Graduation Songwriting Credits by Kanye West

Graduation is the third studio album by Kanye West, released in September 2007 on Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam Records and produced primarily by West with contributions from DJ Toomp and others, the album that marked West's deliberate shift from orchestrated soul sampling toward synthesizer-based electronic pop production, influenced by Daft Punk, German Krautrock, and the stadium-scale aesthetic of artists like U2. West wrote all his own lyrics; the album's lead single 'Stronger', built on a sample of Daft Punk's 'Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger', became one of the defining pop songs of 2007, spending 12 weeks in the top five and eventually selling over four million copies in the United States. The album was released on the same day as 50 Cent's Curtis in what became a widely covered commercial competition; Graduation sold approximately 957,000 copies in its first week to Curtis's 691,000, an outcome framed as a symbolic victory for artistic hip-hop over gangster rap commercialism. Graduation debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and won the Grammy for Best Rap Album. The album's consistent use of Takashi Murakami's artwork, a collaboration that extended across the visual identity of the entire campaign, represented one of the most discussed art-commerce collaborations in the music industry at the time.