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

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

but the typical Grammys show these days is nine tenths music. In the days of Kenny Loggins and Bonnie Raitt there was more time for bizzers to get self-righteous in front of a mic.

i.e. the Grammys look like Dancing with the Stars or The Voice

that is insane j0rdan

"the grammys -- the last simple, uncorrupted way of knowing whether a musician and their music have truly made an impact on the world"

fuck white America -- except Neil Portnow, I desperately need his approval

well there's a few reasons why artists -- even kanye -- still care about the grammys. winning awards is nice. there is a prestige factor. for rappers, especially, there's still some sort of mutinous element to winning a grammy, i think. but also i think artists see it as one of the last arbiters left that allows them to measure themselves up against their peers & predecessors. because the old ways don't really work anymore.

the-dream said this to me in an interview. it's sort of petulant but i think there's truth in it.

"I think I have the respect of my peers, and that's the only one that matters," says The-Dream. "I definitely don't carry a certain respect with social media or whatever it is, because what a person means in music doesn't mean anything today. What I'm doing means absolutely nothing to them," he says. "That's why as much as we want to speak out most of the time against the Grammys, the point actually is that those things are decided amongst our peers in music, on what's good or not."

...yay?

so it doesn't matter that Grammys ratings have gone down, that they're less central to the music industry or to what music fans think than they've ever been, that they don't even effect record sales as much anymore? somehow having a #1 song or a #1 album has lost its luster in some more profound way? idg

i think it's more that a trophy is a trophy, and they can pretend a Grammy actually means something concrete and indisputable in the same way as, i dunno, an Olympic gold medal or a Super Bowl ring, but it totally doesn't and everybody knows that.

sales are nice but pale to the raw purity of a for your consideration poster

will smith needs to have a talk with ye about patterns

look, i'm not saying that artists SHUOLD care about the grammys. but they do! even tho kanye says he doesn't, obviously he does. i think to artists -- especially in black pop, which has been hit harder in the collapse of the industry than white pop -- it's still seen as a more pure measurement of artistic credibility than, yes, charts/sales. kanye can't beat macklemore on the charts, but he just won two grammys.

lol macklemore's gonna win a gang of grammys next year isn't he

kanye can't beat macklemore on the charts, but he just won two grammys.

so what you're saying is kanye is old now

I'm predicting most of next year's Grammy's to go to either Justin Timberlake or Daft Punk.

i think to artists -- especially in black pop, which has been hit harder in the collapse of the industry than white pop -- it's still seen as a more pure measurement of artistic credibility than, yes, charts/sales.

Trying to take this at face value, and acknowledging that we've got two anecdotes via Kanye and The-Dream along these lines, this is still kinda hard to believe. I realize the Grammy voters en masse in 2013 aren't the same ones that, say, gave Jethro Tull the metal Grammy and all, but...

The first award for Best Rap Performance was first presented to DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince (the vocal duo consisting of DJ Jazzy Jeff and Will Smith) for "Parents Just Don't Understand".The ceremony was not without controversy; nominees Jeff and Smith led a boycott in protest of the award presentation not being televised, and some members of the rap community felt that more qualified artists were overlooked. After the 1990 ceremony, where Young MC won the award, the category was split into Best Rap Solo Performance and Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group.

These two categories were once again combined from 2012, as a result of a restructure of Grammy categories. It was the consequence of the Recording Academy's wish to decrease the list of categories and awards and to eliminate the distinctions between solo and duo or group performances.

1989: DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
1990: Young MC
2012: Jay-Z & Kanye West
2013: Jay-Z & Kanye West

Meanwhile I posted Josh's McDonald's bit over on Tumblr and that's caused a bit of discussion:

marathonpacks:

It’s tacky to “us,” but I think it makes perfect sense if you consider that Kanye considers himself a “professional creative” more than he considers himself an “artist,” and says as much in the interview. He namedrops Gil Scott Heron and Dead Prez, but via that interview, he’s thinking of his process and cultural positionality more in the lineage of designers and “image people,” aka the advertising, design, and branding worlds. Those people think of themselves as artists, too, only their work has a functionality and foregrounding of style that they can easily reconcile with the more romantic, “outsider” perspective we ascribe to transcendent artists. They also love rewarding each other for their brilliance in creating art-with-a-function. There’s nothing tacky about seeking the highest award your chosen industry has on offer if you choose this perspective, which Kanye clearly has. I bet he’d love to get a Clio for his pre-release projection stunts.

(also, I love how he puts David Stern in his Mount Rushmore of legends including Anna Wintour and Walt Disney. Honestly, I really love it.)

--

tomewing:

To the extent that the ‘function’ disappears. There are ad awards which are specifically ABOUT “effectiveness” (how well an ad drives sales) in which effectiveness is actually a mighty 33% of the judging criteria.

Sorry, work head on here. Kanye is pretty good at marketing, yes, and pre-release campaigns are the new music videos (or something), though how many of them make a success of records which wouldn’t have been highly anticipated anyhow?

so is Kanye an institutionalist or an insurrectionist?

is he eternal? or an eternalist?

is kanye possible?

Human, dancer

"jackass" aspect aside, i find it pretty hard to begrudge kanye's contradictory impulses re institutions like the grammys and don't feel he has any responsibility to resolve them

the grammys are a historical document now? i might have agreed with this when i was like 10 and used to read about the past winners in the world almanac. It's a big budget TV show that uses celebrities to help businesses sell shit, and not much more than that, with past awards being presented to such game-changers as "Afternoon Delight" and "Eric Clapton Unplugged."

gevity wins over grammys. if people still care about your music years later or if it gains popularity over the years, how is that less awesome than what your friends think right after it comes out? he says right in the interview that some of his biggest game-changers were polarizing. if some people dont understand it right away, obviously he won't be winning every award immediately.

yeah i mean...pretty much every award he hasn't won, he's been vindicated by a huge number of fans and critics and peers who would readily say he deserved that award. with that being the case he really doesn't even need to say anything.

"he really doesn't even need to say anything."

you must be new here.

lol

well i mean...he has a lot he CAN talk about in interviews, but he still talks about the Grammys as much as possible

it's almost as if someone who once called his crew the grammy family might be abnormally occupied by the grammys

dude should work it out in therapy and tell us what he figures out with the Plastic Kardashian Band

"tell me about your grandmother, kanye..."

not sure the world is ready for My Beautiful Dark Double Fantasy winning AOTY.

yeah i mean...pretty much every award he hasn't won, he's been vindicated by a huge number of fans and critics and peers who would readily say he deserved that award.

some people who are as successful as kanye -- across fields, from sports to politics to business -- are driven by slights that are minimal or imagined or so far in the past that normal people wonder why anyone could still care about such a thing. it's mania, basically, but it's also what keeps them motivated even after everyone in the world has told them how great and legendary they are. the example i always think of is albert pujols, who immediately hailed as one of the best players in baseball and very soon thereafter one of the best players of all-time. but there were still stories of, like, how he could never get over being drafted in the 15th round (or whatever). or how he could never get over the fact that the cardinals wouldn't offer him a contract that made him the highest paid player of all time, even though he had more money than anyone could ever want.

lol the Dixie Chicks were almost the original Taylor Swift:

I remember when both Gnarls Barkley and Justin (Timberlake) lost for Album of the Year, and I looked at Justin, and I was like: “Do you want me to go onstage for you? You know, do you want me to fight”

Dixie Chicks produced by Rick Rubin... #GrammyStrategy

i totally get the psychology of that. i also kinda think that if you don't keep that shit to yourself to some extent it can diminish your accomplishments. xp

Kinda like when FDR admitted that the worst blow he ever suffered wasn't polio -- it was getting rejected by the Porcellian Club in Harvard.

drake is already one of the most successful radio rappers of all time and yet!

Where was Drake when he won his first Grammy on Sunday for best rap album? The Toronto rapper, who recently moved to Los Angeles, won for his moody 2012 album Take Care. He has had 12 Grammy nominations since 2010, including three this year, but this was his first win.

At the moment his name was called, Drake was in the car, watching the pre-ceremony on his iPad.

"And then we just started going nuts. And we got out literally in the middle of the street — blocked cars. We all hugged. And then when I got back in the car I realized I had torn my suit," he said.

The happy rapper tweeted the mishap. "I just tore the sleeve off my Saint Laurent!!! Thank you all! I am so happy."

this is for winning an award that wasn't even deemed important enough to be shown on the actual broadcast

But on the other hand, Drake.