Today we have another guest post by GOF comrade Romney Wordsworth.
My first instinct when it comes to Kanye West is to declare war. The garbage he spouts about his under-appreciated genius, his perceived fashion world slights, his media-whore wifey, his publicity-stunt in the naming of his child, the sonically abrasive music and the overall overexposure of the kind of “artist” you’d expect to invent something idiotic like leather jogging pants makes him a justifiable intended target. Perhaps I’ve tempered (slightly) in my advancing years or am too soon removed from my New Year’s Resolutions to hunger for bloodshed and resign to find a peace summit.
West’s unprecedented success at every turn has meant avant-garde is selling its wares to hip-hop. The more far-out and challenging the sound, the more adoration heaped onto the megalomaniacal shoulders of West and we all suffer. Building up West’s ego has led to countless cringe-worthy moments in interviews and distance from music that can be listened to instead of pondered over.
Yeezus was on most of the year-end-best-lists and couldn’t be less deserving. The late-great Lou Reed famously reviewed the album and seemed to like it (baffling!) but described it best when he wrote, “It’s like farting. It’s another dare — I dare you to like this. Very perverse.” I would like to take that assessment one step further and say Kanye West is designing the Emperor’s New Clothes.
I contend no one actually likes Yeezus. It’s disjointed at best and pathetic at worst. New Slaves would be the only saving grace for the record if removed from the context. The song is insightful and its roughness only serves to enhance the message. The messenger, on the other hand, is a caricature of himself. He decries the evils of a culture he promotes every other minute. If New Slaves appeared on one of West’s first three albums, the track might not ring disingenuous.
Speaking out against the Kimye media machine makes you either a hater or a philistine. Hater is a term bantered about in hip-hop for years whenever someone’s success is criticized. Like many hip-hop heads, I am not a hater, I am a lover. I love scratching and breakbeats. I love emcees who control a room with wit and savvy. I love break-dancing and graffiti (when it is an art form and not simply turf-war tagging). I love a culture borne from nothing, striving for acceptance and winning over a skeptical straight-laced industry. I hate rap becoming a money-making enterprise with no love or appreciation for its roots. I hate slo-flo shifting from style to legions of performers with nothing to say buying time. I hate weak garage beats with no originality and the marginalizing of the crate diggers. I hate that Kanye West made a new suit of clothes that is invisible to those unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent. Do we need a child to stand up and tell us Yeezus is naked? Bill Shakespeare is the only one with balls enough to say, “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”
I say that to say this: Kanye became the Emperor by innovating. We accept his role because he took backpackers and the mainstream and wove them together. He made music to nod your head to and get nostalgic over. His early catalog is all the more impressive now that he only makes records to satisfy his dark twisted fantasies. As my Kissinger moment, I challenge all the hip-hop heads to collect his tracks in an iTunes playlist that will make you scratch your head the next time you see/hear the man. It will remind you how he got here and why we shouldn’t accept anything less. All artists have the right/duty to progress and evolve, but we all have the right to feel alienated and refuse to consume something which makes the listener a sycophant.
I give you, “Back To College”:
1. Wake Up, Mr. West (feat. Bernie Mac)
2. Heard ‘Em Say (feat. Adam Levine)
3. Two Words (feat. Mos Def, Freeway & Miri Ben-Ari)
4. Gone (feat. Consequence & Cam’Ron)
5. Skit #1 (feat. Broke Phi Broke)
6. Gold Digger (feat. Jamie Foxx)
7. Skit #2 (feat. Broke Phi Broke)
8. Good Life (feat. T-Pain)
9. Skit #3 (feat. Broke Phi Broke)
10. We Can Make It Better (feat. Common, Q-Tip, Talib Kweli & Rhymefest)
11. All Falls Down (feat. Syleena Johnson)
12. Spaceship (feat. GLC & Consequence)
13. Jesus Walks
14. Never Let Me Down (feat. Jay-Z)
15. Addiction
16. Skit #4 (feat. Broke Phi Broke)
17. Diamonds From Sierra Leone (feat. Jay-Z)
18. Hey Mama
19. My Way Home (feat. Common)
20. Through The Wire
21. Family Business
22. Goodnight (feat. Mos Def)
