Kanye West - Dark Twisted Fantasy

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

i agree that britney seems to have a lot of control at this point, but hasn't always. that said, she was raised to work according to or at least within the dictates of a guiding hand. i'd argue that this conditioning has defined and continues to define her career, even in the wake of her "period of adjustment." i don't say this a criticism of britney on any level, nor do i suggest that an artist cannot communicate effectively when working in such manner. but kanye's position relative to personal agency and the myth of the creative artist is and has been very different all along. that this situation, coupled with his own personality has indeed, in this album, generated something that will be repellent to many (hell it's repellent to me, and that's a big part of why i enjoy it, perverse as that might seem). to my mind, it's also something very different in kind than anything britney's done to date, for better or worse.

i understand why people might want to erase the distinctions between the ostensibly promethean "creative artist" who determines all aspects of his/her output and the "mere" performer who works by and large in a space directly defined by managing others. an artist like madonna, for instance, obliterates such distinctions, at least relative to her own career. and far too much has been made of the idea that only that which one has wholly created is truly artistically legitimate. nevertheless, the distinction isn't entirely meaningless even if it isn't always clear, and it does have bearing on where britney and kanye are at at this point in their respective careers.

will get back to you (likely late tonight) on the specific examples you ask for, lex, as i wrote that before seeing your clarification. not sure i'll be able to provide them, honestly, as the perception of artistic coherence is, as i suggested before, awfully hard to define in precise terms.

I don't want to derail this, especially since we alluded to Madonna last Tuesday or Wednesday, but there hasn't been one aspect of her career in which Madonna hasn't shown herself to be its guiding force.

oh ok it's a straightforward question of authorship/auteurship then. i don't think anyone would dispute that, but what i took issue with was

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

which i don't think is right, and has nothing to really do with how much creative agency she personally has. throughout her career - and more and more as time has gone on - her persona (both the image of britney that's been presented to the public, and the IRL britney beneath that) has been totally intertwined with the music - the beats and the songs that have been crafted for her. and often, especially as she's become more famous, for her specifically. blackout is as driven as much as MBDTF by its singer's persona, even if she didn't write it. also, it has better songs and you can dance to it.

you know what else it is? totally harmless.

― BIG MUFFIN (gbx), Wednesday, December 1, 2010 6:37 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

sure just not really shedding any light on anything

another thing, in parting. the search for tangible evidence of artistic self determination in the work of any given artist seems like something of a shell game to me. that sort of thing can't really be definitively known or shown. we can talk about what we like or dislike in art, how those effects seem to have been achieved and what they might mean. if we know something of an artist's life and situation, we can talk about the ways in which the work reflects that. we can do all these things equally well whether or not the ostensible "artist" has any hand at all in the work produced in his/her name. by which i mean, that we could probably make a solid case for the presence of britney's identity in the music that bears her name even if she had never once made a single decision about its form or content, if she were only its nominal author.

to the extent that we are rational materialists above all else, this might seem to suggest that what we call "artistic vision" is a sham, a projection, or an act of potentially misplaced faith, grated to some and denied others. i disagree, at least to some extent. but i doubt that i could ever make this case to anyone's satisfaction.

there hasn't been one aspect of her career in which Madonna hasn't shown herself to be its guiding force.

― look at it, pwn3d, made u look at my peen/vadge (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, December 1, 2010 4:48 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

agreed.

that we could probably make a solid case for the presence of britney's identity in the music that bears her name even if she had never once made a single decision about its form or content, if she were only its nominal author

lol that's pretty much what i did. it's true tho!

she may not be the author, but she is both muse and performer, roles which provide ample scope for channeling her identity in the end product

totally on board with that

think i said i was going somewhere...

identity /= brand

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.

― lotta diamonds ... but prolly more display names (deej), Wednesday, December 1, 2010 7:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think there's a kernel of truth in that if Kanye was a contemporary of Stevie he'd never in his wildest dreams be put in the same category as a top shelf albums artist the way he is now

Let's have a bump for the douchebags

― Two and a Half Muffins (Eazy), Wednesday, December 1, 2010 5:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

lol

xpost because he can't play piano+samplers not invented yet? or just because people would be like "woah wtf is this, more like CRAP amirite??"

i'm saying put the guy Kanye in the 70s and see what records he makes, not put Kanye records in the 70s. don't be ridiculous, clearly my sci-fi premise makes more sense than yours!

This thought experiment is fuckin' ri-dick-a-lus.

This album is incredibly stupid in at least one essential, correct way; I am having tons of fun quoting it and hearing/reading other ppl quote/reference its dumber lines as part of conversation.

i'm saying put the guy Kanye in the 70s and see what records he makes, not put Kanye records in the 70s. don't be ridiculous, clearly my sci-fi premise makes more sense than yours!

― My Melody Man! (Geir Hongro) (some dude), Thursday, December 2, 2010 9:36 AM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no its just that expectations from rappers are diff than expectations for stevie fucking wonder. the context kanye's come up in is entirely different. no one expects MOP to compete with stevie wonder either.

I do

like wait -- a guy known for rapping & making beats cant compete with a songwriter/singer in the songwriter/singer's era?? no shit!

i dunno djp i think this is an effort by somedude/miccio to create alternate reality situations in which it can seem like overwhelming evidence suggests kanye is a hack or whatever, imo the record's flaws are self-evident & dont need this kind of disingenuously biased "WHAT IF..." scenarios

tbf I was making a snarky joke and actually agree with your position 100%

otherwise I would be on the Taylor Swift thread going "but what would happen if we put her up next to Miles Davis?"

i dunno djp i think this is an effort by somedude/miccio to create alternate reality situations in which it can seem like overwhelming evidence suggests kanye is a hack or whatever, imo the record's flaws are self-evident & dont need this kind of disingenuously biased "WHAT IF..." scenarios

― lotta diamonds ... but prolly more display names (deej), Thursday, December 2, 2010 10:06 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

dude u need to chill

haha

fwiw i don't think kanye is a hack, he's just a moderately talented overachiever who made some really great records in the past, and has probably just about hit his ceiling and run out of creative steam by now, at least for the time being.

i mean i think the 70s era of 'uplifting soulful innocence' pre-crack also makes stevie sort of untouchable, kanye has the unfortunate disadvantage of coming out post-crack, even if hes a reaction to post-crack rap hes still as defined by self-consciousness in relation to that as crack rap is directly. the weary cynicism of it all means nothing current can touch the purity of 70s classic soul in comparisons like this anyway

dude u need to chill

― BIG MUFFIN (gbx), Thursday, December 2, 2010 10:10 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

thats just poor wording! i just meant the argument tactic is as i originally said 'kinda batty'

jeez i just meant stevie's records had cooler synths (xpost)

I'd like to clarify something; I didn't actually read the hypothetical argument, I just saw Kanye getting compared to Stevie Wonder and started rmde

so I don't necessarily agree with you 100%

yeesh dudes whats w/ everyone trying to make me sound crazy lately

i dont really think i said anything too out there here! certainly not as out there as 'but how does kanye compare to 70s stevie wonder'

just clowning u dude

sorry i was playing with my banned whiney fingerpuppet since he always going on about how kanye deserves the "stevie award" for 4-5 great consecutive albums

comparing artists of different eras is just Shark v. Dinosaur bullshitting anyway. getting too worked up about it is like being the dude who says 'yes but a shark and a dinosaur could never actually fight unless the dinosaur had a scuba mask on, and how could you even make a scuba mask for a dinosaur???'

^^^good pt

about the mask i mean

hahaha

we should add kanye to that giant 'who would win in a fight?' superhero thread

I just had a massive flashback to late-90s rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe and the epic Storm vs Spiderman argument

i guess "don't be ridiculous, clearly my sci-fi premise makes more sense than yours!" wasn't a big enough tipoff that i wasn't being deadly serious with this whole line of conversation, but sorry guys, i apologize for suddenly making this thread so terrible

(I understood that and lolled, some dude; it was a good remedy for the sprain rmde caused)

everything about ilx is deadly serious

no, i got it some dude

i thought the 70s thing was about whether being self-absorbed was particularly zeitgeisty

i think the public nature of the self-absorption is whats difft now (the cocaine is the same)

You can totally compare their sunglasses.