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

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.

this is true

And I don't even ascribe that reaction to him being a black pop artist, I ascribe that to him being Canadian.

i'm not saying people can't be excited about awards they DO win, they totally should be. caring too much about the ones you don't win, though, smh.

"Mental pictures of Drake looking ridiculous"

The happy rapper.

kanye's response to the first question here seems pertinent to this discussion http://books.google.com/books?id=fyLttHWpa9EC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA60#v=onepage&q&f=false

it's a totally fair thing to say. he had a good year. but that was around the time he threw a fit because Gretchen Wilson won an AMA over him. that's the other thing, he doesn't just care too much about the Grammys, he's wilding out about VMAs and Kids Choice Awards and shit.

like i honestly think it's bad for hip hop that its most acclaimed artist, its bastion of cerebral non-gangsta music, is a such an idiot in some ways.

I think his ott emotionsl investment in awards nobody else cares about is an interesting, even endearing quirk. I like solipsistic Kanye though, poet of the psychological corrosiveness of celebrity. mbdtf is my favorite album by him.

that old Spin interview, wow.

Kanye To Radio: Drop Dead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppzAzjjH0ng

his attitude towards radio right now is so weird. like, he did that Rihanna remix being all "on the radio, man, I miss myself" after 6 months of "Mercy" and "Clique" blanketing the airwaves.

why does anybody still care about this guy idgi

he's a conundrum wrapped in a weirdo.

he's still trying to prove his coach wrong. every day he has to make the team. forever. i dunno, i don't actually listen to his music, i just read about him. kinda like eminem. or 50 cent. or yoko ono.

haha yeah me too. I don't think I've heard anything of his since "Otis"

he's a star/icon and a punchline and people take him seriously. critical types. kinda like puffy. theoretically, two people i wouldn't want to be stuck next to on an airplane.

i mean people take him seriously AND they kinda laugh at him at times. so, eminem and puffy. three people i wouldn't want to be next to on an airplane. and yoko. four people.

The trickster deity breaks the rules of the gods or nature, sometimes maliciously (for example, Loki) but usually with ultimately positive effects (though the trickster's initial intentions may have been either positive or negative). Often, the bending/breaking of rules takes the form of tricks (e.g. Eris) or thievery. Tricksters can be cunning or foolish or both; they are often funny even when considered sacred or performing important cultural tasks. An example of this is the sacred Iktomi, whose role is to play tricks and games and by doing so raises awareness and acts as an equalizer.

nobody ever took puff seriously, including puff. would love to be on puff's jet.

nobody ever took puff seriously

? idk if we're all working off the same definition of "seriously" here

Best Song on Diddy - Dirty Money's "Last Train to Paris"

this seems like a pretty serious thread to me

yeah there was talk of actually changing the name of the board to I Love Diddy around that time.

I miss his all-caps blog posts. All-caps tweets don't have the same oomph.