“School Spirit” – The College Dropout
Kanye takes a lot of jabs at education (especially on his album ‘The College Dropout’), not all of them completely unfair. I remember listening to ‘School Spirit’ while walking to the Boston T to catch a ride to school in the dead of winter, thinking to myself, “Is this really worth it? Is this degree really going to get me the job I want?” And just then Kanye sings, “This n—- graduated at the top of my class… I went to Cheesecake, he was a motherfucking waiter there.” I bent over laughing right there at the T stop. Not because that’s a funny situation, but because it’s painfully true. It was less funny when it happened to the majority of us after receiving Masters degrees we’d all be paying off for our lives. The dichotomy of a song with a school spirit tone and chant mixed with lyrics like, “Told them I finished school and I started my own business. They say, ‘Oh you graduated?’ No, I decided I was finished,” is just another thing Kanye did right, really really right.