No. 31: Kanye West (Flash) Lights Up Our List
In which we snub the three massively popular singles from Graduation in favor of the cut that most deserves to be Kanye’s next hit.
Back in August, when Graduation first hit the Web, we were one-listen smitten with the “1940s Hollywood studio orchestra strings/rave Morse Code synth riff” beat of “Flashing Lights,” and almost four months later it sounds richer than ever, well after initial fave “Good Life” joined the pile of “2007’s overplayed T-Pain collaborations.” The track’s druggy, mid-tempo disco stomp is a more assured Kanye-matchmaking hook-up between hip-hop and techno than “Stonger”–a cleverly filched hook in search of a better rap/beat–and while some might argue that (lyrically or musically) the haunted survivalism of “Can’t Tell Me Nothin” deserves this spot, you can’t tell us nothing when those drama-swolen violins start swirlin’ during the too-brief outro. We could rewind those 20 seconds all day.
