Kanye West - Dark Twisted Fantasy

does Kanye WANT to be a latter-day prophet inveighing against the hypocrisy of our times?

nah he just wants to redecorate some pussy

a more 'objective' look is "this album is cokey."

isn't this actually subjective, too, unless we know for certain that drugs were involved?

of course whether or not it is cokey is debatable, but most ppl seemed agreed on that. everything CAN be debateable. but if we agree that its a cokey record, then the debate becomes about how that informs the record. just saying "its cokey in a boring way" is like saying ... "isnt it great how cokey this is??" its a meaningless statement unless u look at how its 'cokiness' informs the end product

I just think we like using "coke" and "cokey" in sentences, deej.

http://www.statejournal.com/images/041610052647_CokieHeadShot1.jpg

cokie rock

cokie monster

a heavily-praised album that is nothing but "solipsism, broadcast for all the world to see" (if that's what it is) doesn't capture the times, it's emblematic of them.

― da croupier, Wednesday, December 1, 2010 12:14 PM (58 minutes ago) Bookmark

well, how do we distinguish between one and the other? typically, we look to the artist for some clear signal of intentionality, of critical distance. we don't get that with kanye. he gives little evidence of the kind of distanced, ironic self awareness we expect from artists who are merely inhabiting distasteful personae in order to "make a statement."

but i'm suspicious of the tendency to therefore write him off as a mere emblem or symptom of larger forces he isn't in artistic control of. i see evidence in kanye's music all along that he is self aware and that he indulges, in his work, his worst selves for artistic effect, in order to get at something, or perhaps just to make a sick joke. i'm not going to call this record the rap à rebours, as edward III (perhaps jokingly) suggested yesterday, but i don't think that's such an absurd suggestion. remember that there wasn't much distance between huysmanns and his "jean des esseintes," either.

main point is that my default assumption is that art accomplishes its effects intentionally. or else that the "intentionality" that supposedly justifies art isn't half so important as its made to seem. i think in pushing his pathology forward, especially given how strikingly it coincides with the social pathology of the present moment, kanye west has made a fascinating record. and i respect his artistry enough to give him credit for that, to grant that the things that make this record interesting are the products of his work, not merely accidental correspondences with his times.

http://www.coolcreatureshotplanet.com/images/CoquiFrog.jpg?160

xpost

Does Kanye West do Cocaine?

+Possibly. In new single "Power" off upcoming 2010 album, Kanye raps on the chorus, "I'm trippin' off the powder"--which can be interpreted to mean he's acting crazy due to using cocaine.
(Added March 28, 2010)

maybe a latter-day hypocrite inveighing against the prophesy of our times? but nah, that was Dr. Dre again, wasn't it? ;-/

Let's have a bump for the douchebags

i'm suspicious of the tendency to therefore write him off as a mere emblem or symptom of larger forces he isn't in artistic control of.

uh, never did I suggest he lacked self-agency. Suggesting his acclaim is emblematic of larger cultural trends doesn't mean that he is a mere symbol.

It's possible he'd chase his pathology around just as loudly in the 70s, though I think his competition for being The Greatest would have forced him try harder at making better lyrics and songs.

496,000 first week. Not bad. Nicki Minaj did 375,000, btw.

point taken. i got the impression you were suggesting that the album itself was emblematic of cultural trends (with a "merely" implied), not just that its reception has been so. on that score, i have no opinion, save that most of the criticism i've read has seemed reasonably cognizant of the issue.

that to da croup

i would say the album is emblematic of the era it's come out of (successful albums tend to be!), though I wouldn't say it's solely striking due to that fact.

I know why this album bores me: as a man who just turned thirty-six, I'm impatient with guys whose bank accounts are bigger than mine yet assume their good looks are enough for me to forget their irritability, paranoia, and disinterest in other human beings.

He says he's a monster, I say, "OK, you've told me already, buddy. Check, please."

i'd agree. i wouldn't say that the album is solely striking due to its resonance with the current culture of oversharing and our fascination with celebrity as an end in itself, but i do find it fascinating on that level, and more so than most pop albums. plus i've always loved a good trainwreck.

Naw. I hate rubberneckers.

ever been to Miami? Most traffic forms as a result of rubbernecking.

everybody loves a good trainwreck

this isn't a trainwreck, it's just a bit self-absorbed! i mean if you call this a trainwreck wtf would you call britney's blackout or lindsay lohan's life

Maybe I need to see a train wreck to understand what makes them self-evidently fascinating.

a zeppelin crash on the other hand

I like enough trainwrecks that I won't throw stones if that's what people are digging here, though if that's the case I do recommend some of you check out Chocolate Starfish & The Hot Dog Flavored Water. Songs with lines like "Dedicated to you, Ben Stiller! You are my favorite muthafucka!" and "Pay me no mind/ I seen Fight Club about 28 times" deserve a revisit in this context, and don't tell me the songs are too plodding!

One track Durst is fuming about being dissed in a NIN video, the next he's announcing himself the voice of his g-g-generation!

how is Chocolate Starfish like Empire Burlesque?

I'm saving 80s Dylan for my forties

britney's blackout

A great album.

lindsay lohan's life

Six trainwrecks colliding at ground zero during a nuclear explosion.

But I really don't think this is a trainwreck, if it is, it is the really cool kind.

i mean if you call this a trainwreck wtf would you call britney's blackout or lindsay lohan's life

― lex lex lex lex lex on the track BOW (lex pretend), Wednesday, December 1, 2010 3:13 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

a good album and a flat-out bad one, though the lohan record is quite a mess, sure. which jon just said. the fact that the trainwreck is, in this case, an ambitious and at times brilliant art statement makes it something more than just a stupendously wrong thing. to my mind anyway. can't stand limp bizkit, but maybe that's my loss...

i wasn't really referring to lindsay's albums, which only have minor trainwrecky songs on them, though i'll take both of them over MBDTF easily, and have no idea wtf makes this an ambitious art statement and the britney/lindsay ones not - in fact lindsay's second album is pretty comparable to this in the massively obvious and sorta dumb way it flags up its own confessionalism and rawness and self-importance - the thing's called a little more personal (RAW) for heaven's sake.

ALMP(R) has a few better songs than MBDTF though.

don't get much sense of a distinct & personal artistic/musical aesthetic out of britney's albums, tbh, certainly not one i can watch develop over time. i mean her persona certainly exists and evolves, but it doesn't seem to have a terribly deep relationship with the music. in kanye's case, i get not just a pop persona and some tunes, but a musical vision and an dominant aesthetic point of view that seems to integrate all these things. the distinction is subtle, though, and undoubtedly colored by my assumptions and prejudices. so be it.

but who cares about those things?

I mean -- lots of people (look at the Metacritic score). But recording is so serendipitous.

i mean her persona certainly exists and evolves, but it doesn't seem to have a terribly deep relationship with the music

can you be a bit more specific about what you mean here? because as this point is written i couldn't disagree more.

i just had a major brain explosion.

you know what guest stars would have really taken this album into the fucking cosmos???????????????

http://content8.flixster.com/photo/10/96/79/10967938_gal.jpg

+

http://content8.flixster.com/photo/10/96/79/10967938_gal.jpg

on the same song.

woah.

here's a way to say it, lex:

if you gave britney absolute and total control over every aspect of her entire career to date, final cut on every second of every one of her albums, and if you spent years surrounding her with people who told her that she was not just a talent, a star, but a bonafide creative genius whose every word and whim reeked of unparalleled artistic brilliance. if you coupled that external environment with an inner britney who was desperate to demonstrate her superiority to every other living thing on earth and let her stew unsupervised in a multi-million dollar recording studio for months on end, then she might cough up something as at once bugfuck nuts and artistically coherent as MBDTF. shy of that, you get something else.

two michael winslows on one song

who says she doesn't?

xp

If you think she has no control over her songwriters and producers at this stage of her career, after all her success, I mean, you're wrong.

Also: every one of those conditions is precisely what makes Kanye's album so repugnant (among other things).

also when i said be more specific, i meant actually specific, with reference to songs and sounds and so on, not waffley assumptions about what goes on behind the scenes or speculation as to what might happen in hypothetical circumstances

It's possible he'd chase his pathology around just as loudly in the 70s, though I think his competition for being The Greatest would have forced him try harder at making better lyrics and songs.

― da croupier, Wednesday, December 1, 2010 4:49 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this kind of alternate history type ish is kind of batty.

you know what else it is? totally harmless.

IS IT!?!?!?!?!

http://bookcoverarchive.com/images/books/man_in_the_high_castle.large.jpg

oh god

i never knew