The Graduate is the fifth album released by MC Lars. It came out on iTunes on February 14, 2005, then as a physical disc in stores on March 21, 2006. Like all newish Lars albums, it has a number of guest artists who join the main guy as he raps about literature, society, relationships, politics, and other such topics.
The track list is:
- Download This Song No relation to the "Weird Al" Yankovic song with a similar title, which was created after this. This is a light-hearted pro-piracy song similar in message to pretty much every other pro-piracy song ever made. It got some play on the radio in its heyday. (features Jaret Reddick of Bowling for Soup)
- The Roommate from Hell Very funny song about someone whose roommate is literally the devil. mc chris is appropriately cast as Lucifer.
- 21 Concepts A rundown of some ideas Lars had for the album that never made the cut. With sampled Tetris tunes and a chorus that spoofs Jay-Z's 99 Problems, this is a really catchy song.
- Hot Topic Is Not Punk Rock Turns out Tinkerbell pillow cases are not punk rock. Very funny. (features The Matches)
- Rapgirl A friend of mine told me that this is the worst song on the album, but I think it's actually pretty good. It's a cute love song full of dumb similes and the sort of sincerity I like from MC Lars. Not sure what he was expecting!
- Generic Crunk Rap Hilarious song mocking everything crunk. "But I still have to write some lyrics!" / "It's crunk night." / "Oh, I guess that won't be a problem then."
- Ahab The obligatory lit-nerd song for this album. It's not as great as Hey There Ophelia on This Gigantic Robot Kills, but still a cool song about Moby Dick.
- iGeneration That's internet generation, not Apple generation. For a song that wants to define a generation of people, it's pretty bland and doesn't do a whole lot of defining.
- If I Had a Time Machine, That Would Be Fresh A really short song about time machines. Decent, but forgettable.
- Internet Relationships (Are Not Real Relationships) Really stupid song that mocks internet relationships for stupid reasons. Can't help but laugh (derisively) that it's on the same album as iGeneration. (features A Scholar and a Physician and Piney Gir)
- Space Game This is where the album starts to get good again. It's all about postmodernism, Star Wars, and Futurama references. Synth girls scream when they hear this one.
- The Dialogue A really cool collaboration between Lars and Ill Bill as they rap about politics (democracy and censorship, most notably). It's not especially catchy, but the lyrics are great. (features Ill Bill)
- Six Degrees of Kurt Cobain You'll find this funny if you like Kurt Cobain or at least know a lot about him. Otherwise, probably not; it's just a stream of 90s music references. Not bad.
- Signing Emo An awesome song mocking the record industry and emo music. I don't know if I should be worried or amused that Lars is so good at imitating the emo genre in this song. (The actual emo song within this song used to be available as a full, separate download on his MySpace, perplexingly.)
Overall, The Graduate is a really solid album full of catchy songs with great lyrics. A lot of the songs aren't the best from MC Lars, but the overall level of quality means that I don't have to skip anything, which makes it more of an actual experience than his other albums. Highly recommended.