Kanye West - Dark Twisted Fantasy

i'm calling it now: this album will top pfork's list, as well as p&j, and will place in ILM's top three -- tempted to say it'll win ILM as well b/c i can't honestly think of something that ppl will vote for on a broader scale

― in a merzbow world, how is kanye ambitious?? (ilxor), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 3:26 PM (35 minutes ago) Bookmark

ILMs list: The-Dream and Joanna Newsom released records this year, plus I can see ilx's own Owen P coming top 5. ALSO bet that Big Boi beats it. And markers can vote for that broken social scene record 17 times.

"All of the Lights" defines what I hate about his "ambition" on this thing: it's long and crams too many instruments.

lol

― aerosmith: the acid house years (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 4:05 PM (47 seconds ago) Bookmark

i feel like people are just calling this "prog-rap" because of the song lengths and the King Crimson sample, there's not a lot of formal or sonic innovation here as far as I can tell (and since when did everyone turn into loujag where that's what gets them excited anyway?). i would be fine with a 9-minute "Runaway" if it did something as remotely interesting as, like, Prince's 12" extended mixes of his '80s singles.

the Chris Rock part is a highlight because he has a sense of humor and flair for word choices that Kanye is generally short on. although it does go on too long and the speak-n-spell "yeezy taught me" voice makes it creepy.

― some dude, Tuesday, November 23, 2010 10:00 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i keep hearing it as 'eazy taught me'

tbf a lot of prog doesn't have any formal or sonic innovation either, it's basically just long songs + synths + fancy guitar parts + vocals about hobbits

i just quoted a whole post for the words 'lol'

smdh@self

i feel like people are just calling this "prog-rap" because of the song lengths and the King Crimson sample, there's not a lot of formal or sonic innovation here as far as I can tell (and since when did everyone turn into loujag where that's what gets them excited anyway?). i would be fine with a 9-minute "Runaway" if it did something as remotely interesting as, like, Prince's 12" extended mixes of his '80s singles.

― some dude, Tuesday, November 23, 2010 10:07 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

but isnt that true of like actual prog too? a lot of marketing of 'progressiveness' when really its more or less similar ideas trotted out again&again haha xp to n/a

he wants things to have this largesse.

also deej I am making a conscious and concentrated effort to not be giving you shit all the time because I think you are a good dude with whom I just disagree a lot but "largesse" generally refers to the giving of gifts or money (def. 2 is "generosity of spirit or attitude" but that doesn't seem to be what you're saying) whereas it seems you mean "huge breadth" here so consider this my dark pedantic twisted deej-correction

basically "prog-rap" is dumb but not really any dumber than any other genre name

but isnt that true of like actual prog too? a lot of marketing of 'progressiveness' when really its more or less similar ideas trotted out again&again haha xp to n/a

― challop and a muff (deej), Wednesday, November 24, 2010 12:09 AM (57 seconds ago) Bookmark

yes which is why no band wants to be lumped into the prog ghetto unless they're rush

but is kanye being 'marketed as' progressive or 'dismissed as' prog, i.e. are the associations accumulating to him thru this good/bad/neutral?

Like I said earlier, I find "All of the Lights" heavily reminiscent of this beatwise:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJRiBDMfrTU

dayo I hope you don't mind my reading way too much into your use of the phrase "prog ghetto", but

or, I should really say "influenced"

xp actually nvm it was probably overdetermined by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josefov

ok, that was a bad word choice bernard

haha no, no criticism intended! just thought it was funny + not totally irrelevant to the question

(the question of the different connotations of the signifier 'prog(ressive)' as attached to music, and which ones are predominating here)

i dont like the word 'progressive' in a general sense, the implied linearity -- i like to think of artists doing new things as moving into new terrain, in a geographic sense, and more significant artists are like hills or mountains that shift the shape of the land around them (this isnt quite how mountains work obv but bear with me) -- progressive ambitions dont really correlate to how novel an artist's work is, per se, although kanye does feel like hes moving into new areas, even if those areas are pretty zzz to me, as someone who is pretty tired of those progressive narratives being the ones that have dominated critical discourse for so long

have always associated prog with technical wankery, which then becomes a general kind of self important wankery

i'm with ship - i don't get how this is all that prog? kanye's always had maximalist tendencies and made his name with a big, fairly opulent sound - 808s was a huge anomaly and why it actually seemed like a creative thing for him to have done. i mean, you have long-ass songs that don't do anything with their length except drag, and like 50 famous singers on one song that may as well have been billed kanye ft. rihanna and fergie for all the difference they make

yeah I think it's pretty funny that some famous dude got dragged into the studio to do a 3 second vocal overdub for all of the lights

i also like the geo/topographic view of music history bcuz it allows for subjectivity of the listener -- we both look at the same mountain, acknowledge 'hey thats a really big mountain,' but have difft perspectives on what exactly the mountain is like & how it impacts us

basically there's not much here that's a surprise from kanye, either sonically or lyrically - i get the impression that he's running out of ideas here, not going further out with them

i'm with ship - i don't get how this is all that prog? kanye's always had maximalist tendencies and made his name with a big, fairly opulent sound - 808s was a huge anomaly and why it actually seemed like a creative thing for him to have done. i mean, you have long-ass songs that don't do anything with their length except drag, and like 50 famous singers on one song that may as well have been billed kanye ft. rihanna and fergie for all the difference they make

― lex lex lex lex lex on the track BOW (lex pretend), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 10:26 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

he was always making albums packed with 9-min songs full of instrumental flourishes & solos? successive posse cuts from multi-genre artists?

I would say that, narratively, there's a big difference between a band or artist that gets pegged as "prog" early on, and one that becomes "prog" at a certain stage in a career, maybe goes through a "progressive phase" — the latter story seeming to invoke (whether for critical or celebratory ends) a historical concept of "progressive" rock as excessive deviation from the straight path of "rock" strictu sensu, while the former basically suggests that this new band reminds people of old bands they might like.

i dont think hes running out of ideas at all -- hes just coming up w/ ones that dont particularly interest me. see, i think u guys are denying the mountain in front of you, arguing its a hill, instead of just saying "i prefer my mountains look differently"

you guys = lex & al

cant wait til kanye enters the jazz odyssey portion of his career

deej I don't think anybody gets your mountain analogy

NO ONE REALLY THINKS THIS IS "PROG"

its obv just a shortcut for saying long songs + self-indulgence

duh

I sorta got it but now this stuff about ppl "denying the mountain" has thrown me a bit

+ "there's a King Crimson sample on one song"

i get it deej's analogy

i also can't write sentences

got into trouble one time for denying the mountain in mont blanc

he should have just filled every extra three minutes of no rapping tacked onto the end of songs with twista verses

he was always making albums packed with 9-min songs full of instrumental flourishes & solos? successive posse cuts from multi-genre artists?

the nine-minute song here is an anomaly even by this album's standards and doesn't have any more ideas than the original 5 1/2 min version of it - and yeah, he pretty much has always done 5-6min songs full of lavish flourishes. "we major" beats the shit out of anything on MBDTF.

multi-genre artist collaborations are kinda par for the course for most mainstream pop stars right now, and obv he's always done posse cuts.

its obv just a shortcut for saying long songs + self-indulgence

yeah this, but the self-indulgence remains mostly thematic not musical right? kanye's music just isn't complex

yeah this, but the self-indulgence remains mostly thematic not musical right? kanye's music just isn't complex

neither are his themes!

I sorta got it but now this stuff about ppl "denying the mountain" has thrown me a bit

― underplayed junior boys remixes I have forgotten were on my comp (bernard snowy), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 10:32 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i just mean it seems obvious to me that there is this huge thing in front of us, and we can criticize it for lots of things, but denying that it is in fact an ambitious, important, interesting album seems like denying the obvious thing in front of our faces. regardless of quality

yeah this, but the self-indulgence remains mostly thematic not musical right? kanye's music just isn't complex

― Noel 1 Kanye 10.0 (blueski), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 10:35 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wait, is complexity a rockist red herring or not?

did you not hear late registration - HE MAKES MUSIC THAT IS LIKE CRACK. COMPLEX.

We won't have a conclusive verdict on this until Geir pops up to declare it the best hip-hop album ever made, right?

n/a — then the interesting question would be when/how "prog"-as-derogatory-shorthand is used — why do Kanye's long songs and self-indulgence set off the prog detector, but Destroyer's Rubies or Sufjan Stevens don't? also, when did "prog" come to fill this role?

ambitious? maybe so, it tries very hard to be a Grand Statement anyway
important? insofar as any album by a pop star of kanye's stature is important, yes
interesting? not really! this i would totally dispute.

i didn't say his themes were complex, just that the music would have to be (more than it is) for the prog tag to make sense/be useful

but Destroyer's Rubies or Sufjan Stevens don't? also, when did "prog" come to fill this role?

― underplayed junior boys remixes I have forgotten were on my comp (bernard snowy), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 10:39 AM (25 seconds ago) Bookmark

ha for lex they prob do!

deej — feels like you are basically arguing for a 'hermeneutic circle' — I feel u bro