kanye west

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

Anyway, Steve Vai is awesome on David Lee Roth and PiL tracks.

while i disagree with his analogies i think alfred's pretty otm about kanye's rapping

sometimes i love his verses because they're terrible cf. "knock you down"

He can do it all, fast, slow, so fluid, such great and memorable phrasing, lyricism, storytelling indelible lines...top 10 of all time, a total MC in every sense of the word

and Kanye?

I agree with the point, Kanye is effective and certainly many many memorable verses and lines. He works well with what he can do in the flow of his music*

*Until more recently

Who else could've rapped so well about this domestic scenario -- maybe Talib and Mos Def in 1998-1999? But Kanye's awkwardness works in his favor: like a singer on an Italo disco or house track, the anonymity underscores the pathos.

Also, he sounds sexy.

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

I guess there's use if ghostwriting discussion to be had wrt Kanye as MC but I guess it doesn't bother me, he's a producer and putting together the total package

You wanna see heads blow up? When students ask me about ghost writing and I say who gives a shit.

Maybe the people actually writing the songs? Especially when someone becomes a multi millionaire celebrity with the social capital to run for president of the US off of the fame and money generated from performing those songs, while the people who did actually write them don't earn even a remote fraction of that fame and financial success themselves? Not that Kanye is or is typically perceived as anywhere the biggest offender of using ghostwriten music (I think that honor has been Drake's for a while)... but asking "who cares" about it seems pretty stupid.

I'm reading an E.M. Forster essay about Proust (don't ask). I found this sentence:

"His despair is fundamental. It is not a theory in him, but an assumption, so that the wreckage of his creation evolves as naturally as the music of the spheres."

xp. you get good money for participating in the production of these albums

I mean Big Sean, Pusha and Cyhi the Prince aren't still on GOOD Music because they make tons of money as solo artists

in particular some lines really stick out as Pusha

I'm sure they are more than fine with it

also, not all ghostwriters are like, Gillie, Jay-Z, Eminem, Pharoah Monche, etc all ghostwrote for other people, theyre not starving

should have been a period after Gillie.

asking "who cares" about it seems pretty stupid.

darling, I've had lots of practice reading you the last few months

Re: Forster, that’s some high-grade bullshit right there. Describing Proust’s ‘despair’ as ‘fundamental’ is quite the projection.

the starving ghostwriters aren't writing for like Kanye, they're writing for like, some dude who is in the 9 pm slot as the local opener for Run the Jewels

Re: Forster, that’s some high-grade bullshit right there. Describing Proust’s ‘despair’ as ‘fundamental’ is quite the projection.

― pomenitul, Thursday, July 23, 2020

Yeah. I blame Forster's ghost writers.