kanye west

yeah, his last name is Dombal

Only listened to it twice, but the good thing with Jesus is King is that it has no cringey bleached-asshole / Eatin' Asian pussy, all I need was sweet and sour sauce / etc. lines that bring the others to a dud halt. It's like when the clean version of a song is more inventive/creative than the original.

That’s an abysmally low bar to clear.

guess he's putting more wholesome things in a sarcophagus now

Then we risk underrating Ben Monder.xp

― Feel a million filaments (Sund4r)

his version of danny kirwan's "dust" is so good

such a sad song, i think i'm gonna go cry now

really enjoy “follow god”

his version of danny kirwan's "dust" is so good

such a sad song, i think i'm gonna go cry now

<3.

The two discs of Day After Day are so different from each other and are both great.

Kanye is one of these artists, like Radiohead or Bjork whom fans and critics will always give the time of day to no matter how uncommercial, weird, plain bad, or all of the above their music gets.

I've always found him a tough one to listen to. His productions are often great, even when they sound rough or challenging. But post-Graduation I just find his lyrics, his delivery a real hurdle. it's at once flat, irritating and comically self-aggrandising. the parallel with Radiohead sits: there's so much to love but too often it's like there's a creative choice which sticks out like a sore thumb and ruins it for me

I resent that comparison.

Hahaha might as well compare him to Walt Disney, Steve Jobs and Pablo Picasso.

Pablo Picasso

This whole thread is people calling him an asshole, though...

nice

comically self-aggrandising

a rapper? you don't say!

hope my dick grows as big as a 45 record/so I can fuck the world for 72 seconds

/fixed

double standards for rappers? that's racist as hell, chrissy. not cool at all. what's your problem?

I get it Whiney.
But like others upthread have said, this guy is running for president and I can see him wielding his God complex in much the way as Trump did when he posed with that Bible.
I love a bit of hip hop 'braggadocio' (lol), but this is Kanye getting high on his own empty fumes. It's not lyrically smart, funny or interesting to me.
When he says 'I am a God', I don't think he's speaking figuratively or in the same way other rappers might: It's supposed to be taken literally. It's not a metaphor for anyone other than Kanye; it's like David Icke saying 'I am the Godhead'. 'Blood On The Leaves' was the point where I thought 'Okay, this is all a bit something'... The closest thing I can think of is John Lennon's self-pitying, self-religonising, self-onanising 'Ballad of John and Yoko'. At the end of the day, I don't care enough about him to want to listen him in this way.

"I am a God" is a song that ends with him screaming and panting in terror

because no croissants

Sounds great.

here we are in 2020 and the most discussed threads on ILM are kanye west and taylor swift
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EM3Y6uw6FtU

This is what they look like fifteen years later. Feeling old yet?

is anybody actually arguing that the greatness of Kanye's music means we can't criticize what he's currently doing?

xxpost

Seems like people are mostly doing the "AND I never liked their music anyway" thing.

yeah that is mainly the source of my annoyance

i also don't think whiney said anything outrageous either, and i don't like pablo very much at all

and think mbdtf is an impressive slog, but this is like the only place on the internet where my feelings about that album would be taken seriously lol

the actual great stupid recent kanye song isn't "lift yourself" but "i love it"

Seems like people are mostly doing the "AND I never liked their music anyway" thing.

I know he’s an actual celebrity but for some reason it bothers me how people with no actual interest in rap music, let alone his music, have for years felt the need to express their strong negative emotional opinions about the man’s nonsense. I don’t know why it bothers me. It’s probably hypocritical of me.

yeah being self congratulatory is awesome.

people who weren't into reality TV had some pretty strong opinions about Donald Trump too

Kanye recorded a few good and great albums, some people have written well about him, and he's not gonna be president, nor will he steal votes from Joe Biden.

*leaves thread*

people with no actual interest in rap music

i.e. white people

You mean American white people?

Is this an international forum or.

I know he’s an actual celebrity but for some reason it bothers me how people with no actual interest in rap music, let alone his music, have for years felt the need to express their strong negative emotional opinions about the man’s nonsense. I don’t know why it bothers me. It’s probably hypocritical of me.

― brimstead, Thursday, July 23, 2020 2:05 PM bookmarkflaglink

yeah being self congratulatory is awesome.

― brimstead, Thursday, July 23, 2020 2:06 PM bookmarkflaglink

before the Trump times, I'd see a lot of my non-hip hop friends sharing some anti-Kanye memes, usually some 3 year old bullshit he'd said or done, and I'd defend his music and they'd always go "was he ever REALLY good, though, that's just something people SAY" and then acting surprised when I talked about how much I loved his first two albums.

(not that I'm doubting anybody ITT that doesn't like his music).

It was just like this meme that non-hip hop folk kept sharing that showed a pic of Tupac and MC Hammer in suits and it said "THIS IS CLASS", posted next to a pic of Lil Wayne shirtless with low-hanging jeans and it said "THIS IS SHIT", I kept saying "wtf, you think Tupac dressed in that suit 99% of the time? Look at his street outfits, morons".

in conclusion, the Twins were wrong not to renew Gary Gaetti's contract

His first couple of LPs are solid, especially production-wise, but his rapping has always been generic and nondescript when you consider it in and of itself.

he's always been a semi-clumsy rapper, though the lyrics didn't begin to get real cringe until much later.

People with no actual interest in rap music felt the need to profess strong positive emotions about his nonsense too

I too think Kanye's collapsed in all sorts of ways since 2008, but when I read disses of his "rapping" I automatically think, "What's the rap equivalent of Steve Vai or Neil Schon? You want that?" In fact, we've gotten that style on a few of Andre 3000's guest verses in the last few years: accelerated mush-mouth that's technically unassailable but to my ears dead.

Like, what the fuck kind of rapping do you want? This is like reading Leonard Cohen and Bernard Sumner are poor singers. That's not an opinion -- that's a fact. But what did they do within their limitations? They wouldn't be good to great without those limitations, I'd say.

Kanye at his best between 2003-2008 let his conversational drawl and cadences become part of the sumptuousness of his productions. I'll admit I'm an auteurist about him: when he started crediting co-producers he lost a sense of how he could give himself star entrances. Do we expect stars to "act"? No. We expect them to project the best versions of themselves, which, like Garbo and Harrison Ford taught us, is a kind of acting too.

So y'all stfu about Kanye's rapping prowess.

NB: I don't give a good goddamn about Kanye since My Boring Conventional Fantasies.

A respectable opinion that I happen not to share. I would make the exact same case if someone were dissing the RZA’s flow, which I fucking love for some reason.

xp

I think using Andre 3k as your example of rap Steve Vai is ridiculous

he's more of a rap Dave Mustaine

The point of being a star, in part, is no one sounds like you. RZA's bit in "Snakes"? Ghostface, Raekwon, ODB -- no one could've pulled it off.

I think using Andre 3k as your example of rap Steve Vai is ridiculous

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

Honey, I'm a star. I'm supposed to be ridiculous.

is Canibus the rap steve vai

bad rapping is worse than bad singing imo. tho of course a lot of the most satisfying rap isn't very technical or complex. I just kind of hate kanye's voice a little bit too which is a barrier for me and is probably the main thing that I judge rappers on. underrated lyricist though imo