Kanye West, Yeezus, 6/18/13 (TBC because who knows anymore)

i would do a ton of coke if i were him. 2 tons!

really? that seems incongruous with what you said about being able to find fulfillment purely from the serenity of nature in the rebellion thread. anyway, kanye otm when he says:

I think the fact that I can’t sing that well is what makes “808s” so special.

the other day i listened to some 808s songs i've literally avoided since 2008. still can't deal. so much outright garbage on that album.

i agree it is uneven, but i like the overall concept of a sad "introspective" kanye record with a minimum of rapping and i think that when it works -- like on love lockdown and heartless -- it works really well.

great concept, shitty album

that's the thing: I don't care for introspective Kanye anymore, and on the CD and LR tracks where it worked he relied on narratives and reflections about other people. The introspection fed off his experiences with his mom, family dinners, etc. The beats helped too. From 2008 onwards celebrity as subject consumes him. He just isn't fun anymore even with the musical sophistication.

all of my defenses of 808s were based on kanye making an album that wasn't mbdtf as a followup.

jordan's got me interested in this one tho.

"So when the next little girl that wants to be, you know, a musician and give up her anonymity and her voice to express her talent and bring something special to the world".....

thought this was snowblind gibberish at first, but "giving up your voice to express your talent" seems a good formulation of the pop music machine....

So when the next little girl that wants to be, you know, a musician and give up her anonymity and her voice to express her talent and bring something special to the world, a man will be there to grab the mic and say she didn't deserve that award.

More like be there to say a black woman was more deserving.

Alfred nailed what's bothered me about Kanye for a while unthread

All he wants is dopeness!

There are so many lines in that interview I wanted to cut and paste here, but my god, it'd be less than fully fair to Kanye to post anything other than the entire thing.

why won't NYT publish the word "shit"

it's 2013

"I’ve been connected to the most culturally important albums of the past four years, the most influential artists of the past ten years. You have like, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, Nicolas Ghesquière, Anna Wintour, David Stern."

Poll!

Those are some amazing answers. Great use of third-person and crazed historical comparisons.

"Beauty, truth, awesomeness. That's all it is."

Early draft of Ode on a Grecian Urn.

So when the next little girl that wants to be, you know, a musician and give up her anonymity and her voice to express her talent and bring something special to the world, a man will be there to grab the mic and say she didn't deserve that award.

― some dude, Wednesday, June 12, 2013 2:47 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hahaha this is EXACTLY what i thought

i feel like j-kwon could have been slotted into his list of great artists of the last ten years, between henry ford and walt disney.

i also want everyone to know that i hate jon caramanica.

Woild.love a pic of how Caramanica responded to each Ye line.

Still they got me like Yeezus.

I love how Kanye is so wildly, declaratively ambitious and inventive and pioneering and forward-thinking and broad-minded and in the end what he cares most about is winning more Grammys. That'd be like some self-professed great chef aspiring to get a sandwich on the McDonald's menu.

otm

hahaha

ikr!

Odub must contemplate

i like the elite gymnastics guys take on kanyes weird grammy obsession:

"when kanye attempts to make sense of the grammy awards, he refuses to settle on a position as boring as simple cynicism. he is completely aware of how out of touch and off the mark grammy voters tend to be - he sees that as a challenge. in his eternal, astonishing optimism about the power of art and creative achievement in the face of all potential obstacles he believes that in order to conquer the gordian knot of exotic wrongness that is the grammy awards, he simply needs to make something so good that even the legendarily inept grammy voters can’t deny it’s greatness."

"These McDonald's eaters WILL love my waygu beef panini dammit."

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4wobf7NRp1rxoylbo1_1280.jpg

i'm not sure that's 100% true, the interview touched on where that obsession seems to actually come from - kanye sees the grammys as a historical document. and not just the grammys - that's why he's obsessed with "changing radio" and probably with sales too - tangible markers of his achievements and success. it's this weird mixture of an extreme hip-hop mindset w/r/t awards etc, and an extreme indie mindset w/r/t the purity of ~art~, and the fact that he doesn't attempt to make them gel together is what makes him so...whatever. i'd say fascinating but it's not that fascinating. you're not sure whether he doesn't try to reconcile them because he's too dumb or coked-up to realise there's a disconnect or whether it's a very admirable #YOLO give-no-fucks thing.

also the ability to be confident in art-for-art's-sake and not need the grammys' validation at all is something of a privilege - the racial dimensions to being written out of history etc

What Kanye needs is a satellite radio station.

And a hug.

what he needs is a Grammy.

he has 21 of them!

Album of the Year, that is

if anything on this record is as good as the abbreviation"'gevity" I am all over it

― daft on the causes of punk (schlump), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 02:00 (11 hours ago) Bookmark

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

altho... it's not even an abbrev cos the way he uses it you can also have a short gevity

genius

brevity vs. 'gevity

gevity is the soul of twits

hmm idk now, is longevity a neutral term for duration or does it imply a long span

discount my 'gevity youll end up apologin'

The thing his statistical obsession reminds me most of is Michael Jackson's goal to make an album that sold 100 million copies -- it's looking for some kind of quantification of status. In Michael's case it seemed like a proxy for love, in Kanye's it's a more abstract form of respect, but either way it comes across as extreme neediness.

In the early nineties Neil Tennant, referring to the S-A-W acts who went on and on in interviews about"being about longevity," said the act of surviving in the industry for years is for artists itself a validation almost as powerful as a Grammy).

What Kanye needs is

http://www.pophistorydig.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/jackson-float-uk-1-310.jpg

i found 50% of that interview to be almost completely unintelligible

the grammys thing to me is that for a lot of these guys, the old systems of measurement are corrupted, so they no longer matter. they don't trust radio, don't care about singles downloads and see every successive album sell a little bit less than the last. how do you even measure success in the industry now? virtually no one is stacking multiple platinum plaques anymore. the grammys -- no matter how fusty -- have remained uncorrupted and simple. you make something dope and hopefully people vote for you to win. it's the only system of arbitration left in the music industry that hasn't been usurped by technology and recession.

the grammys -- no matter how fusty -- have remained uncorrupted and simple.

Ow my brain. (I see what you're getting at but OW MY BRAIN.)

give or take an al walser

The Grammy voters gather:

http://www.bayarea.net/~kins/AboutMe/Raphael_fresco/Raphael_SchoolOfAthens.jpg