Graduation Album

Graduation will be the third studio album release from Island Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella hip hop artist/record producer Kanye West.

On August 5, 2006, at San Diego’s Street Scene and on August 20, 2006, at Indiana’s State Fair, West performed a cappella two verses which he said are from songs on the album. West also performed a couple of verses from an unnamed song which will be on the album during his September 3, 2006 performance at the Bumbershoot festival in Seattle.

I can say, idea-wise, I got 10 ideas. I go back and work on ideas and tweak them. I can’t say I’m halfway done. There’s a lot of people I want to work with, a lot of rappers. But I don’t want to give away what I’mma do. I look at music as a gift. So I’mma just keep everything under wraps until it’s time. You remember, you didn’t find out about the Nas joint (”We Major”) until real late? I waited till the last listening session a couple of weeks before the album came out. I played it in a room with 300 people and Nas’ voice hit the track and it was like, ‘Ah, man.’ Another surprise might be there might not be anybody on it. There are a few rappers I really love and I would love to work with, but I’mma figure out what I’mma do for my album

West’s decision to change the album’s release date from September 18, 2007 to September 11, 2007 means that Graduation will have the same release date as 50 Cent’s Curtis. This means that Graduation and Curtis will compete against each other for better album sales. 50 Cent later stated that he will stop releasing solo albums if Curtis will not sell more copies than Graduation.However, 50 Cent would later dispel his comments.