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

i'm not saying you have to like the album. i haven't heard it yet. i expect i'll like it. but it sounds like it's intentionally abrasive and offputting so yeah if you don't like it, you don't like it. i just feel like a) people judge kanye differently from other pop artists and b) i have problems when people use outside elements that the artist has no control over (media representation, the audience, etc) against the artist

swagner

This is awesome and should be the name of his 8-hour album. Or maybe "The Bling Cycle."

I'm asking for a criticism that champions difficulty rather than falling back on puritanical platitudes.

A criticism that champions difficulty will not be wasting its time on a superficial schmuck like Kanye West.

why would anyone bother creating a piece of art if they didn't think people should care about what they're feeling?

Plenty of art—plenty of music, even—is decidedly not of the "here, read my diary" school. This reinforces a belief I already had, which is that people who really like Kanye West and think he's doing something big and important and new really need to hear a lot more music, the sooner the better. Also, the fact that a lot of music, particularly these days, is about the artist's inner universe, and that inner universe amounts to "look at my watch/I'm in the club and everyone's looking at me/fuck the haters," is really fucking depressing and not something that needs to be encouraged, by critics, fans, or anyone.

did you guys not enjoy the daft punk album either?

I did not. I thought it was frequently boring and way overlong. The one thing the Kanye album has over the Daft Punk album is efficiency—10 tracks in 40 minutes.

xpost to jaymc: understood and agreed. I don't particularly care about Kanye-the-person either. Sorry for conflating you with stuff I've read elsewhere.

to n/a: I don't think the album is actually that abrasive! Kanye splices a bunch of tinkly piano-keys and emo singing into the harsher-sounding club tunes. It's a bit over the top. Maybe I'm just interested in puritanism because Kanye is. A lot of the album seems like him wrestling with his atheism and residual guilt, and that's refracted on a musical level in the fight between the exhilarating minimalism and the moments of bathos and pseudo-religiosity.

i mean really most u.s. popular music is about expressing some generic emotion in a relatable way but the expectation is still that it's "about the artist's personal inner universe"

This helps to articulate why the pop music I like most is, like, Chris Isaak and Robin Thicke and the like, who are pretty opaque about their personal lives year-by-year but are consistent songwriters and performers.

Maybe you need to stop hanging out in the Kanye thread if you think he's a superficial schmuck and all his fans are ignoramuses.

Because single-artist threads are praise-only zones?

WTf is "criticism that champions difficulty" that's the dumbest shit I've heard

just seems like a waste of your time, to me

"I want music criticism that pats me on the back and says I'm smarter than everyone else."

I just don't see the point in continuing to have a conversation about the morality of Kanye West. Seems like well-trodden ground.

but people are specifically saying that the media coverage is keeping them from enjoying the album. so "read less media coverage" seems like a pretty easy solution to that.

I don't know if you're talking about me, but I didn't say anything like this...? So far, I don't enjoy the album that much, but that has nothing to do with the media coverage. It does have a lot to do with personal aesthetics -- which also explains why I love Random Access Memories! But I suspect that a lot of the critics that have proclaimed Yeezus a masterpiece don't necessarily have a greater appreciation for its specific musical aesthetic than I do, it's just that Kanye's persona (expressed through his lyrics, his stylistic choices, etc.) gives them a whole lot more to be interested in. And I rarely care about that, except in a broader cultural sense that doesn't really change how I hear the music.

obv there are other kinds of music with other purposes but most u.s. popular music is about the artist's personal inner universe

I'm not sure I agree that that's true, but even if it were, it's not really why I like U.S. popular music.

Wanted to return to this idea of how "batshit" Kanye is: it's not that his tastes are strange, but the way he dramatizes them in song is pretty unique. Maybe most popstars compare Asian pussy to sweet and sour sauce in their spare time, or yell at waiters for not bringing them croissants, but I can't think of many others who dramatize those moments lyrically, alongside laments about being enslaved by capitalism/the world. There's something characteristic about that kind of juxtaposition that (I think) makes him relatable. Is he embarrassed? proud? repulsed? what is it?

Daft Punk's idea of batshit is commissioning Paul Williams to write a 10-minute song about the magical powers of "Touch." The lyrical content is utter banality treated as profundity, instead of banality and profundity locked in a mudwrestling match to the death, as with Kanye.

wow i took a nap for an hour and this thread blew up. drew in baltimore = the tune is space/pygmy squirrel etc?

Sorry, nope. I'm a longtime lurker. Lived in Baltimore for a few years and now I'm in DC.

oh ok, sup. i just did a double take because i hadn't seen the dn before (and i used to post as 'alex in baltimore').

Oh, ha, I totally thought it was DD, too.

DD loved Shaking The Habitual for similar reasons.

Wouldn't he have already known the due date a few months ago?

My guess is that it's both the due date and the album release date.

― MarkoP, Thursday, May 2, 2013 1:01 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Prescient.

Flattered to be compared to DD! Does he like Kanye?

https://twitter.com/feministkanye is kinda cracking me up

FEMINIST KANYE ‏@feministkanye 22h
PINK ASS POLOS AND A FUCKING BACKPACK / EVERYBODY KNOW YOU DON'T SUBSCRIBE TO GENDER-NORMATIVE COLOR SCHEMES

I'd like to say I like this album a lot not cause Kanye is oh so interesting and unique but more cause I like weird noisy beats especially when they have King Louie rapping on them, but then I imagine what if an uninspiring performer with a neutral persona like J. Cole or Wale made this album and it all falls apart. So yeah, it's undeniable Kanyeness is important and that's ok.

Then again, I like Shaking the Habitual too and I barely have any investment in the Knife.

if an uninspiring performer with a neutral persona made this album = El-P?

otm!

who will be the nietzsche to kanyes wagner

im a little worreid the answer is "that prick from rapgenius"

if nietzsche were alive today he'd be shitting all over rapgenius

if an uninspiring performer with a neutral persona made this album = El-P?

Stop picking on Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

I don't disagree with Reverend at all: interesting persona plus compelling sounds is the best combination of all, from Elvis through Highway 61 to today. I started reading the thread at jaymc's comment, and I think he was just trying to say that interesting persona isn't enough (and I assume he was responding to an earlier comment that maybe implied that it was?).

The irony is Nietzsche disowned Wagner for Bizet, which is like going from Kanye to ... Bieber?

you guys didn't post spin raves?

http://www.spin.com/articles/kanye-west-yeezus-first-review/

Soderbergh's blurb and score don't match? Or is it me?

Not just you.

"As for this being his "punk" or "post-punk" or "industrial" record, well, you can hear all that, if that's your life experience or critical orientation, but hip-hop has always been about noise and dissonance and dance music as agitation, et al., so don't act like this is some sort of 1,000 No Homo DJs or Yeezus Built My Hot Rod scenario."

lol

makes up for putting the image of "pussyhound warts" in my head...

But where is the song about how Kim is awesome and Kanye is also awesome? :(

will be on the crowd-pleasing next album, 909s & Valentines

Hoping to see Ye trying his utmost to outdo Jay with a song for his new baby daughter

you're my child with the child from Destiny's Child! you're my Kardashian that I'll keep up with after getting all up in the Kardashian from Keeping Up With The Kardashians!

Projected on the Field Museum last night:

https://vine.co/v/hBib51OP0Ow

projected in williamsburg bk last night too

Can't get the hook to "On Site" out of my head today - totally incongruous to shopping at Target

I just read the last 1/3 of this thread while forgetting that "Shaking the Habitual" was the recent Knife album, thought it was some sort of Jane's Addiction reference, and was kind of disgusted by the tendency of threads to veer off into irrelevant comparisons that only make personal sense to the writer.

well, maybe I still have that

god, bonnie bear's white dude in the old man hat voice is such a buzzkill

dude, it's boney bear, show some respect

saw him on SNL, uhhhhhh

frog time machine go