Kanye West - Dark Twisted Fantasy

Reading that Coates article as being about Kanye's relationship with white culture and not about Kanye's relationship with women and black culture is to miss the entire point, IMO. Coates' entire point is that Kanye is using lazy black stereotypes to avoid saying anything real, making himself into the Undercover Brother of hip-hop (even explicitly so via the accompanying picture).

also this is outstandingly stupid and navel-gazing on a level that would make Kanye blush: His apology to Taylor Swift signified a certain racial deference, given that there was no Tweeted “sorry” also to Janet Jackson, the person who was supposed to be the center of attention at that year’s VMAs for her moving tribute to her deceased King of Pop brother — all of which was overshadowed by West’s antics.

wait which piece is that from??

The one Lex linked.

ok that's a really weird piece

The article lost me when it misused "it's" tbh.

I've gone back and read more of that article and it's more of a gigantic pile of garbage than I originally thought

Which brings us to his non-validation of black women, a trait that he unfortunately also shares with Ali, at least in the boxer's early years. Did Kanye ever allow Amber Rose to be seen as anything other than an accessory -- a golden-haired, golden-skinned "dime piece" to go with his gold neck piece? In 'Power' Ye says "Ma'fucka, we rollin'/with some light-skinned girls and some Kelly Rowlands/ In this white man's world, we the ones chosen." This lyric suggests that only women with near-white complexion are worth "rollin'" with, while only a specific darker complexioned woman -- one like Kelly Rowland -- is acceptable, and likely because of her connection to Beyonce.

That is not actually what that line suggests. That line suggests that they are rollin' with a bunch of black women of different complexions and you have to either have a massive, King Kong-sized chip on your shoulder or be massively stupid to think otherwise. The conclusion would make sense if Kanye had said "and a Kelly Rowland"; as it's stands, it's pretty clear he namechecked her because she is a well-known darker black woman and her last name rhymes with "rollin'" if you're kind of an idiot.

haven't read the article but does it mention why the "phoenix" on the album cover is white but in the Runaway video she isn't, cos if you're writing about kanye's race/women fixations that's probably interesting.

The article is more concerned about a white dude named Cassius Clay and his pernicious influence over Kanye than anything else.

The writer actually comes across crazier than Kanye tbh.

also dumb q but is it really "30 white bitches" because i just assumed "dirty" :/

Kanye asks RZA if he'd voice the hook—"Champagne wishes and 30 white bitches/You know the shit is, fuckin' ridic'lous"—and the Abbott steps into the booth and obliges, immediately transforming from sedate and stoned to amped and aggressive. It's enough to make us all chuckle on his first take; wrapped around those words, his thick and bizarre drawl just sounds so perfectly...RZA. But Kanye notices something off in the delivery, and he presses the intercom button to talk to RZA: "Um, fam, it's actually ‘thirty white bitches,' not ‘dirty white bitches.'" RZA laughs. "I'll do it again," he says, "but to be real, the way I be saying words, you ain't gon' be able to tell the difference."

lol

Fully Validated Kanye West Retires To Quiet Farm In Iowa
'I Got All The Approval I Needed,' Content Former Pop Star Says

http://www.theonion.com/articles/fully-validated-kanye-west-retires-to-quiet-farm-i,18724/

my mom said something was "fucking ridiculous" on gchat recently and I inadvertently read it in RZA's voice

As much as I think the five-star hoopla is absurd, kneejerk and relativist to a tragic extreme, I'll take more tracks from this than I would from Graduation or 808s

eh, Graduation i don't really ride for as a whole but it had its share of jams

i definitely had a fonder initial reaction to it, but in hindsight it feels really negligible aside from a few tracks, really victory lappy. Crazy Kanye has it's problems, but I might prefer it to Victory Lap Kanye.

haha didn't mean to say "victory lap" twice in there.

I liked how his thigh muscles looked in that victory lap.

The throwaway nature of Graduation is its most appealing quality, especially when he can' t help but be sonically ambitious when he's at his most innocuous lyrically.

I don't think he's ever going to make an album better than 808s, personally.

I'm just far too Alan Alda a guy for that album.

i guess i'm too Hot Lips to understand what you're talking about

he's saying he's too much of a wimpy sensitive douche to enjoy an album about the implosion of a cheating misogynist

NOTE: previous characterization may be purposefully incendiary

I wouldn't call sighing "life's not fair" an implosion

good thing there's more than one song on the album, then

which track would you describe as his implosion then?

...

you are smarter than this, at least I would like to think you are

The implosion is chronicled over multiple tracks on the album, starting with the pining-for-a-fantasy-love on on "Say You Will", continuing with the woe-is-me discounting of fame and success on "Welcome To Heartbreak", the bitter acrimony in "Heartless", the self-loathing in "Amazing", the lamentation of lost love in "Love Lockdown", the last-ditch manipulation attempt in "Paranoid", the bitter dismissals in "Robocop", the mournful beginnings of acceptance in "Street Lights", the wounded betrayal of "Bad News", the vituperative kiss-off of "See You In My Nightmares" and the desperate dwelling on the past and future in "Coldest Winter". The entire album is a set piece about the dissolution and deflation of someone who looks to be on top of the world but feels like he is on the bottom.

dude you wanna calm down on the invective? sorry i don't like the album!

I don't really see it as "dissolution and deflation" so much as sulking self-pity from a guy I don't feel much pity for. Dude lashes out at the girl repeatedly, then cries "i will never love again." He may feel like he's on the bottom, but I don't think he ever really pushes himself off his pedestal.

doesn't help that his poor-me metaphors are either painfully cliche or "robocop" ridiculous

oh god i'd forgotten about robocop

Sulking self-pity is often a clear sign of the dissolution and deflation of a massive ego, is the thing

Also, you have known me long enough to know that I am going to come down like a ton of bricks on any line of thought/reasoning/argument that even has faint hallmarks of not being thought out; saying "show me the one song where he falls apart" in response to a claim about the mood of an entire album is, at best, facile. If you don't like that, don't come at me with half-assed rhetoric.

I don't think it's a great catchphrase at all. If someone called me a Robocop as we were on the verge of breaking up that would be the dealbreaker

― let's get high off our own supply (The Brainwasher), Friday, February 13, 2009 9:51 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^^worth remembering about robocop because it means i remember this amazing post

Sulking self-pity is often a clear sign of the dissolution and deflation of a massive ego, is the thing

i think time has proven this wasn't what was happening with kanye

you've known anthony long enough that you should be more accepting of his insightful but often reductive quips! (xpost)

i think time has proven this wasn't what was happening with kanye

Kanye the person is not the album 808s and Heartbreaks.

I don't always advocate the "divorce the performer from the music" line of argument but I don't really have a problem doing it here, largely because I think I was maybe one of the few people around here who successfully avoided learning about the minutiae of Kanye's personal life and therefore had no baggage re: the dissolution of his real-life relationship influencing my digestion of the album.

btw, the first post was a total joke and I apologize if it was over the line

even if i didn't know he split up with his real long-suffering girlfriend, an album where the character passingly references his own cheating while shrieking about her own crimes before moaning about how cold it is now would still sound like douche central. I wouldn't buy his thrashing around before huffing "I will never love again" meant his ego had actually diminished, let alone dissolve.

let alone dissolved, I mean. Though my intent in comparing my stance to Alan Alda was to suck some of the piety out of it. I just find it unrewardingly unpleasant, which is a shame cuz a lot of tracks are musically appealing.

I don't think he has to demonstrate remorse or end up as a sympathetic character to come across as totally falling apart, which seems to be where we diverge in how we see the album.

Kanye too Punk for Anthony!

yeah that's it, it's too punk rock

Sulking self-pity is often a clear sign of the dissolution and deflation of a massive ego, is the thing

― Indolence Mission (DJP), Thursday, January 13, 2011 8:52 AM (27 minutes ago) Bookmark

disagree, sort of. skulking self-pity (and cheap-shot invective) is what egotistical assholes retreat to, temporarily, when others would reflect, accept and hopefully learn something from the whole ordeal before moving on.

but maybe you're defining "dissolution and deflation" differently than i would...

I'm not defining it as "learns a lesson and becomes a better person", no

then what you call "the implosion", i'd call "the embittered whining."

try listening to the Seeds sometime, dude.

xps

I don't know why the narrator has to come out of the other side a better person in order for 808s to have an appealing story.

oh man it's like late december 2008 all over again!

corny rawk dudes luv happy endings.

In fairness, the 808s arguments were more interesting than the MBDTF arguments because they were more often about the music than each other.

Disney damage!