RIP Kanye West

you can't tell me that songs like ..."touch the sky" that tell his life story vividly w/ a strong POV are bad lyrically

Baby, I'm goin' on an aeroplane
And I don't know if I'll be back again
Sure enough, I sent the plane tickets
But when she came to kick it, things became different
Any girl I cheated on, sheets I skeeted on
Couldn't keep it at home, thought I needed a Nia Long
I'm tryin' to right my wrongs
But it's funny them same wrongs helped me write this song

a lot of the "fun and cleverness" of kanye's rapping for the first few years is so deeply enmeshed with misogyny and crass bullshit that, as that became synonymous with his overall brand, they've soured and aged phenomenally poorly for me. And that should frankly be true for anybody! It's hard to enjoy workout plan these days! which i mean, okay i'm not gonna bitch about those same issues with cam but cam is a far better rapper and lyricist and I'm not gonna bitch about that with geto boys but scarface is a far better rapper and lyricist and i'm not gonna bitch about that with david banner but etc etc.

if i have any point to make here it's that i don't think i've ever really liked kanye the rapper? Certainly not since i got past thirty. He can be bearable at times but i am at a loss to think of a single song in his entire catalogue where either his rapping or his lyrics are the best thing about that song. Any nominations?

I have liked (and sometimes still like quite a lot when he's working with other people) kanye the producer. "George bush doesn't care about black people" was a moment but his laboratory remake as a post-modernist product appears to have done genuine creative and psychic damage and engendered as toxic a public persona as any pop star i can think of short of r kelly. It's odd to me that people wanna talk about his current work so much or, frankly talk about him so much period but that's the magic of the everlasting fifteen minutes that comes from adding money into the mix. as matt has said numerous times and i agree, it just makes me sad.

forks did you see cam's recent freestyle on funk flex? he's still got it

you can cherry pick cringe kanye lyrics from lots of places, i mean the entire mythos of his life story is that barely anybody working w/ him in the music industry thought he was good at rapping and he had to conjure his own superstardom from thin air. so this is well trodden territory. but i'll just say that i think the first verse of "touch the sky" if we're gonna look at that song tells a unique personal story w/ wit, humor, detail, and realtability in a way that to me has always scanned as great songwriting despite him always having a penchant for leaning into clunkers, but of course that's part of his mythos too, he's not afraid of embarrassment and he believes he can sell anything thru inhuman confidence. even as i've grown to have zero use for kanye the musician and don't really feel like listening to much of his old music bcuz i've been there done that many times and there's lots of other music to be listening to in the world i never had the thought that he wasn't a great writer for a large stretch of his career

[Verse 1: Kanye West]
Back when they thought pink Polos would hurt the Roc
Before Cam got the shit to pop
The doors was closed
I felt like Bad Boy's street team: I couldn't work the locks
Now let's go, take 'em back to the plan
Me and my momma hopped in that U-Haul van
Any pessimists, I ain't talk to them
Plus I ain't have no phone in my apart-a-ment
Let's take 'em back to the club
Least about an hour I stand on line
I just wanted to dance, I went to Jacob an hour
After I got my advance, I just wanted to shine
Jay favorite line: "Dawg, in due time!"
Now he look at me, like, "Damn, dawg! You where I am!"
A hip-hop legend
I think I died in that accident, ‘cause this must be Heaven

but that family with the large milk bill.

semi-embarrassed that I'm "online" enough to get this reference...

rap lyrics are never well served by being written out

yeah the comments make me feel like I'm going nuts, dude is just running his voice through a vocoder and bungling the meter & all the comments are like THIS IS SO AHEAD OF ITS TIME

xxp i mean those are okay bars. They're fine? but are his lyrics or rapping there your favorite part of that song? relistening it to it now, he's clearly in his best voice at this stage in his career but even so the ad libs are distracting and uninspired. the reason i remember touch the sky at all is because of what just blaze did with curtis mayfield.

at no point has kanye's "you can hate me now" navelgazing gravitas appealed to me as either an origin story or as a meaningful wellspring. i find his sense of humor puerile and his lyricism functional to clunky. as far as the behind the curtain peeks he offers I mean he DOES know all these guys so it's like aquaman rapping about hanging out with superman and okay, that has its moments but... i dunno?

even as i've grown to have zero use for kanye the musician

and don't really feel like listening to much of his old music bcuz i've been there done that many times and there's lots of other music to be listening to in the world

i never had the thought that he wasn't a great writer for a large stretch of his career

lol and then "through the wire" came on and yeah i mean that's fresh

thanks for that freestyle recommendation, great fun!
"this rap here/ is a souvenir/ my index/is not for windex/but i make it super clear"

DJP you've always been pretty otm with Kanye's weak rhyming style:

Oh, to dream of what Kanye would rhyme with "Ra's Al Ghul"

― da croupier, Friday, January 7, 2011 10:31 AM bookmarkflaglink

This is Kanye we're talking about, he probably would have tried to rhyme it with "Louis Vuitton"

― Indolence Mission (DJP), Friday, January 7, 2011 10:48 AM bookmarkflaglink

I genuinely liked his lyrics on the first two albums, even if he was far from spotless as a rapper.

TBH our successors on this board 20 years from now will be praising it probably.
― Johnny Mathis der Maler (Boring, Maryland), Wednesday, February 23, 2022 5:32 PM (fifty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

You speak as if there will be successors on this board. How young is our youngest poster?

I think the semen/Morgan Freeman line is hysterical, when I read it I laughed my ass off.

our youngest poster is 83

Continuing with Edison cylinders?

lol he just put out the unfinished version of the album he played at the event

guess that means it's "finished" though

Second part of the documentary confirms he has always been that guy and only the scale changed.

Pharrell is a really cool dude.

the faq says "the platform can split any song into stems" but im, uh, skeptical.

― nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), viernes 18 de febrero de 2022 04:59 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sounds like bullshit but if by some miracle it is not, I would live to know! I would buy anything that could do that

― i cannot help if you made yourself not funny (forksclovetofu), viernes 18 de febrero de 2022 05:33 PM (one week ago)

I guess the algorithm isn’t hiding they spy on me anymore because my first recommended video today was this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-lq-z5KM2c

Apparently it does split any song, not super clean in some cases, seems like it takes too much time to upload each track and not really for professional use but looks like a fun toy/gadget.

kind of lol, but also kind of interesting. i hope it serves as the prototype for future devices to expand upon because it does seem like an idea with a lot of cool possibilities.

kanye still a complete douche though.

the dumbest parts is most of his productions now only have 3 or 4 elements there's not that much to fuck around with

yeah everything after TLOP feels like just stems

it's probably just using some ml thing which will probably give ok results but far from perfect for obvious reasons

https://www.thecut.com/2022/02/kanye-west-bipolar-disorder.html

If Kanye wasn't profiting from it I'd seriously consider getting one

A bipolar disorder?

jfc it just gets worse, what a creep

STYLECASTER: Kanye West, Kim Kardashian Look-Alike Chaney Jones Dating, Photos.
https://stylecaster.com/kanye-west-kim-kardashian-look-alike/

Seriously, check out this shot the paparazzi got:

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5ab7d7f5b98a7888d760b05f/1531343560901-725Y56YIYUOLTDXOD9CQ/image-asset.jpeg

Can’t tell if that ‘the cut’ article was posted in jest or not.

Stuff like this gives me the creeps.

Reminds me of a close college friend who divorced her husband, and then he married a woman looked exactly like my friend.

Is there any overlap in the history of mankind where someone who repeatedly refers to themselves as a genius is actually a genius? Big if true.

Can’t tell if that ‘the cut’ article was posted in jest or not.

― circa1916, Saturday, February 26, 2022 11:09 AM

glad i'm not the only one.

his entire career goal was to become a self-aware tabloid star.

Didn’t Reggie Bush date Kim and then afterwards date the girl who got a ton of commercial work because she looked so much like her?

Enjoyed other videos on this dude's channel and realized he did a couple on the fall of Kanye. Great stuff and somewhat hilariously on point his use of pro wrestling terms as a means of expressing aspects of hip hop culture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvgehVhF9D4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7e5BFJa-Ug

Yo, Kayne, I'm really happy for you and I'mma let you finish, but Will Smith had one of the best stage invasions of all time. One of the best stage invasions of all time!