The easy hype for fans and observors was "hipster rap" vs "gangsta rap," and a belief that Kanye represented the antithesis of what 50 represented. That presentation was enough for everyone to start paying attention; the two landed on the cover of Rolling Stone, and SoundScan was primed for a showdown of sales.

For his part, 50 was coming off two blockbusters: his smash 2003 debut Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ and it's 2005 follow-up, The Massacre. Both topped the Billboard 200 and spawned a stream of hit singles for the Queens-raised rapper, who's image and G-Unit brand had dominated so much of the mid-2000s in Hip-Hop. 

The rise of Kanye West began just after 50 dropped his debut; Ye was already a successful producer but made his debut as an artist with 2004s triple-platinum selling The College Dropout. He followed that album with the ambitious but just-as-successful Late Registration in 2005. The showdown between 50 and Kanye became music media's obsession, as West bumped his new album's release date up from Sept. 18 to Sept. 11 to go toe-to-toe against 50 Cent's new album, Curtis. The two even engaged in a famous boxing-style "stare down" at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards.

But even before the announcement of a showdown, fans were frothing at the mouth for their next Kanye fix. He dropped his "Can't Tell Me Nothing" mixtape in the spring, featuring a DJ Toomp-produced single that featured Young Jeezy. The anthemic "Can't Tell Me Nothing" made it apparent that Ye was showing no signs of slowing down following the tour-de-force of Late Registration.

The hype surrounding "Kanye Vs. 50" was great for media, but it didn't really matter much when it comes to anticipation for the third album from Kanye West. It was then much as it is now: Kanye gets the world's attention just by being Kanye. And for his third album, the mercurial rapper/producer from Chicago found inspiration in everything from the artwork of Takashi Murakami to Back To The Future II.

"Oh, man, I love that movie so much," West told Rolling Stone in 2008. "You can see so many influences from my new album cover. It’s crazy how movies can connect with pop culture. I also wanted one of those machines from Star Trek. Where’s my 'Beam me up, Scotty' machine?"

He'd also been influenced by opening for U2 on their Vertigo Tour. The legendary rockers had built a legacy on massive arena tours for decades, and with that 2005-06 trek, Kanye got to see the power and fury of arena entertainment up close. It gave the rapper the ambition to put his own spin on that approach, to put Hip-Hop shows on that rivaled the scale of anything anyone had ever seen before, in any genre. Spectacle was beginning to become Ye's greatest muse, and even his music sounded bigger. And when he dropped "Stronger," the first single from his new project, it was clear that he was aiming for something much bigger.

The Daft Punk-sampling hit announced Graduation officially, and in spectacular fashion.

"Arena rap" wasn't an entirely new thing: the crushing bombast of Run-D.M.C. and Public Enemy had taken Hip-Hop into stadiums decades before Kanye West dropped Graduation. But in the post-Y2K musical landscape, and with Hip-Hop suddenly becoming the soundtrack to a generation's sense of upward mobility and luxury; Ye's songs sounded like the epitome of arena rap. The sound of "Stadium status"-level ambitions.

West's love of pop culture and baiting critics is evident on the album. "Barry Bonds," a collaboration with VA producer Nottz, features Lil Wayne and name-drops the controversial MLB legend as he was ending his career amidst ongoing conversation about performance enhancing drugs in baseball. Mos Def shows up on the obnoxious "Drunk & Hot Girls," another song that seems to be Kanye wearing his penchant towards hedonism and misogyny on his sleeve.

"Champion" follows a long tradition of flipping Steely Dan into classic rap songs, this time with producer Brian "All Day" Miller turning a snippet of "Kid Charlamagne" into a triumphant track that reflects the rapper's own complex relationship with his father. In an interview with SPIN, West explained how he got the band to clear the song, but didn't elaborate on where things stood with his dad.

"I ain’t gonna speak on that," he said at the time. "But I will say that that is what got the sample cleared. I wrote a letter to [Steely Dan’s] Donald Fagen and explained to him the importance of this song to me, and of expressing these feelings to my father. I think it’s what made the difference in getting the sample cleared. All of these living artists — I think they’ve learned to trust the Kanye brand. They know their sample is not gonna be placed with some quote-unquote booty video."

He was no longer the scrappy underdog, a semi-nerd rapper who loved A Tribe Called Quest and hung out with Common, intent on proving all the doubters wrong. And he wasn't yet a disgruntled pop culture iconoclast, almost resentful of his stature while doing everything in his power to court and sustain the attention. In 2007, Kanye West was riding the wave of his early acclaim, continued success and ever-broadening cultural reach. Graduation is the sound of West enjoying "the good life" with only a dash of the cynicism and conflict that defines his best work. The dark edges are most definitely there, but he's enjoying himself, for really the first time. And maybe the last time.

Kanye West's reputation as a music nerd may not be as celebrated as a Questlove or a Q-Tip, but it's the bedrock for Graduation. An Elton John flip on the elegant "Good Morning;" Labi Siffre forming the foundation for "I Wonder"; and Laura Nyro's live version of "Save The Children" running throughout "The Glory." It's all testament to how much West and his creative collaborators love crate-digging, and the results are some of the most pristine and infectious tracks in recent music.

From the moment his first album's commercial success affirmed him as a star, Kanye used his stature to afford every creative affectation. Before it became overly indulgent, Kanye's muse and dedication to craft led to some of the most well-crafted, sonically rich music of the era.

"Kanye had a one-day session booked in Studio Two to record some strings," engineer Merik Stiles recalled last year about the recording session. "I gave him a tour of the studios and he really liked Studio Three and asked if he could book it for the remainder of the week. By pure coincidence Studio Three had just had a last-minute cancellation, so it kind of worked out perfectly."

Graduation was released on September 11, 2007 and it became another smash for West. It debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, grossing over 957,000 copies in the United States in its first week. It's commercial success famously bested 50 Cent's competing Curtis album; additionally, Graduation's first week sales of 957,000 and Curtis's first week sales of 691,000 marked only the second time since the inception of Nielsen SoundScan that two albums debuted within the same week with totals surpassing 623,000 copies.

And West would make headlines just after the album's release, when he furiously criticized MTV for not having his performance on the show's main stage during the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards after having Justin Timberlake showcased there.

"It was more because they made me perform in that suite," Kanye told SPIN that year. "And told me I didn’t want to perform on the main stage. They told me Justin [Timberlake] wasn’t performing on the main stage, either."

"It makes me proud as someone who’s watched his growth from the beginning," Jay-Z told Entertainment Weekly after Graduation's chart-dominating success. "When he came in as a hungry producer, to now—he’s a rock star. I’m happy for him on that level. And I’m excited for creativity as well, because I think that’s a win for that as well. You know, people mimic success. And in order to mimic that success, you have to put in a lot of work. You have to really care about the music. I was just listening to the first song [on Graduation], called 'Good Morning' [West sampled] an a capella of my song in the end, 'The Ruler’s Back' off of The Blueprint album. And I was with him last night, he was bragging about having the a capella. He’s like, 'Yo, that’s how I spun it, ’cause I had the a capella.' I’m like, wow. The things he cares about! That’s not a big thing, but in his mind, 'I had the a capella, so I was able to put that sample in there without any drums.'”

Today, calling the album Graduation seems somewhat bitterly appropriate. It feels like the musical and aesthetic culmination of Kanye Mach 1, the crescendo that his first two albums had been building towards; the climax of The Dropout Bear's metaphorical journey. In a way, the album also feels like an ending that's bigger than just Kanye; this sounds like the beginning of the musical end of the 2000s in mainstream Hip-Hop; as an emerging generation would embrace AutoTuned hooks, social media omnipresence and hyperbranding heading into the next decade. West (the Mach 2 version) himself would be a guiding light for that generation, as his following album 808s & Heartbreak, as well as subsequent projects like My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Yeezus) would largely abandon the creative mores of classic Hip-Hop; while also becoming increasingly tethered to multimedia event spectacles and sensationalist headlines.

But we should avoid the tendency towards romanticization when discussing "New Kanye" versus "Old Kanye." You can see the seeds being sown for his next iteration around the time Graduation was topping the charts. The hyped 50 Cent sales duel foreshadowed Ye's present-day preoccupation with ostentatious displays of self-promotion to help sell an album; and he'd already made it clear that he was obsessed with staying omnipresent in popular culture; both as a barometer for it and a reporter discussing it.

"I make music as good as possible," he said to DJ Booth in 2007. "But I do reference cultural icons because I want my music to be a time capsule of 2007. You throw everything in, you know, the Kate Moss reference to the Lil Wayne verse to a T-Pain feature—everything is like, 'This is what’s happenin’ in 2007.' I want my album to be that one—if you’re making a time capsule you have to throw my album in there."