kanye west

i know that "it's the system man" is just the inverse of placing all the blame on the individual but it doesn't follow that considering kanye as a toxic american product has no purchase. i mean this all actually really goes deep into questions of how can any success be ethical in an extractivist/neo-colonial political economy, questions of black belonging in a racist country, etc. i dont like kanye's answers to these questions but to reduce it to "he just SUCKS wah" is like, lame

― Vapor waif (uptown churl), Thursday, July 23, 2020 6:06 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

excellent post

the thing is though: 2pac and biggie had actual skills and talent.

so then your problem isn't is mythologizing, you just think he's not talented.

I mean, I don't agree, but at least just say that if that's what you mean, instead of couching it in how he's objectively terrible by the Hip Hop Collective Bargaining Agreement of 1983 or w/e

also "Through the Wire" is a triumph, dude almost died in a car wreck, jaw wired shut, and he managed to rap that song while basically being in pieces, literally and figuratively. I like what he did with the Chaka Khan sample, and ultimately, the song has a humility to it that you'd never find in Kanye circa now. yeah, it's a "gimmick", but it isn't as if he planned to almost die in a car crash.

...(did he?)

sped up chipmunk soul vocal samples are one of the greatest things in the history of music

I remember seeing the Through the Wire video for the first time on BET, was just blown away, instant classic

for extra credit, please solve (thoroughly) for "x": Prince Paul is much more X than Kanye West.

old

only ten years!

horny

xp And Paul is only eleven or twelve years younger than Kool Herc. Still a relatively young art!

and kool herc is the same age as eddie van halen

this game is fun

eddie van halen is only twenty years older than elvis presley!

which is a smaller age gap than the one between dr. dre and kendrick lamar

also eddie's lookin pretty good for 105

Kanye was born the year Elvis died and Elvis was one year younger than Kanye is right now

Kanye had a secretary named John and Kennedy had a secretary named West.

if Kanye married Olivia Newton John and then Wayne Newton his name would be Kanye Newton John Wayne Newton

ok now we really should lock the thread

nah, he's not very talented. just because you talk the loudest doesn't make your words more meaningful or the intent behind them more noble.

i've recalled this on here previously, but for posterity, i will recollect again:

i was hyped when he first came out. thought his beats on the blueprint were really solid. i sought out 'through the wire' on white label i was so excited for his music. it was underwhelming. still went out and picked up college dropout on its release date. got it home and gave it one listen and that's when i knew i had fallen for the okey doke. the dude was terrible at his own schtick. from then on, i just started calling him k*nye wack. because to me, his music was fucking wack.

i have always found his music to be very underwhelming and, most times, unlistenably bad; and that seems to upset people for some reason. i'm not going to sit here and be all like, "oh but he's done so many big things" because popular ≠ good. i'm not about to start complimenting someone on successfully profiteering bullshit.

that, and his more recent efforts to exploit serious mental health issues for his own gain is just cringeworthy and offensive.

i have always found his music to be very underwhelming and, most times, unlistenably bad; and that seems to upset people for some reason. i'm not going to sit here and be all like, "oh but he's done so many big things" because popular ≠ good. i'm not about to start complimenting someone on successfully profiteering bullshit.

Yep, this is how I've always felt, too. I never listened to one of his albums front to back before Yeezus, because I heard the singles, which were *in theory* the tracks he thought would make the best impression on a prospective buyer, and...I thought they sucked. (And while there's very little current hip-hop that interests me, I've been listening to it since ~1982.) W/r/t Yeezus, I only kinda liked the first four songs, and they mostly just made me want to listen to Nitzer Ebb.

I would never say "Kanye WACK is talentless and was NEVER GOOD, EVER!", but I distinctly remember Andy Kellman's review of MBDTF being one of, if not the only pieces of writing and thought about that complete mess of an album that was anywhere near accurate to the reality of the actual music and my own personal reaction to it. And wondering if I was even listening to the same album that everyone else who couldn't shut up with such endless effusive praise for it as some century defining masterwork was. People then and someone even now in this thread are retroactively characterizing the older Jon Brion orchestral, soul sampling stuff as "corny" in retrospect, but I think it's infinitely better musically than any of his more "avant" (UGH) work that followed starting with 808s/MBDTF. His influences expanding to things that white rock critics found more personally palatable like King Crimson never actually resulted in legitimately cooler or better music IMO, despite the overwhelming consensus from that audience to the contrary.

yeah we really should've locked the thread

yea I downloaded 3 copies of MBDTF because the first two times I swore this couldn't be the amazing production everyone was raving about, I had to have an early unmastered copy

nah, he's not very talented

thank you, almighty judge of all things, for rendering this gospel from on high

How's the new one?

unsurprisingly unreleased, so far

Pitchfork has nonetheless given it BNN

best new neuroses

he was a great rap producer, he didn't start to suck until he became a genius

Correct. His production jobs on things like Be by Common and the first Blueprint are fantastic, really inventive.

Was never enthused by his solo records even in the mid-2000s, they seemed very contrived and not terribly interesting. As for the more recent stuff, good night and good luck.

I hope he gets the help he quite obviously needs, you could very easily see him pissing away all his money in the next 5-10 years.

doesn't he have a new album today or something

i think it was "something"

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/03/who-is-kanyes-running-mate

Bill Garlow, the great-grandson of Buffalo Bill Cody, owns two Best Western hotels in Cody, Wyoming. In June, Garlow, who is seventy-eight, found himself sitting in his office across from Kanye West—a Cody resident since 2019—along with West’s cousin and a Yeezy employee. None of them wore masks. “Kanye kept saying, ‘Best. . . West. . . ern,’ ” Lindsay Garlow, Bill’s daughter, who’d sat in on the meeting, recalled. “He didn’t seem to know that it was a chain of international hotels.” West loved the name—and he thought her dad had come up with it. The group spoke for an hour. “They were on their phones the entire time, texting,” she said. “As a teacher, that drives me batshit crazy.” Eventually, Bill cleared his throat, and West looked up. “He wanted to talk to Dad about hospitality,” Lindsay said, “but we weren’t sure where he was going with that.” West further confused the Garlows when he removed one of his Yeezy shoes and passed it across the desk to Bill. “It was weird,” Lindsay said. She noted her dad’s poor health, adding, “I told him to wash up when Kanye left.”

what level of privilege is not knowing what a Best Western is

I refuse to believe that Kanye had never heard of Best Western

he hasn't made a groanworthy rhyme about it yet so maybe he hasnt

I took several mental stabs at it then turned the knife on myself instead

i mean, I bet there are like 30 Best Westerns in the Chicagoland area

like an egg in a nest on the presidential lectern
I left my shoe on a desk at the Cody Best Western

I fantasized 'bout this back in Chicago
Mercy, mercy me, that Murcielago
Best Western is the cheap hotel where I go
How you say "toilet overflowed" in Spanish? Me no hablo

Maybe you can be my intern
I’ll be Ernest and you can be my Vern
Yeezy pinball built by Stern
YZY Presidential Suite Best Western

kicked off Illinois ballot for fraudulent signatures leaving him well short (60% were fraudulent/invalid). also withdrew from Jersey ballot due to it being discovered he had 600 fraudulent signatures, leaving him short, and he opted not to challenge it.

about to get kicked off of Wisconsin's for filing it after 5 pm, and also having questionable signatures.

think he wants to go to jail at this point.

meanwhile, Rolling Stone writes a shitty article about why we should be afraid of Kanye a day ago.

he should be prosecuted for these sneakers

https://hypebeast.com/2020/8/derrick-rose-adidas-yeezy-prototype-on-foot-look

Rolling Stone writes a shitty article about why we should be afraid of Kanye a day ago

I'm not gonna search for it - was it by Matt Taibbi?

i almost like the yeezy's for their cronenbergian body horror qualities but then i see the price

It's like wearing large fishbones

Nice visual representation of what Kanye’s career looks like atm.

Well, not nice, accurate.

This guy

DC Tok https://t.co/GZZd2zpwmy

— Jason Isbell (@JasonIsbell) August 17, 2020

bro shut up!