Kanye West‘s Graduation has continued to receive its flowers from people all over the world, and this time the classic album has received another certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).
The revered industry collective announced that the album had reached seven-times platinum status as of Thursday (January 11), having been certified six-times platinum the day before. Also on Wednesday (January 10), “All of the Lights” went seven-times platinum, “Follow God” went double-platinum, and “Runaway” with Pusha T officially went five-times platinum.
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Graduation was first released all the way back in 2007. Check out the record’s certifications below.
Kanye West’s Graduation was a “Thriller moment” for Hip Hop, Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def) has claimed.
During a 2022 Drink Champs interview alongside Dave Chappelle and fellow Black Star MC Talib Kweli, the Brooklyn rapper compared the impact of Kanye’s third album to Michael Jackson’s best-selling 1982 LP.
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Echoing a sentiment shared by many, Bey said Graduation shifted the trajectory of Hip Hop when it outsold (and, in his opinion, outshone) 50 Cent’sCurtis during Kanye and 50’s highly publicized sales showdown in September 2007.
“It was so creative, it was funny … Graduation is like a Thriller moment that people don’t properly appreciate,” he said. “I always feel like they’re trying to hate on it ’cause he really sold a million records in a [week]. I don’t care what they say.
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“It kept the record industry floating for at least the next five years and it helped them transition into this whole streaming model ’cause they were just sitting on cash. I mean, who performs like that?
“It wasn’t Coldplay, it wasn’t U2, it wasn’t any other genre — it was Kanye West with a beautifully, cleanly-produced album that was pure Hip Hop. I mean, ‘Barry Bonds’? What are we even talking about? That shit was out of control.”
He added: “From an observer’s point of view, it felt like a referendum — this side or this side is going to determine the cultural direction for this group for at least the next five years, if not the full generation.
“In my opinion, that’s what Kanye West’s Graduation album did. It opened up the paradigm creatively for what could be viewed as groundbreaking and inventive and also having a big scale.
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“No one at that type of pop culture scale was being that creative. Particularly in Hip Hop, so it was a big moment for the culture.”
