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

"here's something palpably sad about the men in these songs, which twists them away from misogynistic assertions of power toward feelings that are ultimately more self-destructive."

This is the worst attempt at rationalization I've read in some time. This review is literally the worst thing I've read in ages. Is Ryan Dombal always this bad?

that's like the historical default means of rationalising misogyny innit. make it about the man and his uncontrollable feelings that must be respected at all times, never about the women on the receiving end

dombal has always been a terrible, terrible writer

what about the comparison to ice cube do you also dislike cubes classic records for the same reason nwa etc

i haven't said anything about disliking the record. i dislike the dombal sentence

i mean if mysogyny is yer bottom line then that counts out many many records and artists. not trying to defend mysogyny i dont think (or am I?) just putting this out there for discussion

oh ok fine

being able to enjoy problematic art doesn't mean that its problems need to be defended or excused or rationalised in such a terrible manner

it's also a fair point that - still, in 2013 - rap records tend to be the ones where rock critics suddenly care about misogyny, but even if you really enjoy them - especially if - *shrug* is not really a worthwhile response to misogyny

Yeah, echoing what lex says: I find it irritating that a mainstream critic with some unfortunate sway is so wrapped up in his fandom that he completely glosses over the more problematic and pernicious aspects of a major cultural work. And I'm saying that as someone who likes this album for the most part, and thinks it does some interesting things aesthetically.

Also, I think the fact that the implications of Kanye's reappropriation of "Strange Fruit" don't register on Dombal's radar speaks volumes about his incompetence as a music critic. I think he is the first critic I've seen not to address that when talking about this album.

kanye does not have a likeable persona or at least care about being liked or maybe he swings wildly around - this record is not trying to be liked by the majority - i can't play it round my house too loud having kids - so i think that - from one of the 'biggest artists' in the world this kind of disregard for the majority might be admirable - this persona where he is ready to be honest about his dickishness plus apparent willingness to experiment with harsher sounds is the reason for the hyperbole - means he can get away with being an arse because he is apparently honest - in confessing his imperfections and foibles while at the same time claiming/trying to be a god. he also fits into the classic rockist tradition of evolution/ revolution etc...which makes him perfect fodder for critics. personally i think he is a damn sight more interesting than another critically adored group -say radiohead- who knows what those guys are thinking - fey, obscure uptight fops that they are. i think like KW they aspire to god status but are so much more coy and put so much less on the line.

i havent got my head round this all yet either but i guess your point is that his lyrics deserve more scrutiny. strange fruit is the nina version right?

what are the implications of kanye's reappropriation of "strange fruit"?

I'll have a go. I guess maybe that song (SF) is like a sacred text or something - pretty heavy subject matter - black lynchings etc... and Kanye using it as the bed to write a song about 'divorce and betrayal' for his own ends might come across as crass? What is he getting at writing such a bitter, personal song with something like this underneath - he is not comparing himself to the victims of race violence is he - I don't know i will have to listen some more.

Listening now: Bitches trying to get money off him - he is bitter about the break up - "We could have been somebody" - implys that fame destroyed or changed the other person "Before the limelight turned up" He seem wistful. The lawyers now involved. She has lied. Unhappy with woman coming on to him just cos he is famous - not impressed with namedropping about Jay Z. Too much drug use - one of his friends has also been caught in the trap - 'She got your body'...unholy matrimony. Ends up he is sad - melancholy even. It must be hard being Kanye.

I don't know. I think the track works overall - but the implications of using the particular track as a sample are strange. I am not sure about it. Someone else help.

I could admire the way he travesties Strange Fruit if the crassness were a calculated outrage or a comment on his own lack of perspective - ditto the way he compares fisting to a Black Power salute on I'm In It - but the NYT interview suggests he really sees himself in the tradition of Gil Scott-Heron et al, in which case wtf. I felt like the Gil sample at the end of MBDTF was cheap imported gravitas but at least he let the message stand.

imo "he's being honest about being a dick and he doesn't care about being liked" is a pretty tired defence as well, and not really something that deserves respect automatically

haha DL that makes me MORE ok with the "strange fruit" sample! calculated outrage would be the most zzz motivation ever

(still haven't worked out where i stand on the song apart from well at least it's not as tedious as "hold my liquor")

Nah, calculated outrage would at least be daring - knowingly fucking with sacred cows. But this is just idiocy.

I agree that being honest about being an asshole is tired now. Runaway was the natural peak of that idea. Now I just feel he should try not being an asshole.

Still, a lot of great stuff on this record. I'll just ignore Blood on the Leaves and I'm In It.

a lot of watch the throne is about blackness+success in america and jay and kanye i forget in what ratio make reference to civil rights heroes etc and some similar fairly explicit connections on the same topics are drawn on "new slaves" which echoes the "blood on the leaves" line from "strange fruit": "i throw these maybach keys / i wear my heart on the sleeve / i know if we the new slaves / i see the blood on the leaves." and there's also just his penchant for using over the top imagery to dramatize the desolation of wealth+success, this broad is trying to lynch him just like they did thomas shipp and abe smith; and his calculated carelessness with other symbols, like black power fisting a chick. so i guess i'd start there with trying to figure out his intent.

there's a long list of irreverent invocations of civil rights heroes/symbols in the k west oeuvre.

Being honest may be 'tired' but I don't think KW can escape being himself. I do not look forward to his Rudyard Kipling concept record where he takes speaks from the POV of Mowgli.

Absolutely it's a recurring trope but I wonder if it occurs to him that his rich guy angst isn't actually equivalent to slavery or lynching. I keep looking for some glimmer of self-satire. Maybe it's there and I've missed it.

KW may or may not be able to escape being himself but if it's tired it makes his art less effective

Unless he brings something new to the table or finds some new way of presenting his themes.

I mean I have not actually had time to fully take in all the lyrics yet apart from the surface expressions offered so far - maybe I should not comment until i have done so. Is he allowed to use similar themes but explore them more deeply - will that be 'effective' and are you so sure he has not actually done so?

Cos at least musically I would argue he has bought something new to the table - therefore to use your parlance enhancing his art. The lyrics are still up for debate.

I know American Gangster doesn't get much love here but I liked how Jay-Z used the movie project as a way of getting out of that familiar ageing-rapper trap of having nothing new to say - he found a way to tell stories again. I hoped from Black Skinhead and New Slaves that Kanye would find a new lyrical seam to mine here but no.

i dunno whether i'd call the music "new" or really a radical direction but it's pretty much why i really like about half of the album - that plus kanye's delivery, esp on "black skinhead". i mean, i am really impressed by a lot of yeezus, it's def a step back up from MBDTF and it broadly keeps me interested in him - but there's so much hyperbole around at the moment that doesn't take into account (or excuses/rationalises) the album's flaws and moments where you just can't take it or him seriously

only heard the album twice, but it seems to conflate politics/sex/race into one bizarre, hugely entertaining but kinda incoherent kanye whole, with black power sexual fisting on one end and strange fruit being used as a backdrop for breakup bitterness on the uncomfortable other (and lines about having sex with white women and new slaves somewhere in the messy middle). it seems like an album that was made very quickly (and should maybe be judged that way), not a long gestating project like the over-wrought dark fantasy or late registration.

But a hurried album is like being drunk - you may something you wouldn't have said if you'd thought it through but it still occurred to you in the first place.

Yes. It is the ID exposed - as uncomfortable as that might be.

That previous statement was slightly tounge in cheek but I think I have said enough now. I need to go to bed. Cheerio everyone.

if kanye spent more time on it (he seems to spend less time on writing than he does thinking about the production these days), it probably wouldnt be half as interesting or honest (i hope he never starts censoring himself, even when he comes off badly).

does interesting equate to honest?

i kind of feel that kanye gets not just a free pass but, like, a 5-star pass for ~HONESTY~ but i don't find that exposed id necessarily interesting in and of itself

to be clear: i think yeezus is a pretty decent album, but v little of what i find interesting or effective has anything to do with his third-hand patrick bateman "honesty"

Lex there's gonna be a point - sooner than later, I imagine - when that pass gets pulled

Yeah, this is Kanye's genius - making people think that working harder to be a better writer counts as "censoring himself". It's a rockist notion that sloppiness = raw honesty.

"And while there's no real excuse for flat oafishness like "eatin' Asian pussy, all I need was sweet and sour sauce," many of the album's most powerful moments have him broken down, insecure, and bloody, railing against an ineptitude with the opposite sex."

The Tyler, the Creator defence. It's as if people don't realise that awkwardness with women is often the root of misogyny not an excuse for it.

I think there's plenty of self-consciousness or self-satire on the record. The Kanye character in the songs comes across like a buffoon or an embarrassing immature jerk as often as he does a transcendent power tripping god figure. It's impossible to excuse the misogyny on the record, I think in part because it's part of the seductive power trip of the whole. The record it's reminding me of now is Slayer's Reign in Blood, another remorseless Rick Rubin pummel. That record is scary, too. The fascination with Nazis and death a similar thematic bete noire.

Production-wise, has anyone brought up El-P yet? Because that's what this electro hip-hop dystopia reminds me of.

haven't read all of the thread yet but:

Why do debates about Kanye always devolve into the sympathetic and intentional fallacies? Why is criticism about him so insistently moralizing? I don't read the lyrical content as something that needs to be endorsed or condemned, and I think it's similarly beside the point to fret about the persona he puts across, as if we need to "approve" of the art and the artist that compels, moves, confuses us. Obviously it repels and attracts at the same time, and Kanye presents us not with a unified character but a series of fragmented selves. It's the very lack of platitudinous generalities, his willingness to go out on batshit and arguably offensive limbs, that make Kanye still fascinating, to me. And yeah, I think he is saying some pretty profound things about what it's like to be alive, right now, in a way that no other artist is brave enough to do right now. And I think everyone can agree that the sonics on this record are amazing. I didn't realize I wanted a version of Blood on the Tracks by the Knife, but it is scratching a really big itch for me. Can't stop listening.

― drew in baltimore, Saturday, June 15, 2013 2:02 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark

is massively otm

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.

― The Reverend, Saturday, June 15, 2013 7:18 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark

also this

i think my favorite kanye is the kanye that leaves his fingerprints all over the track - not afraid to say that 808s is probably my favorite kanye album. i've only listened to this once yesterday (and out of order!) but will be rinsing it.

I love "On Sight" through "New Slaves" basically because Kanye turns himself into a ugly noise to match the beats.

like at this point in the career it's much more interesting to build a ten song suite around permutations of 'monster' than 'the good life'

although production wise this album still kind of sounds like ass, i blame kanye for mixing this on dre beats instead of proper studio phones

Jeromey-romey-rome

Finally heard "Bound 2" in finished form, it's a lot better/deeper

i wrote a review that kinda delves into the "using language symbolic of racism/oppression to talk about my crazy celeb life" stuff: http://blogs.citypaper.com/noise/index.php/2013/06/album-review-yeezus-by-kanye-west/

one thing i meant to bring up there, and unfortunately forgot, is how this squares with lil wayne's infamous "beat the pussy up like emmitt till" -- obviously none of the kanye lined are that bad but i'm not sure they're that much better or even that much different

sorry, misspelled that, emmett till