Kanye West

given that we can't really hear it properly i'm not going to say it sucks yet but what precisely do you like about it j0rdan? you can barely hear it

― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Thursday, May 16, 2013 9:40 AM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark

well for one i was at the show so i could hear it pretty well

but i don't know i found it kind of really powerful. like, him standing in front of a crowd and with barely a beat singing this naked ode to a woman/relationship regardless of what the crowd or his peers or gossip magazines think. my biggest problem with kanye is that he's moved from the most relatable rapper (for middle class kids anyway) to the LEAST relatable rapper for anyone who isn't jay-z. but this kind of levels him again, even the lyrics are perfectly dumbstruck in a really sweet way. like, he sings about wanting to make kim a huge dessert.

like, he wants to make a huge dessert for her to eat, or he wants to lap her up like a giant bowl of Hagen-Daas, because

like, him standing in front of a crowd and with barely a beat singing this naked ode to a woman/relationship regardless of what the crowd or his peers or gossip magazines think

this is kind of why i compared it to "love lockdown" but that really was kinda whoa-wtf on a musical level

Kanye & Macca - Only One

https://soundcloud.com/bitemeapplesign/only-one

i love that there can be only one post about this song on ILM in its first 8 hours of being out

"Cut Me Some Slack" > "Only One"

it's the first of the month! it's the first of the year!
anyways, it's off soundcloud, here it is on youtube for the moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ES0Q5p4QF-8

it's fucking incredible

stevie wonder is gonna be like "uh" when he hears it, and i wish kanye didn't do his overload thing on the chorus, but i was surprised how affecting i found it even after giving the "making of" story on pitchfork an eyeroll

I dug it, how spare and emotional it was - not what I anticipated. Was not at all surprised to find Kanye dropping new music today tbh.

really lovely
his voice has shifted into this real rich mode, too

nice! keyb outro esp gorgeous, but i like the whole thing. vocal processing does undercut the intimacy somewhat.

Absolute garbage. Worst thing I've ever heard from Kanye.

^^^

Pretty shit. Reminds me of why I stopped paying attention to him.

Ya this is shit.

nah nah nah the vocal processing is what takes it over the top

and what's up w/ all the grinches itt xmas is over find a soul

Just like everything else in the 2000s it would be better with 100% less Paul mccartney, really whenn is this guy and his 2nd grade music class keyboard / rubber band guitar noodling going to die

really whenn is [paul mccartney] and his 2nd grade music class keyboard / rubber band guitar noodling going to die

new board discription

wonder if this is indicative of the album's overall sound or if it's just gonna play the bound 2/hey mama emotional climax role on the new record. either way, pretty damn good.

as long as mccartney's voice doesn't ever get involved I spose he can't fuck it up too much

"as long as mccartney's voice doesn't ever get involved I spose he can't fuck it up too much"

thinking this will prove wishful thinking. kanye could make the juxtaposition cool, but it's a tall order...

haha, fair point. I mean if it ends up working it ultimately won't matter, and I think it does work on this song. kanye almost always weaves the contributions of his collaborators into his own specific musical aesthetic in a way that seems organic (keef on "hold my liquor," fergie on "all of the lights," jon brion's arrangements and instrumentation all over late registration, etc.), so even bringing in paul mccartney doesn't worry me. yet.

paul vox on this, & the accompanying processing, are a neat thing i think

Omari and Ivory

so this song is probably the best vocal performance he's done so far, although the song itself is a bit corny, but then I went and read the story of how he came up with it and now I'm all choked up

probably didn't hurt that I just had my pre-dinner cocktail...

are paul's vox on this though? i think the backing vocal voice, when not doubled kanye, has been IDed as being ty dolla $ign

nah pretty sure Paul's just on keys on this

outro on this thing never fucking ends

just the idea that kanye has worked with paul mccartney makes me lol a bit. it gets better as it goes along. his vocals at the start seem quite bad. also, the 'and if you knew how proud' part comes in a bit suddenly. its just a rough demo right? it could be good but i hope this isnt on the finished album.

it seems like with the whole thing about how the song 'captured a special moment' they probably just wanted to leave it at that spare original recording. could be a good album closer, interesting first thing to release but i suppose it operates as a pretty dramatic palate cleanser after Yeezus.

it deserves hidden track status at best

rappers' songs about their kids are mostly terrible iirc

what about rappers' songs about grandmothers singing to gran kid?

this is sweet i guess but i have no real desire to hear it again

...and about a minute too long

this is sweet i guess but i have no real desire to hear it again
--lex pretend

this was basically my reaction

it seems like a decent album track, i'd never skip it but wouldn't actively seek it out

I could see it being a powerful album moment depending on sequencing, but yeah I am surprised by how minor it is.

The sentiment is so simple that it isn't served by the song length; it's a powerful two minute track drawn out to a lukewarm 5 min one

Not mad this exists but it's more of a one off single, isn't it? Maybe slap it on a deluxe edition of whatever the new album is called.

Works as a 180 from Yeezus.

that's what's so great about kanye. there really aren't that many other songwriters who present as comprehensive a portrait of themselves in their music as he does.

I don't think this makes a songwriter great...? Lots of'em present portraits of themselves. What made him for me a pleasure til 2010 was his attitude and how the beats abetted it. For electric piano tinkle and sighing, Bon Iver's around.

still soty

I mean, everyone has their own criteria. I like kanye for the compositional boldness of his music (this song is 't so bold though) but I also like his unflinching confessionalism. He is willing to be both embarrassingly hateful and embarrassingly corny and sentimental, and you never get a sense that he is disavowing any one of these moods as aspects of a persona or mask a la eminem. A kind of artlessness pulled off artfully

i don't see how he's unique in that

There does seem to be a lack of Kanye filter as of late, pretty inchoate in his targets and anger and vitriol. This side of him really seemed to pop up after his mom died, so I wonder if she had a significant tempering effect on the guy. Listening to "The College Dropout" and then his most recent stuff, back to back, it sounds almost like someone took this nice guy who liked to smile and locked him in a room for a decade, forcing him to raise and then kill a puppy a week.

it's almost like fame turns people into assholes. who knew

there's absolutely no pre-fame Kanye interview or anecdote that gives any indication that he was less of an asshole before he was famous though haha

Keyboard outro is very McCartney II.

Idk if he is an asshole though. He seems like a sensitive guy who somehow got the (mistaken?) impression that it's virtuous to have no filter.