Kanye West - Dark Twisted Fantasy

DJP i was responding to your original question but characterizing Whiney's argument (that you seemed to have no problem with) as a "stupid wall to put up," that's not the same as calling you stupid and i'm sorry if you took it that way.

i don't think i said a single particularly contentious thing in this argument?! don't drag my name into it because you and al ship are all rock em sock bro bots

all i'm saying dude, is this question

"Why does this approach irritate you here more than it does in other contexts?"

what is "this approach" and what are the "other contexts"? it hasn't been defined in any meaningful way but you treated it as the most reasonable question in the world.

whiney the totally useless and misleading "bwaha you like sonic youth" thing was all you

i think he means the approach of not enunciating and other context being other songs in history

again, I think a Daniel Johnston fan saying Kanye sounds criminally inept would be infinitely more on point than SY, who are all about ironic detachment and sounding droll - they really don't go for big emotional vocal climaxes

sorry, that should be "I think calling bullshit on a Daniel Johnston fan saying Kanye sounds criminally inept..."

Would it have made any difference if I'd said "why do you hate Kanye's singing on that line, since it doesn't really seem THAT bad particularly in relation to other things on the album like 'Dark Fantasy'?" Because those were really the examples I was thinking of; the wider point of other mumbly/indistinct singers was floating out there as an expansion point for the conversation.

xp: or what J0rdan said, unless you're just saying that you hate all singers which mumble which is totally fine and something that can be said without strawmanning and being hilariously defensive.

"why do you hate Kanye's singing on that line, since it doesn't really seem THAT bad particularly in relation to other things on the album like 'Dark Fantasy'?"

You're right that technical proficiency isn't the whole picture, but is it that hard to grasp that coming up short on the big money moment of an emotional American Idol-style ballad could rankle a listener more than in less consequential-to-the-song instances?

The subjective thing that no one wants to talk about or interrogate or discuss is the "coming up short" part. I keep asking "Why do you think he came up short there?" and the response I'm getting is "BECAUSE HE DID STOP ATTACKING ME"

well what did you mean by "it isn't pretty"?

I mean he's shouting; you can hear vocal strain in the notes he's hitting.

well then

...

I should have deleted this board when I had the chance

I've learned a lot about life.

Would it have made any difference if I'd said "why do you hate Kanye's singing on that line, since it doesn't really seem THAT bad particularly in relation to other things on the album like 'Dark Fantasy'?" Because those were really the examples I was thinking of; the wider point of other mumbly/indistinct singers was floating out there as an expansion point for the conversation.

xp: or what J0rdan said, unless you're just saying that you hate all singers which mumble which is totally fine and something that can be said without strawmanning and being hilariously defensive.

― BO (DJP), Friday, December 10, 2010 2:30 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i've criticized a lot of the other vocal moments on the album on similar grounds -- specifically the line in "Monster" after the Napoleon Dynamite impression when he's rapping, not singing, but kind of grumbles intelligibly in a similar way. and i hate the sing-song flow on "Dark Fantasy" as much as you. i wouldn't say that those parts don't bother me just because I said the "Runaway" part is the nadir of the album instead of that.

Ha, okay. I can't fathom hating anything on the album as much as I hate "Dark Fantasy" tbh; there something especially galling about talking about how nice your flow is and then immediately pulling out that garbage (not to mention the "seance"/"parENCE" couplet). I pretty much thought I was going to hate the entire album up until "Power".

yeah you won't catching me defending that song. it'd be better without the constant muppet choir interruptions, but even without them it'd be a pretty average Kanye rap song.

i almost feel like the first 2 tracks exist to make "Power" sound bigger and better than i thought it was before

actually since I apparently keep attempting to blot "Devil in a New Dress" from my memory, I actually hate that one more; at least I can laugh at "Dark Fantasy"

i like dark fantasy for sounding like rza

it does? i was kinda surprised when i found out he was involved in that track.

i mean there's a 'generic 90s rap piano loop' feel to it but nothing that jumped out to me as very rza-sounding

uh, the fact that the loop closes in on itself with no crossover is a very RZA thing (or a very muggs thing)

the fact that ye can't this the notes it makes it more human, period.

for some reason i always think ilx is above this lame "this record is flawed but you know what, human beings are flawed WHOA" stuff

did you guys not have punk rock growing up?

we had soulja boy

I had punk rock growing up, and I hated a lot of it for being too incompetent and a little too playing-with-racism-y.

(in fact, I am older than u)

the actual flaws in the record, kevin, is that he says dumb shit like "NNNAHHHHHHH PUT A PUSSY IN SARCOPHOPHOHGPGS" not that he's up on Jagjaguwar shit and knows that sometimes leaving in imperfections is an artistic choice for a lot of modern musicians

that he's up on Jagjaguwar shit

okay, stop

um

next thing you're gonna try & explain him recording in hawaii because he's into underwater peoples

Who do you thinks put out Bon Iver records?

Pitchfork doesn't just gift them to the internet

yeah but "purposefully singing poorly" is not something that kanye started doing on this album

or something that he realized was okay because of bon iver

wonder if kanye has been hipped to richard youngs

(not to mention that there's no evidence that kanye has heard any bon iver song besides "the woods" considering that's the one he samples & that he has vernon singing thru auto tune on every song)

i'm just saying chicken or egg it's an aesthetic he clearly understands

yeah but it's something he copped from lil wayne, not merge records

intentionally singing poorly is a longstanding cross-genre thing & not rlly a big deal. this debate is confusing -- obvi al's problem is that this poor singing is employed as a strategy that doesnt work for him in this instance, and other people think it does work -- these are the terms on which this debate wd actually make sense. Also 'dark fantasy' struck me as rza esque immediately, so i knew it was his track as soon as i heard it. tonally-limited off-meter loop, its like the most rza sounding thing ever

tim f says this a lot, its more helpful to think of these aesthetic approaches as 'strategies' that succeed or fail based on the listeners expectations, rather than automatically c or d techniques

bon iver is a gayng member, maybe that's how kanye know him

http://lolosad.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/sad_pug_4.jpg

pug lyfe

intentionally singing poorly is a longstanding cross-genre thing & not rlly a big deal. this debate is confusing -- obvi al's problem is that this poor singing is employed as a strategy that doesnt work for him in this instance, and other people think it does work -- these are the terms on which this debate wd actually make sense. Also 'dark fantasy' struck me as rza esque immediately, so i knew it was his track as soon as i heard it. tonally-limited off-meter loop, its like the most rza sounding thing ever

― lotta diamonds ... but prolly more display names (deej), Friday, December 10, 2010 3:41 PM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

tim f says this a lot, its more helpful to think of these aesthetic approaches as 'strategies' that succeed or fail based on the listeners expectations, rather than automatically c or d techniques

― lotta diamonds ... but prolly more display names (deej), Friday, December 10, 2010 3:43 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah true. i mean, i really don't like the singing on "Runaway" and even if you like it it shouldn't be that hard to figure out where i'm coming from. and yet here we are bringing Rough Trade and Jagjaguwar into it like that means anything at all.

I can get why someone wouldn't like "Runaway"; I was asking because the reasons you were giving didn't jibe with my experience with the song and I was curious if there was another layer that was fueling the antipathy.

yeah...if anything the extra layer is that hearing the song on the VMAs i was like "okay, it's live, he's always a little shaky there" and then the studio version comes out and the vocals are even sloppier.

i mean Kanye has aggro songs like "Keep The Receipt" where he's hollering along with ODB, i'm not really going to sweat the perfection of the vocal performance there, but "Runaway" feels like it's aspiring to be a big pop moment but then you've got this one kinda weak verse, a chorus that could've been tightened up a little, an off-topic guest rap, and singing so half-assed it makes me grind my teeth.