kanye west

kanyes goin off on twitter 2nite

kanyewest Kanye West
I am assembling a team of architects, graphic designers, directors musicians, producers, AnRs, writers, publicist, social media experts...

lmbo

kanyewest Kanye West
app guys, managers, car designers, clothing designers, DJs, video game designers, publishers, tech guys, lawyers, bankers, nutritionist ...

kanyewest Kanye West
I care about people who have never heard of me...

kanyewest Kanye West
5:18 am in London... My dreams keep me woke

'dreams'

kanyewest Kanye West
I have started a new company and I'm so excited about the name.... it's got the best name ever of all companies of all time!!!....

kanyewest Kanye West
The name of the company is DONDA

http://i.imgur.com/KbuWp.png

kanyewest Kanye West
We can collectively effect the world trough design. We need to pick up where steve jobs left off

Well, tbh, trough design has been at a standstill for quite awhile now.

kanyewest Kanye West
Instead of kicking kids out of schools for using there iPhones... why not promote it? Allow kids to use search engines to do test...

so. many. ideas.

kanyewest Kanye West
like the real WORLD!!! Give kids the amount of test they would have in a year in one day but they have to get everything perfect...

Kanye's giving a whole TED Talk tonight.

(on Twitter)

kanyewest Kanye West
If anyone would like to reach out email us at contactDO✧✧✧@gm✧✧✧.c✧✧

http://charactergrades.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Entertainment_720_Logo.jpg

lmao @ contactDONDA @ gmail.com

DONDA has registered a gmail account everyone, let the problem solving begin

NO_TATS_B SUCK MY DICK
SOMEBODY SHOULD SEND A PICTURE OF AMBER ROSE TO THAT GMAIL HE JUST POSTED I BET HE WOULD CRY IF HE SAW IT

lol

kanyewest Kanye West
Instead of kicking kids out of schools for using there iPhones... why not promote it? Allow kids to use search engines to do test...

― lag∞n, Thursday, January 5, 2012 12:43 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

this one is so fucking stupid/amazing

@kanyewest Kanye West
My mom was an English teacher so I know she sends an SMDH from heaven : )
3 hours ago via web

she's not the only one

kanyewest Kanye West
I have started a new company and I'm so excited about the name.... it's got the best name ever of all companies of all time!!!....

kanyewest Kanye West
The name of the company is DONDA

this is such a two-ilx-post joke move

i feel bad taking the piss out of the name cuz it's his mum

ahhh i didn't know that, & now feel bad accordingly.
can we talk about him & spike jonze starting a summer school instead

THE DONDA MANIFESTO IN ITS ENTIRETY

I love being back at my fashion office learning and creating. It’s so challenging and fun and I’m surrounded by amazing people.
They so you only live once but every time I come to work I feel like I’m starting a second life.
You guys might think I have some type of backing for my line but I don’t.
I did the first fashion show out of my own pocket and used the money I made touring to follow my passion.
I’ve been working at this for 8 years now …from the first offers to do urban clothing lines that I turned down…
To begging Bape to do my line and never making any real headway…
To having an office in LA that was shut down after the “MTV” moment along with my tour with GAGA
I moved to Japan for one month after that and designed every night in my room… I had this opportunity to intern at Fendi and was also..
…offered a position to at Versace wich I could not take due to my contract with LV which was for 2 years…
I moved to Rome after I left Japan and worked at Fendi for 4 months under cover … I was there to give ideas for the men’s collection
I snuck to Giuseppe Zanotti Factory still under contract and learned to design woman’s shoes for 2 years before my first show in Paris
After doing the first LV collection I was sure I would get a second shot to create but was never given the opportunity
I designed a sneaker called the YEEZY with Nike. I’m “allowed” to design 1 pair of sneakers every 2 years. I have more ideas…
Early 2011 … I moved to Paris and opened a small design studio… the language barrier was quite difficult…
I still don’t have a Paris VAT number to this day… I don’t know what a VAT but every time I asked why we didn’t have fabrics they said…
… it was because of the VAT.
In Paris I met many great people in design including the master Azzedine Alaia… Azzedine even came by my studio one day : )))
This was the greatest feeling to stand in his presence in my embarrassingly small Paris studio in a courtyard opposite Collate
I remember being 5 years old picking and my mother taking me with her shopping at the discount fur spots
She said I would always point to the most expensive furs even as a child LOL
It’s something about making clothing that always brings me back to that point. For the first 16 or 17 years of my life the only thing…
I knew about my woman’s clothing was what my Mom would wear. I guess some critics would joke that I still don’t know anything LOL
My Mom would wear blue jeans with a fur and an embellished “Cosby Show” sweater : ) to pick me up from school
… the teachers said I couldn’t focus… I used to get kicked out of class for bringing dirty mags and drawing Nikeys in 4th grade
Being a celebrity has afforded me many opportunities but has also boxed me in creatively.
I was just discussing becoming the creative director for the Jetson movie and someone on the call yelled out.. you should do a Jetsons tour!
This just happened a few hours ago. I was very insulted of course becuase for anyone that’s seen the Watch the Throne Tour…
Or Coachella or Glow in the Dark or Runaway.. you know I have real ideas…
I appreciate having the most nominations at the Grammies but I feel so conflicted by the fact that award shows sometimes are completely…
…illogical
Good logic tells me smile Kanye… the world likes you again… red or blue pill? … aaaaand Swallow lol
I wouldn’t have the prestige I have if it wasn’t partially for the Grammies validation and I honor that
….hmmmmm what to wear… here I go again… Yeezy the trend setter or complete fucking fashion victim … the verdict is still out
This is just a train of thought .. but figure it’s better to read than trained thoughts
What good is fame and prestige if you can’t use it to help people… I want to help by doing what I know how to do best .. create
I have started a new company and I’m so excited about the name…. it’s got the best name ever of all companies of all time!!!….
The name of the company is DONDA
DONDA is a design company which will galvanize amazing thinkers and put them in a creative space to bounce there dreams and ideas…
I used to blog all the time an fit was a way to get my opinion out…
Dr Dre redesigned headphones and made more impact off of one product.
I am assembling a team of architects, graphic designers, directors musicians, producers, AnRs, writers, publicist, social media experts…
app guys, managers, car designers, clothing designers, DJs, video game designers, publishers, tech guys, lawyers, bankers, nutritionist …
doctors, scientist,teachers…
DONDA will be comprised of over 22 divisions with a goal to make products and experiences that people want and can afford…
I want to put creatives in a room together with like minds that are all waaaay doper than me
We want to help simplify and aesthetically improve everything we see hear, touch, taste and feel.
…To dream of, create, advertise and produce products driven equally by emotional want and utilitarian need.. To marry our wants and needs.
DONDA
This will all take time but I wanted everyones to know what I really care about… I care about people. I care about my fans..
I care about people who have never heard of me… There are over 7 billion people on the planet now…
It’s something about coming from music that makes me so optimistic… Music travels and is not limited to only the wealthy.
Sometimes my grammar is wrong but my thinking is right : )
My mom was an English teacher so I know she sends an SMDH from heaven : )
5:18 am in London… My dreams keep me woke
The Watch the Throne tour was a small example of what a Donda Experience can be…
I’m currently working on a new 7 screen experience pic.twitter.com/4XmQmCL3
This one of our projects to be released this year called 2016 OLYMPIC’s … It’s a semi sic-fi since 2016 is only 4 years away : )
We would also like’ to design the MTV awards
We’re taking everything 10 steps at a time LOL!
I wanted to put this in the world in hopes that the people who can actually make a difference will stand up and reach out
We can collectively effect the world trough design. We need to pick up where steve jobs left off
When I said wealthy I wanted to point out there are so many billionaires in the world that can come together and help to redesign it
Help education. School systems were designed to turn people into factory workers.
Schools should be designed to prep human beings for real life.
Spike Jonze and I want to do a Summer school that tries new forms of cuuriculim
Math classes should teach addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, accounting and money management aaaaaand cut!!! ….
UNLESS YOU’RE A MATH MAJOR!!!! Kids you should be able to take majors starting in grammar school like how it is at performing art schools
Instead of kicking kids out of schools for using there iPhones… why not promote it? Allow kids to use search engines to do test…
like the real WORLD!!! Give kids the amount of test they would have in a year in one day but they have to get everything perfect…
Some kids have better memories than others… what about emotional IQs… what about kids who do bad in school because of how bad there..
…surroundings are? I meant to say their…
excuse me… I just get excited at the possibilities… the more excited I get… the more grammatical errors you’ll see…
We need to take what Michael Jackson felt and Mcqueen and Steve Jobs and we need make things better…
When me and Jay toured… ever night I peered into the audience astonished by the different walks of life that came to support us.
The adrenaline is running… I don’t know if I can even get to sleep now… From Wall street to the London riots to Chicago murders…
I sit everyday and ask what can I do to make a difference…
I know this is not a very rapper thing to say but I haven’t bought a new car or piece of jewelry in about 2 years…
I invest every dime back into creativity… hiring amazing creatives paying for flights, offices … etc…
My area of expertise is in music, my passion is in music design film and products… my strength is connectivity…
There are so many broken systems from the economy to school systems jail systems… we need experts for this…
We need scientist and top world designers to directly affect governments.
If anyone would like to reach out email us at contactDO✧✧✧@gm✧✧✧.c✧✧
I just wanted to share what’s been on my mind…
“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. ….
…But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” – George Bernard Shaw

i have a meeting at work tomorrow & it will probably be kinda busy in the AM but i might try to tell someone that I’m currently working on a new 7 screen experience pic.twitter.com/4XmQmCL3 so am sorta tied up

tl;dr

Early 2011 … I moved to Paris and opened a small design studio… the language barrier was quite difficult…
I still don’t have a Paris VAT number to this day… I don’t know what a VAT but every time I asked why we didn’t have fabrics they said…
… it was because of the VAT.

there's like a whole sitcom episode tied up in this one

exasperated kayne in a small room attempting to create clothes w/out fabric addressed by a bored french man 'no vat, i keep telling you, we have no vat man'

"Got my designers in Paris and they don't have a VAT"

"I don't know what that means!"

"Noone knows what it means, but it's provocative, it gets the people going!"

http://i.imgur.com/Ycadx.png

http://www.etsy.com/listing/83599070/your-favorite-kanye-west-tweet-hand

http://img1.etsystatic.com/il_570xN.277563621.jpg

want / don't want / lol

want

It's been kind of amazing to me to see just how much people *hate* this guy these days. It's not hard to tell why he's disliked, I mean constant foot-in-mouth moments, the Swift/Beck incidents, his egotism; he knows what he's doing, it's all calculated.

But I recall the reactions being more "God, what a jackass" back during the Swift incident (which I also said), but now he's generating Nickleback levels of hate. What with the recent petition to remove him from the Glastonbury lineup that got 90,000 sigs (not going to happen), people are acting like he's the Antichrist. I don't even think he got this level of vitriol during his legendary "Bush doesn't care about white people" quote (his best moment IMO).

you play the heel long enough...

i find myself liking him more and more

That was his best moment. It's been downhill ever since.

Xxp

in the sense that he released his best album a few days before that, yeah it has

i think he absorbed some residual kardashian hate, another example of people being hated on disproportionately.

disproportionately to their "behavior" or whatever i mean

his legendary "Bush doesn't care about white people" quote

you might want to read that again (although the quote would be even better)

Lol oops

It's been kind of amazing to me to see just how much people *hate* this guy these days.

this is both jarring to see, and jarring when it's pointed out within the context of twitter spheres that are blindly devotional to kanye. people on all sides love to project stuff on to kanye and i don't think he lives up to any of it

Ha i assumed that misquote was intentional

Xp

http://kotaku.com/for-two-years-the-kanye-west-rpg-has-been-hiding-a-dis-1704673459

for your consideration.

Kanye's getting into bed with Ben Carson is the only time I've ever really thought damn maybe this guy is as big of an idiot as all the facebook friend i have from HS think he is.

Caramanica re 808s & Heartbreak done live at the Hollywood Bowl

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/28/arts/music/review-kanye-west-shines-light-on-his-darkest-hour.html?_r=0

On stage here, he played “808s” as a sort of Greek tragedy. Outfitted in druid chic, drapey garments in shades of white and off-white, Mr. West largely kept his energy centered and mellow. Backed by a small band and a medium-sized orchestra, he cast these songs as meditations, especially on tracks from the first half of the album like “Welcome to Heartbreak” and “Heartless.”

xp i think he's just being diplomatic...political... but where's the record?

"His politics—including his support of Donald Trump—fit under the “I don’t read shit” umbrella. He’s conflating contrarianism with bravery and intellectualism. To nonreading-ass niggas, people like Trump or Candace Owens are free thinkers—mavericks unafraid to challenge the status quo. But if he’d actually pick up a book (and not just any 48 Laws of Power-ass book, but the right books), he’d be aware of the danger of that type of contrarianism and aware that for people like Trump and Owens, their words aren’t about free thinking. They’re specifically and intentionally tethered to white resentment, which is also often tied to anti-intellectualism. They’re actually the antithesis of free thought. They don’t think. They incite.

Do you need to read a book to know all of this? No. Not at all. But not reading is particularly dangerous for someone like Kanye, who obviously possesses an extremely high musical intelligence and seems to be, at the very least, curious about politics. Because while there’s not much difference between his politics and the politics of the fake-smart niggas we personally know who get all of their information from YouTube, if we don’t want to listen to those cats, we can just lock the doors to their grandparents’ basements."

https://verysmartbrothas.theroot.com/kanyes-politics-are-what-happens-when-you-dont-read-boo-1825475113

ok the MAGA beats... are fire

like...reichstag fire?

Like should die in a fire?

“I’m full of shit ideas and here’s another one”

Kanye West

I could never have a Virgil in my circle and hold him back 'cause he makes me nervous
I wanna see my brothers flourish to their higher purpose

Why is this guy so amazing other than he’s a phenomenally obnoxious lapsed-frat-boy-who-can-read prick?

https://www.babble.com/celebrity/the-unusual-names-of-marissa-ribisi-and-beck-hansons-kids/

quacks like a duck etc

i was referring to the pusha t album..

it's great

hope it starts a trend of super-tight sub-25 minute rap albums

Isn't that trend already here? https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/considering-the-rise-of-the-super-short-rap-song/

those are songs not albums 👍

Read the whole thing.

you're right, my bad. Although a 21-minute album with only 7 tracks is still something of an anomaly

Yeah, sure. And if it's inspired by the youngsters, that honestly only makes me like the album more, it has just the slightest sense of 'get-off-my-lawn'-ness otherwise.

For what it's worth, I'm enjoying the Ski Mask album that came out a couple weeks ago as much as Daytona. It's 10 tracks, 21 minutes lol

I’m sick of this fucking clown

I know LDR gets flack for a lot of things but when she said that his conservative turn was "a loss for the culture", that was exactly right

Does anyone even have the energy to react to this at this point

just several thousand twitter eggs saying “ well, he’s better than either of the other guys running ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”

is there a kanye-epstein connection

Already seeing heavy bot push. They've been planning this!

he will be thwarted when thousands write him in as "kayne"

That's ok, he's got plastic with that on

Already seeing heavy bot push. They've been planning this!

― Dan I., Saturday, July 4, 2020 10:50 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

not planning enough to apparently get on the ballot in a bunch of states whose filing deadlines have past.

this is some fundraising grift, right?

isn't the Democratic party a fundraising grift? Sounds smart to come in after he can't get on the ballot in some states. You don't want to fuck around and accidentally win!

Possibly West thinks this will help Trump - more likely to pick up write-in votes from the swingers who were captivated by the prospect of "a legendary businessman!" in the White House who otherwise would've leaned Dem over another strikingly weak GOP field. He may also think nothing is actually any worse for black Americans now than ten years ago and would rather have their vote increase for Republicans (via born again Christianity) than Dems for reasons including that normalisation of America entails black people there being as split politically as whites and that deregulation and lower taxes for billionaire philanthropists will help both the richest and poorest more likelier and sooner than the opposite of that.

the number of normally astute people I see freaking out over this right now is disheartening. "missing the deadline for several state ballots" aside, they actually think he'd steal votes from Biden, as if the guy would be endorsed by SERIOUS voters who were seriously freaked the fuck out about getting Trump out of office.

looks like I have another phrase to add to FB Purity.

the other thing I hate about the left rn, aside from Kanye, is the contradictory thought-process some have where if you express any sort of optimism, however-guarded, towards an upcoming election, that you're being complacent and that you shouldn't speak of things of which you have no certainty as it might cause people to stay home.

but if you take a similar tack with their disaster-cosplaying, they say you're being disrespectful to something that is a very real possibility, even though it only became one because they thought about it and started writing a first draft of it in their head two hours previous.

There's no way this guy doesn't end up dead broke someday

which makes me incredibly sad, actually

I really got mad at how many wanted to make the dude a punchline after he was the one dude who had the balls to call on Dubya on live tv for not caring about Black people.

he's gotten to a point where I can't even defend anymore (even if I know much of it seems beyond his control), but he was treated as a punchline before he deserved to be

Every time I see this thread I think it's about Key West.

no one who can cash in on their celebrity/notoriety is ever truly broke

not planning enough to apparently get on the ballot in a bunch of states whose filing deadlines have past.

Wrong. Why do people keep repeating this bullshit without actually confirming that it's true? The filing deadline has only passed in 5 or 6 states, and only one of them (NC) is a battleground state (though some may argue that TX is now as well). He only needs to get on the ballot in a few battleground states to have a chance at helping Trump steal the election, and some of them (PA, WI) look like they're very easy to get on to, signature-wise.

https://ballotpedia.org/Ballot_access_for_presidential_candidates#Requirements_for_independents

so, 5 or 6 states isn't a "bunch" to you?

lol at the idea that a) this is going to happen and that b) he's going to help Trump steal anything if it does.

No 10% is not a "bunch", obviously.

where exactly is this myth that he's going to siphon away Biden votes going to come from? Outside of troll votes, which probably come from people who either weren't going to vote or weren't going to vote Biden anyway, what Biden voter is going to somehow turn around and think Kanye is a better choice for their interests as President, and a more stable option....in numbers enough to swing an election?

then that's your stupid arbitrary definition of "bunch" then

so not sure why you thought anything that m bison said was wrong other than enjoying a moment to smugly burst into the thread with a "well actually"

like, idk why I'm bothering to break this down further, but if 10% of the people who ate the shrimp at a banquet got massive diarrhea, you would really argue that 10% of the people getting sick from the food didn't constitute a "bunch of people getting sick"?

ONE battleground state's deadline has passed. You sound hysterical, just admit you were wrong.

and, also, Florida's deadline (most certainly a swing state) is 7/15, and to qualify, he would have to gather 132,000+ signatures in 10 days, because there's no "buy-in" option.

Michigan's is in 11 days (7/16), and while it's easier, he'd need 30,000 signatures to get on their ballot, with at least 100 signatures from each of at least half of the state's congressional districts.

He'd need 10,000 signatures in South Carolina in the same timeframe. He'd need 35,000+ signatures OR have to pay $35,000 for Oklahoma by 7/15

he's going to do all of this in all of these states when he just announced candidacy yesterday?

you're a fucking dumbshit dude. I'm not even the dude who said "bunch", that was m bison, who wasn't wrong.

Can’t we all at least agree there are eight days in a week?

iirc i have never been wrong on ilxor dot com

Who gives a shit about SC or OK? He's trying to ruin Biden's chances in the battleground states. The signature threshold is basically trivial to achieve for someone as famous as Kanye in IA, MN, NH, OH, PA, WI, VA, and WA

lol no it fucking isn't. these aren't Change.org signatures, these are PHYSICAL SIGNATURES that he has to get from people residing WITHIN THAT STATE.

and...? He's one of the biggest celebrities in the world. He could ask on Twitter or whatever for his fans to get him the signatures, and for the states where the requirement is like 1000-5000 signatures it would be done in a few hours.

in 4 or 5 states, simultaneously, while doing the regular shit he does on a daily basis, when he hasn't even filed with the FEC yet, which he has to do within 15 days of spending $5,000, and he isn't allowed to spend beyond that until he has.

and then the ballots have to be certified to make sure there aren't fraudulent signatures on them. that doesn't just take 2 hours.

kanye west? more like kanye worst.

kanye west? more like bahn mi fest (postponed until 2021 bc of covid)

kanye west? more like kan we nest? what do you mean thats a weird way of asking if we can live together?

Can I bus?

Kanye West's Yeezy Received $2M-Plus From #COVID19 Federal Paycheck Protection Loan https://t.co/8Z5Ke9YYKm

— chris evans (@notcapnamerica) July 6, 2020

jfc, Debra, stfu

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/nina-turner-debra-messing-kanye-west-2020-bid

In fairness everyone who is genuinely freaking out about this instead of mocking it like it deserves is saying the same thing, she just said the quiet part out loud

Otm

Kanye Finally Dumps Trump: ‘I’m Taking the Red Hat Off’

Amazing:

When asked to explain what he was thinking when he donned the MAGA hat in the first place, he claimed it was “as a protest to the segregation of votes in the Black community. Also, other than the fact that I like Trump hotels and the saxophones in the lobby.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/randalllane/2020/07/08/kanye-west-says-hes-done-with-trump-opens-up-about-white-house-bid-damaging-biden-and-everything-in-between/#70962f5f47aa

planning to run under the 'Birthday Party' banner “Because when we win, it’s everybody’s birthday.”

That he’s suspicious of a coronavirus vaccine, terming vaccines “the mark of the beast.”

That he believes “Planned Parenthoods have been placed inside cities by white supremacists to do the Devil’s work.”

Ah, the Q vote.

the latter is a pretty common argument used by conservatives (esp black conservatives), seems pretty unremarkable next to the more explicitly manic stuff

i mean the thing is american politics is such a decayed rotting almost toppling gimcrack nightmare that this sort of thing should be 100% expected. also margaret sanger was a huge racist .and even i, nobody who could be considered an anti vaxxer, have been so terrified of US government incompetence that i feel like at least i would prefer, like, a french covid vaccine or something

Too many quotable bits in that Forbes piece. Almost all of it really sad stuff.

lots of quotables nothing on any real plan for doing the considerable work it would take to get on the ballot in the remaining states in which that is still possible

this whole week, or two days, or however long it's been, since kanye 'announced' i haven't seen anyone recall that he came out / was outed as mentally ill not… two or three years ago?

since when has being mentally ill stopped someone from being president

well obviously but i was thinking more that a presidential campaign is not the kind of logistical ordeal you'd wish on a well person let alone kanye

newsflash we're all mentally ill under capitalism

https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-kanye-west-change-of-heart/

man, when you've lost the "grifter creep naming his kids an unpronunceable character string" vote...

https://www.spin.com/2020/07/kanye-west-at-2-in-first-national-poll-since-announcing-presidential-run/

LOL - he actually pulled votes from Trump in this poll.

2% might alarm some but trendy third party candidates tend to poll much higher than they will when we're still far out from election day (hence Nader polling close to double digits in the summer of 2000).

still just LOLing that the poll bucked "conventional wisdom"

is he even on the ballot anywhere?

unless he's secretly diligently fulfilling campaign requirements as we speak, he'll be unable to appear on 10 state ballots after this week.

wasn't "Deez Nutz" leading the GOP primary for a week

quiet diligence, the hallmark of kanye west

Steve Kramer tells @Bencjacobs he was hired to help @kanyewest get on the ballot in Florida and South Carolina. But while he was following up with Kanye's publicist, the operative suddenly texted the reporter to say "He's out."https://t.co/StNEgFZflF

— Philip Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) July 14, 2020

news, everyone!

Helluva campaign

so inspiring, brought many people together

Now what will I do with all these palettes of Kanye 2020 merch?

lmao perfect

xpost sell so hard motherfuckers wanna buy it?

they will be going for $800 a pop soon

you can't sell me nooothin

https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/forms/C00751701/1422253

lol

He's...not out. And now on the ballot in OK. Which cost 35k.

However, FL's deadline was yesterday and the dude helping him get signatures there thought he quit...so?

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/kanyes-short-lived-attempt-to-get-on-the-2020-ballot.html

Lol so OK is one of 3 states that you can buy your way onto the ballot. Guess he decided to say fuck it to the states with signature requirements. He's missed 8 other states deadlines and is about to miss a 9th today

Kanye said this and I left immediately. I went for a laugh and I got one. But when it got disrespectful for me it was over. pic.twitter.com/nNqjUp03mu

— Toe Knee (@toekneerlynos) July 19, 2020

nice to know there's a level of fame you can reach in this country where establishment newsmedia will take seriously your run for president in spite of your clear mental illness.

You mean whatever level of fame Trump was at?

At this point it just makes me sad, he clearly isn't getting the help he needs.

That said, even with my sympathy for his mental health, I also wish the media would stop treating this with any sincerity.

the difference is I think Kanye is capable of doing good things but he's got all the wrong people in his ear. Trump is a pure sociopath who is incapable of doing a nice thing for anyone unless he gets something in return

I don't know how to take the way things are going down right now. I suffer from severe mental illness. I don't like it when people use it as a pretext for disregarding what I'm saying. All that bias, all that stigma, that he's been through all his life. Not being taken seriously because he's black, not being taken seriously because he's bipolar, and what? Some goddamn white lady somewhere who's never listened to a single song of his says she's worried about him, worried that he might not be getting the help he needs?

Kanye deserves better, sure. We all deserve better. I don't think taking Kanye West seriously is really that much different from taking, oh, say, Bari Weiss or Elon Musk seriously. Things are fucked and Kanye isn't the only one having problems. Hell, I'd venture to perhaps suggest that maybe some of the problems Kanye is having aren't really _his_ problems in the first place, they're problems a lot of us have in common.

I can no longer imagine feeling bad for kanye and I've felt that way for some time tbh

people shouldn't take Elon Musk seriously either but alas we live in a society where being born rich is continued a great virtue which allows you to essentially invent your own reality where you can just dismiss every real problem as a hoax

i can't help but feel a little badly for ye, since he's surrounded by enablers and his only family is america's pre-eminent group of fame-obsessed narcissists

it was pretty weird when he was forced at gunpoint to marry Kim K

that was weird

Also weird how they kept playing "White Wedding" throughout the entire ceremony

Kate, re: mental health, you work hard to try to take care of yourself. Kanye pretty clearly thinks taking his meds and/or ensuring his prescriptions are actually working isn’t worth the time.

Loving the news either going with confused, bad faith readings or just consciously lying w/r/t the Harriet Tubman quote.

Malcolm X Claims Giant Rock Fell From Sky and Landed on Black Americans

Kim is and always has been a much better person than he is imo.

Kate, re: mental health, you work hard to try to take care of yourself. Kanye pretty clearly thinks taking his meds and/or ensuring his prescriptions are actually working isn’t worth the time.

― sound of scampo talk to me (El Tomboto)

i do work hard to try and take care of myself! i also have a lot of people i trust who care about me and support me and have been very patient with me, so when i start thinking i should start randomly cold-turkeying my meds because clearly they aren't working, the people who care about me persuade me to hang on until i can actually see a professional to evaluate my meds even if it _is_ a two month wait, and i agree because i remember what happened when i cold-turkeyed the benzos.

I know that from your posts on 77. I can see how you might’ve misread my post.

Ye probably gets bored of his meds on the regular and just forgets they’re even in the medicine cabinet

i don't think i was misreading it! i'm just not inclined to judge anybody else for how they handle their mental health issues until or unless it directly affects me.

Let’s just say I have personal reasons that cause me to have extremely low patience with people who refuse to attend to their diagnoses when care is available and effective. It’s not as if Ye is a victim of our country’s fucked up healthcare system.

fair!

Kanye is a tragic story predominantly of his own making is how i break it down to an extent.

I just want to see how Bret Easton Ellis will spin this into
Kanye being persecuted by “the left”. It’s awful reading, but I was genuinely mesmerized by Ellis’ impassioned, horrifically misguided attempt to rehabilitate the public image of a fellow narcissist/artistic collaborator in his book WHITE (!)

Kanye is a tragic story predominantly of his own making is how i break it down to an extent.

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses)

i don't disagree. just like i don't disagree that, you know, wesley snipes listening to those people who told him that he didn't have to pay taxes, that's ultimately his responsibility. i just also see, when i look at kanye, someone who has spent the last fifteen years in the panopticon. i have a hard time seeing a timeline in which things worked out better for him. there's lots of people who have their heads screwed on better than kanye right now, that's for sure, but i wonder if that'll still be the case five years from now. i wonder how someone who's had the experiences kanye has had is supposed to _not_ go completely fucking batshit crazy in 2020.

i think his life (and artistic career, and music as a whole) looks very different if his mom doesn't tragically pass away

seems like plenty of people manage it just fine

or at least don't turn into raving shitheads for years on end

seems like plenty of people manage it just fine

― k*r*n koltrane (Simon H.)

ok. i don't know those people. who are some of them?

i agree that things happen for a reason and i have some real sadness that Kanye - artistically, publicly, politically - has mostly disappeared so far up his own ass. At the same time, he and his family have chosen to be complicit with the Trump administration with the intent of getting federal favors in exchange for celebrity shine and, regardless of how righteous the asks they've made are, complicity with this administration means you can fuck off imo.

ok. i don't know those people. who are some of them?

I dunno, take your pick of ultrarich hollywood celebrities who turn out as boring milquetoast liberals despite decades of fame? some of them are even black!

ulysses otm

unless "the experiences kanye's had" refers to something other than the Perils Of Super-Icon-Dom And Untold Riches and I'm just not getting it. xp

I dunno, take your pick of ultrarich hollywood celebrities who turn out as boring milquetoast liberals despite decades of fame? some of them are even black!

― k*r*n koltrane (Simon H.)

i think that there is a particular _sort_ of "genius" that is celebrated in people like kanye in a way that is essentially brutal and traumatic, those expectations. and i, being white, i can't speak to the _role_ of blackness in that trauma, but i see a lot of other "geniuses" who seem to get really incredibly fucked up by it in a way that Untold Riches and Superstardom really oughtn't do.

like, i'm not defending kanye, the man means nothing to me. it just makes me uneasy when the narrative starts and ends at "he is a Bad Person", what the fuck is this world where all the people who are important and powerful are Bad People?

I agree with that, I'm just not sure why we should give him the benefit of the doubt over against other Bad People who are likely struggling with their own cast of demons.

i don't think we should be. fuck kanye, that's how i feel, personally. if we're going to talk about kanye, i'd rather move on to the larger problems that affect those other people.

life is basically hell for basically everybody

that's the spirit

New board description.

xp

Wtf!? Why tear down Harriet Tubman of all people? I’m not sure if I’m missing context to what he said before or after - though I’m sure it was on the same level of stupid - but I don’t see how it would benefit his “political campaign” at all. I don’t see how it would even benefit his album sales. I don’t see what the endgame is here but he keeps tarnishing his legacy.

Remember his batshit hot take on the 13th Amendment? There’s a pattern here.

he's after the challops vote

This just makes me sad.

West-Musk 2020

He keeps making it hard to separate art from the artist. Why should I care about the good ideas he once had, the great albums and songs, his most personal lyrics documenting his rise to fame, if I know it ends with a series of bullshit after bullshit after bullshit. I keep expecting a redemption arc from him but I’m not sure it will come anymore.

At this point I’m not angry anymore I’m just very disappointed.

He's not tearing down Harriet Tubman, he's saying that black people still aren't free

even Musk, idiot charlatan that he is, has backed off xps

If that’s the case then it’s actually kind of in character for him? He sort of expresses the same theme in “all falls down”.

Examples:

We shine because they hate us, floss cause they degrade us. We trying to buy back our 40 acres. And for that paper, look how low we a'stoop. Even if you in a Benz, you still a n***a in a coop/coupe

I say fuck the police, that's how I treat em. We buy our way out of jail, but we can't buy freedom. We'll buy a lot of clothes when we don't really need em. Things we buy to cover up what's inside. Cause they make us hate ourself and love they wealth. That's why shortys hollering "where the ballas' at?" Drug dealer buy Jordans, crackhead buy crack. And a white man get paid off of all of that.

Even if that’s the idea behind it, which isn’t really that controversial, I don’t like that he feels the need to shit on Harriet Tubman’s legacy to make a point.

He's not tearing down Harriet Tubman, he's saying that black people still aren't free

maybe but its still in the sense of "you're not free because you vote Democrat instead of listening to Candice Owens"

Back then he had yet to find Jesus, i.e. himself.

xp

lol

Might as well shit on his adidas deal because he’s making a bunch of white men richer.

This is the first video I've seen that gives more context. It seems like he was going for what Whiney said (although focusing on the ownership of a few major corporations is a bit idk) but it still seems pretty strange, with stuff about how "you don't see the real power" and apparently concluding (?) that it all needs to change with him ending up on the boards of Adidas and Gap.

Here’s more context to what Kanye said. pic.twitter.com/Xv4mMFYqeg

— Raury (@Raury) July 20, 2020

Oh so, he is actually shitting on his adidas deal then? Lol

Based on what he said about meds and creativity in the past, I wouldn't be surprised if he went off his meds to finish his new album. Currently tweeting scary tweets.

Yeah, his tweets tonight are just scary depressing. I genuinely hope he has someone supporting him right now.

this is fucked

He's not tearing down Harriet Tubman, he's saying that black people still aren't free

― The Mandymoorian (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, July 20, 2020 4:44 PM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

even with the added context, this is an extraordinarily naive and tendentious reading

ugh. are his tweets suggesting that Kim wanted to commit him?

Yes, it’s “naive” to not assume someone is saying the Underground Railroad was a hoax

Even if that’s the idea behind it, which isn’t really that controversial, I don’t like that he feels the need to shit on Harriet Tubman’s legacy to make a point.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Monday, July 20, 2020 4:51 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

whiney and moka otm. he's not a very articulate guy but the things he was saying are straightforward and in line with what he has been saying for years. the idea that him, as a black man, being on the board of adidas will help "emancipate" black people from consumerism is pretty dumb but that should just be engaged at face value. instead people accuse him of MENTAL ILLNESS 👻 as if they never heard a social conservative before.

Face value engagement: There's a difference between saying that real racial inequalities still exist in terms of economic power and saying that no one has been freed since the time of slavery. I do not think that an already-wealthy black celebrity being on the board of Adidas and Gap would do more for emancipation than what Harriet Tubman did - that's almost like a grotesque parody of neoliberal identity politics. Lastly, the stuff about the shadowy 'real power' is a little strange and might imply some kind of conspiracy theory, although of the more common (and thus more dangerous) kind than it would be if he had been claiming that the Underground Railroad was a hoax. It's possible that people want to believe the latter thing because it is the less scary option.

fwiw, it's entirely plausible that Kanye has some controversial socially conservative views AND is struggling with mental illness (his twitter breakdown last night being a fairly clear example of the latter)

^ yup

Face value engagement: There's a difference between saying that real racial inequalities still exist in terms of economic power and saying that no one has been freed since the time of slavery.

A million times OTM. Things are unquestionably better than they used to be; that doesn't mean they are perfect or even good, but it also doesn't mean you can handwave the work people have done to get us here.

it's also entirely possible that "social conservatives" are ALL MOTHERFUCKING INSANE

You don't have to be insane to be an utterly unsympathetic dick.

(That is not about Kanye specifically, although I do think people give his abhorrence a lot of leeway because of his public disclosures of his mental issues; I think the solution for him is to a) get medical help and b) stop being such a fucking dick and that separate courses of action will be needed to address both issues.)

Kanye has been saying things like “the slaves were never really freed” for years (e.g. his comments about the Thirteenth Amendment leaving room for incarcerated people being enslaved). I don’t think that part is mental illness talking. I do think the fact that he is going out and making these proclamations publicly in a highly erratic manner is a bit manic, not just arrogant.

xp DJP otm

Sund4r & DJP otfm

he's not a very articulate guy

I feel like a lot of the charitable programs and good things he’s done are overshadowed by his boredom in doing them, or the disinterest in continuing them. There are some good sentiments, like those Moka mentioned, on those early albums and in some of his public appearances at the time (the Katrina live on air call-out is still great), but I’ve always gotten the impression that he does things out of a sense of obligation of what he thinks he’s supposed to be to different people.

I remember an interview with Rhymefest from a few years back where he voiced his frustrations with Kanye putting him in charge of an outreach program that he then ignored. I think the implication was that Kanye’s new Kim-influenced lifestyle was to blame, but I really think Kanye just does Kanye. The presidential aspiration stuff is just him wanting to do the same bullshit at a different scale, and with the current president basically doing that, I get where he’s coming from (and it is a bad place).

I mean, I think this is a bad way to live life and he’s mostly interested in his own self-aggrandizement

the video clip I saw was an actual mess but the sentiment about his ramblings on abortion seems to be “I could have been aborted. Me, Kanye!”

You don't have to be insane to be an utterly unsympathetic dick.

― shout-out to his family (DJP)

...but it helps!

honestly though i feel like there's a case to be made that being unsympathetic enough for long enough will eventually DRIVE one insane

I think we want for that to be true in order to promote the idea that being good to others is a fundamental component of being a rational, functioning individual but I don't think it's a true statement. Or, to put it another way, sociopathy is defined by the norms of society and acting in concert with society is not always conducive to mental health.

I am neither a psychologist or a philosopher so take that statement with a giant mound of salt.

I mean doesn't he brag about never reading books? I don't know why we'd expect his political views to be any more informed or interesting than some random dude you went to high school with on facebook. he's just really good at music and making ugly sneakers.

if there's one thing i wish i could change was this weird baseline assumption that if someone is exceptionally skilled in one area it means this aptitude translates to other areas

For every Condoleezza Rice, there are at least a hundred Ben Carsons/Kanye Wests.

He's long had a way of conflating/collapsing his personal successes and challenges with those of society in general. It worked pretty well on Yeezus, less so in the current context.

hmmm. let me refine that statement.

i think that there have always been successful, functioning people who were utterly unsympathetic pricks. that's pretty basic history, i'd have a hard time arguing with that statement.

i also think that being a "conservative" of any sort in america requires one to exist with truly herculean levels of cognitive dissonance. humans in general are very adept at not seeing things they don't want to see. humans are very adept at compartmentalizing. the president in america... i mean, i try not to use emotionally loaded language, but i struggle to find a better phrase than "insane death cult". less loaded phrases seem to me like soft-pedaling.

I think the issue is that my rando high school friends on FB aren't running for President (or PM).

For every Condoleezza Rice, there are at least a hundred Ben Carsons/Kanye Wests.

― shout-out to his family (DJP), Tuesday, July 21, 2020 2:44 PM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I would 100% rather have an uninformed person like Carson/West in political office than an informed, unscrupulous, unapologetic mass murderer like Condoleeza Rice

You have that now. How's it going?

I would 100% rather have an uninformed person like Carson/West in political office than an informed, unscrupulous, unapologetic mass murderer like Condoleeza Rice

This is 100% fucking stupid and why we are in the current position we're in now.

xps to Kate:

Being a "conservative" requires you to distrust change. I think you can boil pretty much every conservative stance down to "it's worked so far, why do we need to change it?"

Trump isn't conservative, he is a narcissist and a user who preys on conservative thought. If he thought he could accrue power by and make money off of Socialist rhetoric, he'd do that. The driver for his behavior and a lot of the people running the conservative movement now is avarice, which is why Kanye fits in so well with them and why in the modern age, it's nigh-impossible to interact with at least half the political actors in US politics in good faith. (Do not mistake this for excusing conservative thought, which has its own problems worth several threads of their own.)

I would like to apologize for the redundancy in my previous post and would like to make up for it by calling Whiney fucking stupid some more

i also think that being a "conservative" of any sort in america requires one to exist with truly herculean levels of cognitive dissonance.

I think we all require Herculean levels of cognitive dissonance to get by, but it also depends on your own experiences and environment and the information streams you are exposed to.

why you would choose rice - who is inarguably culpable in supporting a number of actions at least roughly akin to war crimes - as an exemplar in contrast to kanye?

also i have forgotten if i am on the kanye thread or the politics thread

Being a "conservative" requires you to distrust change. I think you can boil pretty much every conservative stance down to "it's worked so far, why do we need to change it?"

― shout-out to his family (DJP)

i mean not to get all into semantics but are you talking about "conservatism" as an internally consistent, rational, and coherent ideology? because i know that a lot of people writing for the national review _claimed_ there was such a thing, this vast sea of anti-trump conservatives. hell, i knew some people who claimed to be "anti-trump conservatives" themselves... and then voted for him anyway because they believed he was the "lesser evil".

also i have forgotten if i am on the kanye thread or the politics thread

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses)

#onethread

i don't think it's really a question of whether kanye is suffering from mental illness... he's publicly acknowledged he's bipolar, has been hospitalized previously, and has also previously talked openly about going off of his meds. his tweets from last night indicate that ppl close to him are trying to get him back in the hands of professionals, and just from personal experience of knowing someone w/ the illness that kind of social media posting seems consistent w/ a heightened manic period

but it's pretty easy to divorce the recent sideshow from his political beliefs. his newfound interest in abortion isn't surprising when you read the ppl helping him w/ the south carolina rally were an anti-abortion film score composer and some other shadowy "spiritual advisor." if you think about his turn towards evangelical christianity in the last year w/ sunday service and the whole weird atmosphere around that, i think it's pretty easy to trace the roots of some of what he's saying. in a way it's quite retrograde as far as republican politics go.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/kanye-in-s-c-two-political-novices-are-running-his-campaign.html

"at least this guy has never committed war crimes" was a popular argument for Trump over Clinton iirc

if 9/11 had happened on Trump's watch there probably wouldn't be a planet left

trump was actually voted "Most Likely to Commit a War Crime If Allowed To" in junior high so it's not like we weren't warned.

whiney is really bringing his A game

people saying trump hasn't committed war crimes, give the man some time jeez, there's only been gestapo in portland for like a week or so

pretty sure ICE detention centers already measure up

you're right, missed the mark there

anyways, really, america induces mental illness. capitalism induces mental illness. not to elide personal factors or responsibility but reducing it to "dude is nuts" seems to miss so much. i would certainly describe trump as mentally ill even if you can't match him up with something in the DSM-V or whatever. (fuck the DSM-V)

also isn't there this narrative lurking that his mother's death may have been related to surgery kanye helped pay for? if so that's a bit different than "not getting over it." and yet we can feel bad about that and still conclude that he currently meets the definition of "dickhead" or worse

Look, I’m an outsider because I’m neither black nor American, so speaking about American identity politics or the struggle for black people in America is something out of my comfort zone and I don’t feel I have the rights or authority or even the pertinent knowledge to talk about it.

However, I do understand - as incoherent as it is - that somewhere in there, Kanye is actually very passionate about inequality, this isn’t something new that he’s pushing for personal gains. How could it be? If this is about him pushing a new album release, or wanting to split votes, or wanting to be a member of the Adidas board - this whole thing he’s doing might be one of the stupidest ways to do it. This hurts his chances of succeeding in any of those. And Kanye has proved several times he is not an idiot. He’s no genius either - contrary to what he may thin. But, I don’t see the endgame in here... I think it’s pretty clear this is actually a mental breakdown and he’s in self-destruct mode. I hope he stops refusing the help and actually starts constructing towards the goal he is passionate about.

I thought one day I might become one, these "sensible conservatives" of whom I heard spoken. As I got older I studied studied the past more and more, tried to understand myself as someone not new. I started going to church, identified myself as a Christian, became skeptical all of the Good Ideas people kept proposing that didn't seem like they would quite work out in practice, seemed like they might do more harm than good, and it was easy for me to say that, easy for me to judge in that way, because I was a white man.

And then 2016 happened, and the people I thought were my friends, again, once again, turned horrible, monstrous, in front of my eyes, and even though I'd been told many, many times it was a Bad Thing to run away from my problems, I ran, not because I was afraid of them but because I was afraid of _becoming like them_.

And I went on with my life, and when I came back to visit, a year later, everything looked very different, and I started to realize that I was a very different person than I thought I was.

I was lucky. Lucky and privileged. I feel no guilt or shame for that, but I also know my path is not open to a lot of people.

<i>this isn’t something new that he’s pushing for personal gains</i>

you're right, it's not new. Everything he's ever done has been solely for personal gains.

aw fuck.

Like if you think anyone with narcissistic personality disorder even has the faintest conception of what it means to give a shit about any other human being I got bad news for you

Some of them do a decent job of miming empathy when they have something to gain from being perceived as caring.

Yep, eg every post-mortem mention of his mom

Agh sorry I gotta quit with this thread, I have always loathed this piece of shit deeply

yeah it’s very clarifying to say Kanye is Bad, in opposition to the things that are Good

we can think his trump support and opinions are beneath contempt and also acknowledge things like this

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/06/04/entertainment/kanye-west-two-million-dollar-donation/index.html

Kanye doesn’t care about black people.

dan, you are on the fucken mark, my dude. if it really was about breaking everything and establishing true equality, he wouldn't be barking up the trees of the current establishment. fuck this guy; he is trying to monetize his psyche while passing it off as a power move for equality. all it is is one shamelessly mediocre attempt at "self-realization" after another. pathetic.

Trump isn't conservative, he is a narcissist and a user who preys on conservative thought. If he thought he could accrue power by and make money off of Socialist rhetoric, he'd do that. The driver for his behavior and a lot of the people running the conservative movement now is avarice, which is why Kanye fits in so well with them and why in the modern age, it's nigh-impossible to interact with at least half the political actors in US politics in good faith. (Do not mistake this for excusing conservative thought, which has its own problems worth several threads of their own.)

― shout-out to his family (DJP), Tuesday, July 21, 2020

djp also killin' it here. funny that both tr*mp + k*nye respectively found their true personas through twitter (possibly k*nye earlier, as his blog rants predate the prominence of twitter by a bit iirc) — a platform whose entire premise is "try to say short sentences that will get you as much attention as possible." it's a narcissist's paradise and they've flourished accordingly. i see both of them as exactly the same kind of evil. makes perfect sense that k*nye now wants to be a politician. it's the only way he can cash in most effectively at this point.

in closing: k*nye sucks and always has. fuck him.

Black people will truly be free when Kanye becomes the main shareholder of adidas and/or president of the USA.

Until then, thanks for nothing Harriet Tubman.

***retweets***

i don't think kanye is such a bad guy

really bad takes. kind of erratic, but i think some of this is about phrasing things in the most provocative way possible to get a response. wouldn't be a good president.

jesus is king was actually a dope record though, musically and lyrically.

one thing i value about Kanye is that, on the record at least, he lays it all on the line. he doesn't pretend to know more than he does and he never shies away from very awkward and even--i'm sorry--dumb trains of thought, as long as they are authentic.

what you hear in "Jesus is King" is a guy who has come up in a world of consumerism and is still attached to those values. but he sees that they are hurting him. and from this standpoint, he is trying to understand Christianity, or see what's in it for him. and there is actual struggle here, moments where he sounds like he is trying to see what it would be like to subordinate his ego to a higher power. real-time, spiritual wrestling. he seems to know what transcendence might *feel* like but how to integrate that into the ethical demands of religion, he's trying to figure it out.

a lot of his music similarly comes from this place of doubt, which is why it's so easy to make fun of. but there is courage in doing this, in being Kanye.

i mean, it's also exhibitionistic in a way the blogosphere used to encourage. christopher lasch wouldn't have much time for it. but even in that there is something refreshing--somehow, it just seems shockingly un-manipulative. he's a real one.

JiK is def an interesting record but it's also awful in some pretty obvious ways

i mean, the way he says "chik-fil-A" at the end of "closed on Sunday" brings me a lot of joy. what else is there?

jesus is king was actually a dope record though, musically and lyrically.

one thing i value about Kanye is that, on the record at least, he lays it all on the line. he doesn't pretend to know more than he does and he never shies away from very awkward and even--i'm sorry--dumb trains of thought, as long as they are authentic.

what you hear in "Jesus is King" is a guy who has come up in a world of consumerism and is still attached to those values. but he sees that they are hurting him. and from this standpoint, he is trying to understand Christianity, or see what's in it for him. and there is actual struggle here, moments where he sounds like he is trying to see what it would be like to subordinate his ego to a higher power. real-time, spiritual wrestling. he seems to know what transcendence might *feel* like but how to integrate that into the ethical demands of religion, he's trying to figure it out.

a lot of his music similarly comes from this place of doubt, which is why it's so easy to make fun of. but there is courage in doing this, in being Kanye.

Jesus Is King sucks

jesus is king was actually a dope record though, musically and lyrically.

jesus fucking christ people if he literally took a dump in your ear you'd find some way to find it a fascinating look into the kanye's fractured psyche

Case in point: Jesus Is King

I mean, we live in a world where people are posting multi paragraphs about how Lift Yourself is the best diss track of all time so it shouldn’t be that surprising

the record's not about his fractured psyche though. it's about trying to heal.

i'm not going to convince anyone here, i know. but like, there is a reason people love these records. for a megalomaniac he is weirdly willing to make himself seem vulnerable, even ridiculous.

it's like, the opposite of a well-crafted take on twitter or ilx

for a megalomaniac he is weirdly willing to make himself seem vulnerable, even ridiculous.

Almost like he's more of a narcissist than a megalomaniac, eh?

the album was originally called Yeezus is King iirc

the record's not about his fractured psyche though. it's about trying to heal.

― treeship., Wednesday, July 22, 2020 6:41 AM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

fucking BULLSHIT it's narcissism with a paper thin veneer of prosperity gospel bullshit. spends on god bitching about the IRS and why he has to charge $800 for clip art sweatshirt designs.

it's peevish, self-centered, greedy, judgmental, ugly and vile. it's a parody of thought, a parody of spirituality.

what a fucking insult to people of actual faith, actual spiritual thinkers.

it's isn't possible for someone with such malignant narcissism to be spiritual. kanye only worships himself.

i hope he gets the help he needs but he was to want to be helped.

and then to actually think it MEANS something and try to post that to me? the the fuck out of here.

yes, because i said he was a profound "spiritual thinker" in my posts. exactly.

I also said it's an insult to people of faith in general

he's a prosperity gospel charlatan

also an insult to music

and fashion

presumably other ppl named kanye aren't too jazzed about him either

treesh you are on some irwin chusid shit, there are _plenty_ of people with fractured psyches you can be fascinated by, just listen to some fucking pneumershonic for god's sake

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0o7HJlD7nA

Kate knows what’s up.

Fwiw I’ve never been a fan of Kanye’s music so it’s a lot easier for me to dismiss his would-be political theatre outright.

he was a great rap producer, he didn't start to suck until he became a genius

I still enjoy most of 808s but it’s really not a stretch to see the seeds of his demise in that album

From Kim Kardashian West's Instagram account:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EdiawrZXkAAcM0t.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EdiawrTWkAIYBkx.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ediawr5XgAQjo-6.jpg

all fine.
BUT HE IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT
how are you gonna ask the media and public to provide "compassion and empathy" while you are running for president?!?!?
the dumbest timeline.

also 808 and Heartbreak is a garbage album.

nah 808s rules

hope he gets the help he needs and deletes his accounts and stops running for president

808s is his best album

808s is good

this probably makes me a bad person but my first thought about Kim K's posts was "I bet these would look good in a divorce proceeding"

he's also not really running for presidency

he will be on the ballot in US states! not sure what else you need to do to "really run"

you guys are repping an album with robocop on it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XlCbDPDciM

dang "Robocop" is a jam

yes

I really like "Through the Wire".

808s does rule, "paranoid" is his best song

agreed paranoid is the best song on 808s. robocop is also good, as are most of the other songs on 808s.

*most, meaning not bad news or see you in my nightmares

you guys are welcome to that album and all subsequent lead-kanye recordings, enjoy them in peace and please keep them away from me.

do you get radiation sickness from them or

kim kardashian west otm tbh

Twista should have been his muse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfpXgTpg52g

I’ve never understood what’s supposed to be exceptional about this guy’s music except for one mostly instrumental track that featured in an adidas ad during the world cup in brazil. It was mostly because it was just a sample of samba percussion with distortion applied to it. “God Level” I think. Nothing else has ever really caught my ear. I feel like this post is confessional, but then again, I’m also the guy who made the “Worst Steppenwolf Hit” poll.

He did coin "swallowship"

do you get radiation sickness from them or

I don’t get his ‘genius’ as a producer at all and to add insult to injury, his flow is wack.

his genius as a producer can be partially witnessed on the janet jackson album damita jo cf. "i want you"

just one example among many

is this conversation really about his music

"I Want You" is kind of bad, though

ok then pretend i gave any other example from 2001-2004

yeah, in his prime as a producer, his shit was lit. like T.I.'s "Doin' My Job"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M95G-AKnflo

forgot about that freeway x twista song, that beat is crazy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0H_CwuLO1c

Is this where a bunch of the National fans get together and say the most gifted rap auteur of the 21st Century was never actually good

it's starting to become the thread where people post kanye beats that they love, a much better turn imo

oh in that case

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

I don’t get his ‘genius’ as a producer at all and to add insult to injury, his flow is wack.

same and I don't like bringing it up in wake of him wearing the MAGA hat because it sounds like you're just avoiding the difficult question of how to reconcile great artists with shitty views...but like honestly I really didn't get it, when I hear MBDTF I hear a dude who just has no clue how to master or engineer an album which sucks because there are some legitimately brilliant ideas on there. but too often it just sounds like it was mastered for the iPhone speaker. when he revealed that he thinks he can just rap into his phone and use that for the album it suddenly all made sense. he's gifted alright but sorta in the same sense of say Prince where you hear you're a genius so much that you start to believe that everything you do is genius and just stop editing yourself, except Kanye was doing this shit from his very first album

This dude is going to get people killed with his anti-vaxx shit, but sure, he's better than The National.

Those KKW notes are fucking abysmal

Checkmate, Whiney, I’m not a National fan either.

And at least one person who is itt is also a Kanye fan as far as I can tell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw7ukmZVQHg

Kanye's run from 2003 to 2016 is probably the greatest body of work of any musician of the 21st century, but everyone def come out with your contrarian opinions because he wore the Bad Red Hat

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

and incidentally, I hadn't checked back on scarface since he contracted covid and:
https://www.bet.com/music/2020/06/18/scarface-coronavirus-diagnosis-survival-story.html

probably the greatest body of work of any musician of the 21st century

Unless it was an honest mistake and you just forgot to type the word "pop" into that post, fuuuuuck off.

Wow you must not have heard a lot of music between 2003 and 2016.

xxp

Unless it was an honest mistake and you just forgot to type the word "pop" into that post, fuuuuuck off.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Wednesday, July 22, 2020 3:22 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yes, one day may Kanye West reach the heights of Defeated Sanity's Chapters of Repugnance or whatever

How about Anthony Braxton or Henry Threadgill?

It takes a special kind of person to claim that people didn't hate Kanye until he put on the hat.

much respect to Anthony Braxton, but he did not make "Otis"

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

...and that’s ok.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDGtRo-O1Mg

Kanye needs to get properly medicated, quit running for president, reject Jesus and produce a new Freeway album

Kanye's run from 2003 to 2016 is probably the greatest body of work of any musician of the 21st century, but everyone def come out with your contrarian opinions because he wore the Bad Red Hat

― The Mandymoorian (Whiney G. Weingarten)

oh good we are Canon Building again, this never gets old

lmao at Whiney's insistence that 1) Kanye's work up to TLOP is somehow inscrutable and 2) supporting oppression and American fascism just boils down to "wearing the Bad Red Hat"

"i am concerned about kanye's acute bout of what appears to be uncontrolled mental illness"
"yeah well i bet you like The National"

what's happening here

fuuuuck this is nasty

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k00DesCGjlM

whiney it's a bit more than wearing a bad hat, though i will defer to your expertise in that area

just blaze for president
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb6PJxprRME

xpost haha nice

Kanye's run from 2003 to 2016 is probably the greatest body of work of any musician of the 21st century, but everyone def come out with your contrarian opinions because he wore the Bad Red Hat

― The Mandymoorian (Whiney G. Weingarten),

talk about challops! holy balls

Just p4k doxa.

Do we have a Pick Only One: 2000-2020 thread?

Thread is on ILM so YouTubes is the way to go tbf.

oh man that Freewest track

Yes, even I like that one.

*Freeway

the other kanye-produced song on philadelphia freeway is also a banger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3l6N40lqck

i totally forgot that he produced ludacris's 'stand up' too, beats very much out of character

MBDTF sounds like a very 2000s album in a highly compressed, bit-crushed way. This trend was very much not in line with the tradition of big budget, ultra high clarity recordings, but it was a clear stylistic move at the time, and served its purpose well enough.

Kanye's a narcissistic asshole, yes, culturally dangerous even, and hasn't produced anything of artistic value imho since maybe 2-3 songs on Pablo. ehhh I actually liked Poopity Scoop as a joke but it's clear he's a good half decade past jumping the shark and reaching shore.

But holy shit, takes like "Kanye's run from 2003 to 2016 is probably the greatest body of work of any musician of the 21st century" being thoroughly trashed in this thread is some ludicrous revisionism. Name any other artist that had the pop cultural impact that dude did for a fucking decade in the 21st century. I can't think of a single one other than mayyyyybe Beyonce? Even as I type that it doesn't feel right though. He was at the zeitgeist of popular music and pop innovation for at least 10 years. Yeezus and The College Dropout are my two favorite records by the dude and are amazing to listen to even today, if you can put aside your feelings of him as a person, and that is incredible as they are nearly a decade apart. He was wildly creative and innovative; his very narcissism allowed him to bore head first into relatively experimental territory for a mainstream artist and was critically celebrated, here and elsewhere ad nauseum.

Yes, too much praise inflates the narcissistic bubble to cancerous tumor levels. Yes, he was a fucking asshole, to a certain extent, from day 1, but was grounded by his mother. Her death I think began the slow decline into the emotional cesspool he's found himself in today, that and honestly I feel he's been seduced by the darker sides of social media and authoritarian conservative culture. Do I think he's free of culpability for being a narcissistic closed minded prick? Hell no! But the amazing music he wrote or produced from 2000 - 2015 is still amazing.

I wish he had the sense of ambition and work ethic he exhibited up until 2010. His ambitions now are ersatz. MBDTF was rightly praised, even if it felt a bit Cremaster Cycley in its visuals and was musically celebrating his narcissism and cult of personality, but it was entertaining and reflected a lot of social media zeitgeist culture of the day. Indeed it was toxic. But it felt confessional and self aware. It was sonically diverse. Social media and "me culture" has now been revealed for what it always was now that the consequences have thoroughly washed over us as a culture. And now he's literally "phoning it in" and his muse is a shell of what it was, but fuck it shouldn't take away from those tunes. The fucking ruled.

Is this where a bunch of the National fans get together and say the most gifted rap auteur of the 21st Century

Kanye's run from 2003 to 2016 is probably the greatest body of work of any musician of the 21st century

Only people I've ever heard say silly shit like this unironically are white rock critics who don't otherwise pay any attention to, let alone give any serious critical praise to, anything other than white indie rock bands like the National lmao (major lol @ those same people who tried to cannonize Yeezus as some revolutionary "industrial" album when in reality it is just mixed and produced like a Youtube poop video).

And 2016??? Do any actual fans of Kanye even claim Pablo or hold it anywhere near the same esteem as his first couple of albums??

He was at the zeitgeist of popular music and pop innovation for at least 10 years.

This is a more sensible take. Whiney's challop was less circumscribed, and calculatedly so.

my challop is that the first couple of albums are corny and bad and 808s is the peak

honestly I think he is by far the best when he is producing tracks for other people

best two things he's done in recent memory was Daytona for Pusha and KTSE for Teyana Taylor

yes

people make fun of Lift Yourself but it's better than any beat on anything he's done Pablo and after

I think part of the beef with him and Drake was that he'd promised that to Drake and then put it out as a joke and Drake took that as a slap in the face

poopity scoop is better than drake could've done

i think pablo is regularly overrated and quite a mess but come on lol

http://media2.giphy.com/media/amxLHEPgGDCKs/giphy.gif

lift yourself was a cool beat!

anyway long story short I'm a medium fan of his albums, totally sick of his bullshit, but even if he never made a solo album he'd be in the conversation talking about the best rap producers in this century

But holy shit, takes like "Kanye's run from 2003 to 2016 is probably the greatest body of work of any musician of the 21st century" being thoroughly trashed in this thread is some ludicrous revisionism. Name any other artist that had the pop cultural impact that dude did for a fucking decade in the 21st century

What if we don't equate "pop cultural impact" with "greatest body of work"?

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/DisastrousUnfoldedDarklingbeetle-size_restricted.gif

What if we make "cultural impact" one aspect of judging greatness

one aspect

Sure.

I mean I will side-eye anyone who doesn't think his first two solo albums are classics, I will also ride for MBDTF, and I know I will get clowned for it, and I do like Graduation. 808s can suck a dick. and of course his pre-solo career production as well.

Yeezus I listened to once and probably left in the house I opened it in. not cos it was bad, just cos....idk

Then we risk underrating Ben Monder.xp

I’m going to write a 33 1/3 volume about jesus is king. Then you’ll all see.

Kanye will probably buy them all

I like graduation too

Oh shit too many new messages but hold up: there’s people who think “jesus is king” is a good album!? Holy fuck.

yeah, his last name is Dombal

Only listened to it twice, but the good thing with Jesus is King is that it has no cringey bleached-asshole / Eatin' Asian pussy, all I need was sweet and sour sauce / etc. lines that bring the others to a dud halt. It's like when the clean version of a song is more inventive/creative than the original.

That’s an abysmally low bar to clear.

guess he's putting more wholesome things in a sarcophagus now

Then we risk underrating Ben Monder.xp

― Feel a million filaments (Sund4r)

his version of danny kirwan's "dust" is so good

such a sad song, i think i'm gonna go cry now

really enjoy “follow god”

his version of danny kirwan's "dust" is so good

such a sad song, i think i'm gonna go cry now

<3.

The two discs of Day After Day are so different from each other and are both great.

Kanye is one of these artists, like Radiohead or Bjork whom fans and critics will always give the time of day to no matter how uncommercial, weird, plain bad, or all of the above their music gets.

I've always found him a tough one to listen to. His productions are often great, even when they sound rough or challenging. But post-Graduation I just find his lyrics, his delivery a real hurdle. it's at once flat, irritating and comically self-aggrandising. the parallel with Radiohead sits: there's so much to love but too often it's like there's a creative choice which sticks out like a sore thumb and ruins it for me

I resent that comparison.

Hahaha might as well compare him to Walt Disney, Steve Jobs and Pablo Picasso.

Pablo Picasso

This whole thread is people calling him an asshole, though...

nice

comically self-aggrandising

a rapper? you don't say!

hope my dick grows as big as a 45 record/so I can fuck the world for 72 seconds

/fixed

double standards for rappers? that's racist as hell, chrissy. not cool at all. what's your problem?

I get it Whiney.
But like others upthread have said, this guy is running for president and I can see him wielding his God complex in much the way as Trump did when he posed with that Bible.
I love a bit of hip hop 'braggadocio' (lol), but this is Kanye getting high on his own empty fumes. It's not lyrically smart, funny or interesting to me.
When he says 'I am a God', I don't think he's speaking figuratively or in the same way other rappers might: It's supposed to be taken literally. It's not a metaphor for anyone other than Kanye; it's like David Icke saying 'I am the Godhead'. 'Blood On The Leaves' was the point where I thought 'Okay, this is all a bit something'... The closest thing I can think of is John Lennon's self-pitying, self-religonising, self-onanising 'Ballad of John and Yoko'. At the end of the day, I don't care enough about him to want to listen him in this way.

"I am a God" is a song that ends with him screaming and panting in terror

because no croissants

Sounds great.

here we are in 2020 and the most discussed threads on ILM are kanye west and taylor swift
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM3Y6uw6FtU

This is what they look like fifteen years later. Feeling old yet?

is anybody actually arguing that the greatness of Kanye's music means we can't criticize what he's currently doing?

xxpost

Seems like people are mostly doing the "AND I never liked their music anyway" thing.

yeah that is mainly the source of my annoyance

i also don't think whiney said anything outrageous either, and i don't like pablo very much at all

and think mbdtf is an impressive slog, but this is like the only place on the internet where my feelings about that album would be taken seriously lol

the actual great stupid recent kanye song isn't "lift yourself" but "i love it"

Seems like people are mostly doing the "AND I never liked their music anyway" thing.

I know he’s an actual celebrity but for some reason it bothers me how people with no actual interest in rap music, let alone his music, have for years felt the need to express their strong negative emotional opinions about the man’s nonsense. I don’t know why it bothers me. It’s probably hypocritical of me.

yeah being self congratulatory is awesome.

people who weren't into reality TV had some pretty strong opinions about Donald Trump too

Kanye recorded a few good and great albums, some people have written well about him, and he's not gonna be president, nor will he steal votes from Joe Biden.

*leaves thread*

people with no actual interest in rap music

i.e. white people

You mean American white people?

Is this an international forum or.

I know he’s an actual celebrity but for some reason it bothers me how people with no actual interest in rap music, let alone his music, have for years felt the need to express their strong negative emotional opinions about the man’s nonsense. I don’t know why it bothers me. It’s probably hypocritical of me.

― brimstead, Thursday, July 23, 2020 2:05 PM bookmarkflaglink

yeah being self congratulatory is awesome.

― brimstead, Thursday, July 23, 2020 2:06 PM bookmarkflaglink

before the Trump times, I'd see a lot of my non-hip hop friends sharing some anti-Kanye memes, usually some 3 year old bullshit he'd said or done, and I'd defend his music and they'd always go "was he ever REALLY good, though, that's just something people SAY" and then acting surprised when I talked about how much I loved his first two albums.

(not that I'm doubting anybody ITT that doesn't like his music).

It was just like this meme that non-hip hop folk kept sharing that showed a pic of Tupac and MC Hammer in suits and it said "THIS IS CLASS", posted next to a pic of Lil Wayne shirtless with low-hanging jeans and it said "THIS IS SHIT", I kept saying "wtf, you think Tupac dressed in that suit 99% of the time? Look at his street outfits, morons".

in conclusion, the Twins were wrong not to renew Gary Gaetti's contract

His first couple of LPs are solid, especially production-wise, but his rapping has always been generic and nondescript when you consider it in and of itself.

he's always been a semi-clumsy rapper, though the lyrics didn't begin to get real cringe until much later.

People with no actual interest in rap music felt the need to profess strong positive emotions about his nonsense too

I too think Kanye's collapsed in all sorts of ways since 2008, but when I read disses of his "rapping" I automatically think, "What's the rap equivalent of Steve Vai or Neil Schon? You want that?" In fact, we've gotten that style on a few of Andre 3000's guest verses in the last few years: accelerated mush-mouth that's technically unassailable but to my ears dead.

Like, what the fuck kind of rapping do you want? This is like reading Leonard Cohen and Bernard Sumner are poor singers. That's not an opinion -- that's a fact. But what did they do within their limitations? They wouldn't be good to great without those limitations, I'd say.

Kanye at his best between 2003-2008 let his conversational drawl and cadences become part of the sumptuousness of his productions. I'll admit I'm an auteurist about him: when he started crediting co-producers he lost a sense of how he could give himself star entrances. Do we expect stars to "act"? No. We expect them to project the best versions of themselves, which, like Garbo and Harrison Ford taught us, is a kind of acting too.

So y'all stfu about Kanye's rapping prowess.

NB: I don't give a good goddamn about Kanye since My Boring Conventional Fantasies.

A respectable opinion that I happen not to share. I would make the exact same case if someone were dissing the RZA’s flow, which I fucking love for some reason.

xp

I think using Andre 3k as your example of rap Steve Vai is ridiculous

he's more of a rap Dave Mustaine

The point of being a star, in part, is no one sounds like you. RZA's bit in "Snakes"? Ghostface, Raekwon, ODB -- no one could've pulled it off.

I think using Andre 3k as your example of rap Steve Vai is ridiculous

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

Honey, I'm a star. I'm supposed to be ridiculous.

is Canibus the rap steve vai

bad rapping is worse than bad singing imo. tho of course a lot of the most satisfying rap isn't very technical or complex. I just kind of hate kanye's voice a little bit too which is a barrier for me and is probably the main thing that I judge rappers on. underrated lyricist though imo

Anyway, Steve Vai is awesome on David Lee Roth and PiL tracks.

while i disagree with his analogies i think alfred's pretty otm about kanye's rapping

sometimes i love his verses because they're terrible cf. "knock you down"

He can do it all, fast, slow, so fluid, such great and memorable phrasing, lyricism, storytelling indelible lines...top 10 of all time, a total MC in every sense of the word

and Kanye?

I agree with the point, Kanye is effective and certainly many many memorable verses and lines. He works well with what he can do in the flow of his music*

*Until more recently

Who else could've rapped so well about this domestic scenario -- maybe Talib and Mos Def in 1998-1999? But Kanye's awkwardness works in his favor: like a singer on an Italo disco or house track, the anonymity underscores the pathos.

Also, he sounds sexy.

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

I guess there's use if ghostwriting discussion to be had wrt Kanye as MC but I guess it doesn't bother me, he's a producer and putting together the total package

You wanna see heads blow up? When students ask me about ghost writing and I say who gives a shit.

Maybe the people actually writing the songs? Especially when someone becomes a multi millionaire celebrity with the social capital to run for president of the US off of the fame and money generated from performing those songs, while the people who did actually write them don't earn even a remote fraction of that fame and financial success themselves? Not that Kanye is or is typically perceived as anywhere the biggest offender of using ghostwriten music (I think that honor has been Drake's for a while)... but asking "who cares" about it seems pretty stupid.

I'm reading an E.M. Forster essay about Proust (don't ask). I found this sentence:

"His despair is fundamental. It is not a theory in him, but an assumption, so that the wreckage of his creation evolves as naturally as the music of the spheres."

xp. you get good money for participating in the production of these albums

I mean Big Sean, Pusha and Cyhi the Prince aren't still on GOOD Music because they make tons of money as solo artists

in particular some lines really stick out as Pusha

I'm sure they are more than fine with it

also, not all ghostwriters are like, Gillie, Jay-Z, Eminem, Pharoah Monche, etc all ghostwrote for other people, theyre not starving

should have been a period after Gillie.

asking "who cares" about it seems pretty stupid.

darling, I've had lots of practice reading you the last few months

Re: Forster, that’s some high-grade bullshit right there. Describing Proust’s ‘despair’ as ‘fundamental’ is quite the projection.

the starving ghostwriters aren't writing for like Kanye, they're writing for like, some dude who is in the 9 pm slot as the local opener for Run the Jewels

Re: Forster, that’s some high-grade bullshit right there. Describing Proust’s ‘despair’ as ‘fundamental’ is quite the projection.

― pomenitul, Thursday, July 23, 2020

Yeah. I blame Forster's ghost writers.

anyway, I cited the line b/c it's clearer now that for Kanye despair is fundamental, and there's a lot to despair over.

xp. But not every ghostwriter is a Jay-Z, Frank Ocean, etc. level celebrity right? Those guys ain't starving but it's not the same situation for someone who isn't already an established name like that. You get good money SOMETIMES for participating in the production of these works as a ghostwriter, but again; the fact that your name is never directly associated with the work, while as "a single by the artist Kanye West" it goes on to sell tens or hundreds of millions and earn massive levels of worldwide attention and acclaim... the name/brand recognition from that will almost always more significant than whatever meager royalty you were paid to not have your name on it. And again, that's IF you're compensated at all; even an artist as "big" as Aphex Twin almost didn't receive anything when Ye sampled Avril 14th on MBDTF. "Ghostwriting" wouldn't really even be a stigma if the writer in that situation was always being truly appropriately compensated for their involvement in the work IMO. Again, not to derail or scapegoat Kanye as some specific abusive tyrant of an army of ghostwritten raps or anything.

pretty sure the producer who spent a mill to sample 21st Century Schizoid Man isn't paying $50 for "MC Scoliosis" to write his rhymes

I never said that he did, although recent stuff like Poopity scoop does makes me wonder what he does hypothetically pay whoever writes his rhymes now

considering some of the guests on KTSE went unpaid until recently it's possible they did it for nothing. (ime the uber wealthy are always the cheapest motherfuckers alive)

Imagine being the ghostwriter tasked with coming up with "Lift Yourself"

"it's never going to get out that I wrote this, right?"

"This is a good start, but at this part I was thinking we could say 'scoop-dee-WHOOP' instead of 'scoop-dee-POOP', switch it up a little on 'em you know?"

lol

p sure I unequivocally love Lift Yourself, had never heard it till last night

btw richard james is credited on 'blame game,' he's definitely gotten paid

xp to trevor phillips' nonsense

ftr the good songs on Yeezus still bang like fuck, which makes the bad songs that much more disappointing to me

of course I'd forgotten about "I'd rather be a dick than a swallower" when I typed that, yeesh

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/aug/26/aphex-twin-kanye-west-avril-14th-sample-blame-game

xp Yea, and he apparently had to fight for that credit. This was old news and also not the first time a story or claim like this had been made about Kanye. Fuck off

I remember this with Syl Johnson

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/kanye-west-and-jay-z-settle-syl-johnson-lawsuit-91675/

Jay-Z and Kanye West have settled a federal lawsuit by soul singer Syl Johnson, who claimed that the duo used an unauthorized sample of his song “Different Strokes” on “The Joy,” a track on the deluxe version of their album Watch the Throne.

According to Johnson, West had attempted to clear the sample for his 2010 record My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, but could not get the deal ready in time for its release and ended up putting the track on Throne without his permission, proper credit or payment. The details of West and Jay-Z’s settlement with Johnson have not been made public, though legal papers filed in Illinois last week indicate that the suit has been dismissed.

he didn't get the King Crimson sample approved til after the fact either fwiw

Sampling first and clearing later is so common though (not that it's admirable or anything). Also I'm sure this is something he leaves up to his legal team, it's not like he's calling up RDJ or Robert Fripp (although it's probably impossible to clear samples when the record is released two hours after getting mastered).

the rdj story a bit more damning than "he didn't have time to clear his sample before dropping the record." to be fair to kanye, he's been very exhaustive about crediting co-writers, producers, and sample sources from yeezus on. the lists of credited writers are looooong.

it's not like he's calling up RDJ or Robert Fripp

Apparently, there literally was a West-Fripp phone call, as related in this Rolling Stone story:

Kanye West even prominently sampled “21st Century Schizoid Man” for 2010’s “Power.” Fripp relates the story about how he called West personally to iron out a last-minute sample clearance before a BET performance. “What I said to Kanye was, ‘I’ll make it happen,'” Fripp says, pronouncing the rapper’s name “can-yee.” “‘Cause here was an artist who effectively had been fucked over by his record company, who was just about to do a live broadcast on major TV and he didn’t know whether he could do the piece he was rehearsing or not.”

kanye's sample sources are vanilla as fuck and always have been. almost as "good" as his rapping.

everything he does is a contrived move to start "DISCOURSE." the music matters later, but what can be said "about" it right now?

i mean, just look at his very first single: 'through the wire' wasn't just an effort at making a good song. the song itself was about how the song was made. it's a type of faux "genuine, earnest" presentation that lacks any sort of substance. i just can't believe people continue to fall for it.

Watch The Throne is legit great except for "Otis"

Don't forget the Manzanera sample in "No Church in the Wild":

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/phil-manzanera-on-jay-z-kanye-west-and-the-riff-that-changed-his-life-10128766.html

the song itself was about how the song was made. it's a type of faux "genuine, earnest" presentation that lacks any sort of substance.

don't really understand how the second sentence follows the first here.

ya heard it here first, kanye west is the first artist to ever self-mythologize.

I understand how people hate the more, um, erratic and inscrutable work from 2013 onward, I truly do, even if i defend it.

But through the wire is very good and relatable.

change display name (Jordan) at 3:47 23 Jul 20

Sampling first and clearing later is so common though (not that it's admirable or anything). Also I'm sure this is something he leaves up to his legal team, it's not like he's calling up RDJ or Robert Fripp (although it's probably impossible to clear samples when the record is released two hours after getting mastered).

the Syl Johnson thing is shitty though cuz the tried to clear it for Twisted then just did it without permission later

xp: but that's all he's ever done. he's done a lot of mythologizing and next to nothing in the way of actually living up to any of it, outside of continuing to repeat his self-aggrandizing.

to voodoo's point mythologizing oneself in hip hop it's so prevalent, especially since Biggie and Pac it feels a bit weird to call out Kanye on it

to summarize:

Kanye was/can be an amazing producer for other artists

Kanye has had a very unique and distinctive style as a producer

Kanye is not the most skilled rapper in the world, but definitely had an engaging and unique style with memorable lines in great songs

Kanye is an asshole

Kanye is a misogynist

Kanye has severe mental illness problems

These problems were likely exacerbated by the death of his mom

These mental illness issues help explain but do not excuse his support of Trump and other bad behavior

As Kanye's mental health issues have appeared to worsen, his music has suffered

His beats are now often sloppy and half baked

His "Christian faith" is a judgmental tub of prosperity gospel, resentment and persecution complex bullshit

He made a shitload on sneakers and clothes

He probably needs to step away from public life and concentrate on getting mental health

It seems likely he will do this

He's undeniably a compelling and complex public figure

He's a messy bitch

the thing is though: 2pac and biggie had actual skills and talent.

But through the wire is very good and relatable

yeah, because who hasn't tried to rap mediocrity while having one's jaw wired shut. so #relateable

i don't really understand what's so self-aggrandizing about 'through the wire,' he spends the majority of the song alternatively making fun of himself and thanking god he survived

lock thread

xp

3rd to last pt seems the opposite of likely to me

Too much braggadocio (or these other tropes).

it's about overcoming hardship and appreciating the people who were in your corner when you were at your lowest.

none of his really beserk personality traits were that pronounced back then. xp

3rd to last pt seems the opposite of likely to me

― k*r*n koltrane (Simon H.), Thursday, July 23, 2020 4:58 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

dang that was a typo, yes very unlikely

i don't really understand what's so self-aggrandizing about 'through the wire,' he spends the majority of the song alternatively making fun of himself and thanking god he survived

― mozzy star (voodoo chili), Thursday, July 23, 2020 4:57 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

one thing he was very good at was undercutting his ego with little self-effacing asides that pointed out his own hypocrisy in a fun way

i don't really understand what's so self-aggrandizing about 'through the wire,' he spends the majority of the song alternatively making fun of himself and thanking god he survived

― mozzy star (voodoo chili), Thursday, July 23, 2020 4:57 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

one thing he was very good at was undercutting his ego with little self-effacing asides that pointed out his own hypocrisy in a fun way

like the last verse of Gold Digger for instance

he has done this in more recent albums too. like people act like the "croissants" line in "i am a god" was serious on his part and they're the only ones who recognize its ridiculousness.

xpost UMS otm lock thread

...

i mean isn't kanye's mythologizing about how he is a dominant creative force? seems hard to argue with that even if you disagree with his politics. he, you know, won the american game. fake it til you make it is how we do it in us of a and i dont like it either, but all austin is really saying is "i do not like kanye, he makes me mad."

ftr fuck his trump bullshit but all these weird a priori critiques "he's insane!" "he's always been bad" are just so much magical thinking and utterly barren as analysis and remind me of all the denial about how we got trump in the first place tbh ... i know that "it's the system man" is just the inverse of placing all the blame on the individual but it doesn't follow that considering kanye as a toxic american product has no purchase. i mean this all actually really goes deep into questions of how can any success be ethical in an extractivist/neo-colonial political economy, questions of black belonging in a racist country, etc. i dont like kanye's answers to these questions but to reduce it to "he just SUCKS wah" is like, lame

two songs later he has a song about waking up drunk at his ex's house, only to have her aunt show up that morning and kick him out. and that song includes a plug for the Yeezy "red October" sneakers. like, there is humor as well as pathos on yeezus and also on pablo

self xp

i know that "it's the system man" is just the inverse of placing all the blame on the individual but it doesn't follow that considering kanye as a toxic american product has no purchase. i mean this all actually really goes deep into questions of how can any success be ethical in an extractivist/neo-colonial political economy, questions of black belonging in a racist country, etc. i dont like kanye's answers to these questions but to reduce it to "he just SUCKS wah" is like, lame

― Vapor waif (uptown churl), Thursday, July 23, 2020 6:06 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

excellent post

the thing is though: 2pac and biggie had actual skills and talent.

so then your problem isn't is mythologizing, you just think he's not talented.

I mean, I don't agree, but at least just say that if that's what you mean, instead of couching it in how he's objectively terrible by the Hip Hop Collective Bargaining Agreement of 1983 or w/e

also "Through the Wire" is a triumph, dude almost died in a car wreck, jaw wired shut, and he managed to rap that song while basically being in pieces, literally and figuratively. I like what he did with the Chaka Khan sample, and ultimately, the song has a humility to it that you'd never find in Kanye circa now. yeah, it's a "gimmick", but it isn't as if he planned to almost die in a car crash.

...(did he?)

sped up chipmunk soul vocal samples are one of the greatest things in the history of music

I remember seeing the Through the Wire video for the first time on BET, was just blown away, instant classic

for extra credit, please solve (thoroughly) for "x": Prince Paul is much more X than Kanye West.