The Graduate (MC Lars album)

The Graduate is the fourth full-length studio album by American musician MC Lars. It was released on March 21, 2006 through Horris/Nettwerk Records. Production was mostly handled by Mike Sapone, as well as Christopher Rojas, Ill Bill, Oli Horton, Q-Unique, Steve Dawson and The Rondo Brothers. It features guest appearances from A Scholar And A Physician, Ill Bill, Jaret Reddick, MC Chris, Piney Gir and The Matches.

The album spawned three singles: "Signing Emo", "Download This Song" and "Ahab". "Download This Song" made it to number 29 on the Australian singles chart.

Critical reception

Alyssa Rashbaum of Spin found Lars' lyrics and cultural observations "both absurdly comical and strangely astute", concluding that: "[W]ith intelligent rhymes about why downloading rocks, Nickelback sucks, and youth is kind, Lars may be preaching to the choir, but at least he has a pulpit to stand behind." AllMusic writer Bret Love was positive towards Lars' wide array of "clever pop culture references" but critiqued that the album's production mostly consisted of "generic laptop DJ stuff", concluding that: "While The Graduate may not be pumping in Jeeps on urban city streets anytime soon (read: ever), it's not difficult to imagine it providing the bong-hit soundtrack for the nation's university dorm rooms." Eddie Fleisher of Alternative Press cautioned readers to not take Lars overly serious for his "hopelessly nerdy quality" and "mixture of satire and pop-culture commentary" throughout the album, saying "it's not the best rap record of all time, but what's refreshing is that it was never intended to be." Tim Perlich of Now wrote that: "The Graduate seems less like the wiseass commentary of a pissed-off bedroom recorder than the contrived gags of a major label flunky with access to market research on iPod buyers. For a comedy album, it's not that funny, but Nettwerk's laughing all the way to the bank." PopMatters writer Dan Raper said: "In his preoccupation with sending up genres such as emo or crunk, his reliance on too-famous samples that hijack Lars' own creativity, and his simple, simplistic delivery, he has failed to create a cohesive or compelling album."

Track listing

Notes

• signifies a co-producer.
• "Generic Crunk Rap" features additional vocals by Steve Connelly.

Sample credits

• "Download This Song" samples "The Passenger" by Iggy Pop.
• The song "21 Concepts" samples music from Tetris. When performed live, the background video includes clips of Mega64s popular Tetris video. Additionally, the lyrics parody the song '99 Problems' by Jay-Z.
• The chorus to "Ahab" samples the British band Supergrass performing "Moving" off their self-titled album.
• The song "iGeneration" samples "American Hearts" by Piebald.
• The song "Singing Emo" samples "Cry Tonight" by Hearts That Hate.