The Cold Cut

Kanye West's post-'Graduation' campaign is going well. Three great singles, some nice live performances, four Grammys, and now two good videos to his name (unfortunately, 'Stronger' wasn't up to scratch). That's right, the third single has been announced- 'Homecoming', featuring Chris Martin.

The video has some nice touches (that outline idea is pretty well executed), and the video fits the jaunty piano and weird dancing, from featuring artist Chris Martin. I guess that's one thing you can expect from a man who named his daughter 'apple'.

Some treats for you- as well as 'Homecoming', an inventive Diplo remix of what was the last single- 'Flashing Lights'.

Kanye West- Homecoming (Link 2) (Link 3)
Kanye West- Flashing Lights (Diplo Remix) (Link 2) (Link 3)

I'm not exactly sure of the reason behind it, but lately loads of rappers and hip hop artists have been reigning in singer-songwriters to guest on their record: the latest to join their ranks is Kanye West, who has roped in Chris Martin of Coldplay to sing on Homecoming, one of the leaked tracks off Graduation, out 10th September. As much as I love Kanye and Coldplay, this song is a dud from start to finish- there's nothing distinguishing about it- and I found myself slightly bored about a minute in, something which rarely happens without reason. It's a bit of an anti-climax to release/leak this after the brilliance of Stronger (my favourite hip-hop track this year, hands down)...

Another worrying thing I've noticed about Kanye is he can't seem to sustain a record by himself anymore- at least 5 or 6 tracks on each of his albums have the dreaded featuring stamp. Keep this up Kanye, and you could find yourself becoming the new Timbaland: On his new album Shock Value, Timba is only on his own for one of the 19 tracks... I appreciate that having a variety of different artists looks great from a business perspective, but sometimes, we (the paying customers) just want to hear the artist by themselves rather than with a plethora of random "hip-hop legends/singers".

Well, that's the rant over- Homecoming is included at the bottom of this post, and now I'm going to go and give it a few more listens before I decide is total rubbish. Just to put my conscience at rest, what do you guys/girls think? Am I right/wrong? Please let me know... This hasn't deflated my expectations for Graduation- I still think it's going to be a great album, only worse than it could have been... Follow the link below to download the track:

Kanye West ft. Chris Martin- Homecoming

Graduation can be pre-ordered here