why i care about kanye west

Firstly, I care about Kanye West because I think hero worship is funny in its weirdly excessive self-deprecation and apparently other people do too so I feed into that. Secondly and more pointedly, though, I care about Kanye West because he’s the one figure in all of hip-hop that’s been able to snag the elusive term of “genius” without letting it turn him (completely) into a joke or a caricature. Sure, 2Pac is a genius – a thug genius.  Jay-Z’s a genius too – but a business genius. Kanye’s managed to take that term and force the general public to come to terms with, if not the certainty, then at least the looming and very probable possibility that he’s a genius on a creative and musical level.  It doesn’t really matter if he is or not to anyone who isn’t invested in his music. It only matters that he’s defiantly shouldered his way into the center of that discussion (either in spite of or because of his antics).  

Kanye West is the type of rare artist that’s somehow managed to part humanity into two polarized sides on every aspect of his personality like Moses did the Red Sea: or, at least, everything but his music.  That, we’ve somewhat grudgingly conceded, he’s got covered (easy to forget in the wake of Drake and Kendrick Lamar’s ascendances and subsequent warring for the metaphorical throne of hip-hop that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was one of the most unanimously and immediately praised hip-hop albums in the genre’s history, and that came after all of the amazing shit he did before it that I could write and have written about for thousands of words).  That’s also why Yeezus won’t ever be one of my favorite Kanye albums, because it finally permitted Kanye’s polarizing nature extend to his music in a way it hadn’t before (Watch the Throne and Cruel Summer were big steps in that direction, but breaking the string of universally praised Kanye solo albums is a big deal), in the process shattering Kanye’s final and most fundamental barrier from public ridicule.  

I’m doubtful that the recently strengthening tides against Kanye (71% unfavorable, according to Rasmussen) have the Kardashian clan to thank as the proverbial straws that broke the camel’s back.  In my mind, it’s because Kanye’s finally showing cracks in the unassailable helm of “creative genius” that he wore so proudly for a decade.  And thirdly, that’s why I care so much about Kanye – because if Kanye isn’t a genius anymore, whether because he’s actually making worse music or because the public has decided that Kim Kardashian and/or his consistent barrage of shockingly, incredibly, unbelievably dumb declarations in the media, that means that hip-hop is having to stake its reputation (and potentially its hopes of ever shedding its primary status as a shallow music form) on the likes of the afore-mentioned Kendrick and Drake.

Yeah, I know and you probably know that hip-hop is more than that, and I know and you probably know that Kendrick and Drake are both generational talents who are very potentially capable of transforming and shaping a genre like Kanye before them. But that’s beyond the point, because most of the public doesn’t. Drake is the guy who raps about girls who don’t love him back and calling them at 5AM, and Kendrick is the new guy who raps about swimming pools and really deep shit about the hood in some order.  Kanye had built up a reputation with critical and public acclaim – not one that Drake and Kendrick can’t build, but one that they haven’t just yet.

So that means that in the wake of Kanye meticulously self-destructing every facet of his public reputation, hip-hop has to hope that someone can step up and grab that “genius” mantle, because especially in the wake of this kind of over-generalizing, stereotyping, predetermined-narrative-searching bullshit, hip-hop needs a figure that can be taken seriously outside of its own bubble.  And it doesn’t look like Kanye can be that person anymore. 

Now go listen to the best Kanye song and remember why he’s one of the most singular talents hip-hop will ever have.

1. kanye west - yeezus

Over the last twenty days of December (and obviously 2013), I’ll be writing about my favorite twenty albums and songs of the year, one a day.  Not best. Not most influential.  Not most likely to land on a Complex slideshow.  Just my favorite, ranked in order.

1. kanye west – yeezus

While Pitchfork’s reader-base might not be the most authoritative of sources, it’s telling that Kanye West’s Yeezus was voted “Most Overrated,” “Most Underrated,” and “Best” album of the year.  While Kanye’s musical ability seems to be increasingly up for debate as his career rolls along, his ability to spark discussion certainly isn’t; Kanye’s name hasn’t really left the headlines all year. Whether it’s been his relationship with Kim Kardashian or his explosions at Jimmy Kimmel (#ALLDISRESPECTTOJIMMYKIMMEL) and Shade 45's Sway (“You ain’t got the answers, Sway!”), Kanye certainly hasn’t lost his knack for retaining the spotlight.

And while it’s not that Kanye has ever been a public figure who’s seemed overly concerned with his public image, but Yeezus is divisive even by his standards.  He’s seized the opposite end of the spectrum from the maximalism that ran through the veins of his last few releases, instead employing the legendary bearded presence of Rick Rubin to help strip Yeezus down to its very core.  It’s not the same type of minimalism that Pusha T embraced for My Name is My Name, though; Yeezus demonstrates it through restraint, when it submerges its synths underwater to let Kanye rage, or when it draws back everything but the beat’s spine for the majority of a song. 

It’s almost a guilty pleasure to watch Kanye drop all pretenses of eloquence. It’s not an approach that’s too surprising given that Kanye never was the most talented of lyricists (he’s always relied on memorable rather than articulate lines) – to be honest, it’s the direction Kanye’s been heading in for years; it was only a matter of time before he decided that crude bluntness was a better approach than subtlety.  And while Kanye’s perceived lack of lyricism has been a major gripe surrounding Yeezus (in all fairness, Kanye’s performance as a rapper on this album is amateurish often bordering on pathetic), what Kanye has discarded in his bars he’s more than regained through his emotion and investment.

It’s sharp and primal when it’s there, like when Kanye kicks up into fifth gear in the second half of “New Slaves” or when he breaks out the screams in “I Am a God.”  Kanye built up his career as the open antithesis of hip-hop’s hard street thug image and he’s certainly not forgotten that (“Pink-ass polo with a fucking backpack/Everybody knows I brought real rap back,” “I Am a God”), so the shock isn’t Kanye’s openness.  It’s the extents to which he’s willing to stretch that approach – but then again, Kanye’s not one known for moderation. He’s efficient, for once in his musical career.

And Yeezus is just ten songs long, and the fact that it only clocks in at forty minutes means that it’s more easily consumed as what it is: a flash of intensity  Had Kanye tested the hour-mark as he often does (My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy nudged up against seventy minutes) Yeezus might have appeased more fans, but its battering ram quality would be far less compelling.  Yeezus’ length means that every verse hits harder and every musical move means more.  It’s not just a coincidence buried in an hour of music that Kanye paired up “Strange Fruit” with TNGHT in “Blood on the Leaves,” nor is the unexpected soulfulness of “Bound 2” just a throwaway moment.  The album is best absorbed as a powerful in-and-out blast of music, driven forward less by finesse than by brute force and emotion.  Fantasy relied heavily on our investment in Kanye’s issues to drive the album forward for full effect, but Yeezus makes it brutally clear that, well, Kanye couldn’t give less of a shit whether we relate to his problems.  It’s a musical manifesto, often unclear and misleading but always gripping.

 Kanye exists in a musical vacuum of his own, where his primary comparison will always be his last album and his primary competitor is himself.  The specters hanging over him aren’t that of Drake and Jay-Z (his utter disregard for public opinion seems to indicate as much), but of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and The College Dropout.  He’ll always be compared against his other albums, for better or worse – and even if Yeezus might qualitatively be the worst of his solo efforts, it’s an album that’ll be discussed years from now.  Even when the whole point seems to be that Kanye doesn’t care, well, he can’t help but make us care.

1. pusha t - "nosetalgia feat. kendrick lamar (prod. nottz & kanye west)"

Over the last twenty days of December (and obviously 2013), I’ll be writing about my favorite twenty albums and songs of the year, one a day.  Not best. Not most influential.  Not most likely to land on a Complex slideshow.  Just my favorite, ranked in order.

1. pusha t – “nosetalgia feat. kendrick lamar (prod. nottz & kanye west)”

On an album that embraced minimalism as a way of life, “Nosetalgia” stands head and shoulders above the rest as the purest manifestation of the album’s “Rick Rubin on steroids” mantra.  It’s as bare-bones as a hip-hop song gets, relying on about six different drum and sample sounds to lurch it along, and there’s no mistake where the spotlight’s turned: towards the mic.  On a superficial level, it’s excellent simply as a glass display case for two of the best rappers alive; Nottz and Kanye’s stretched-out horns and subdued drums certainly leave enough space between drums and rattles for Pusha T and Kendrick Lamar to flex.  We could leave it there – it’s just two incredibly talented rappers clearing the table off, sitting down, and rhyming.  

But that’s not all.  Kendrick plays the windowpane-peering Nas to Pusha’s Jay-Z stunningly well, each taking up two different roles and lenses to view the cocaine trade through.  While Pusha was “crack in the school zone/two beepers on me, starter jacket that was two-toned,” Kendrick’s “daddy turned a quarter piece to a four and a half/Took a L, started selling soap fiends bubble bath.”  They’re at odds by the very nature of the parts they play, but “Nosetalgia” doesn’t pit the two rappers against each other: the song isn’t accusatory towards any side, and it’s not a platform for either to level shots.  Instead, the aggression and intensity bleeds through the lines and snarls, letting the verses serve as testimonials to be taken and absorbed.

For any other rapper, Kendrick’s turn on “Nosetalgia” would be a career-high.  It’s telling that for him, it’s just another clip in a highlight reel of a year full of song-throttlers: Big Sean’s “Control”, Tech N9ne’s “Fragile”, Fredo Santana’s “Jealous.”  It’s not as in-your-face as the verse that most might name as his biggest contribution this year (here, Kendrick at least refrains from calling out his peers), but it burrows into your brain just as well.  While “Control” saw Kendrick tossing out a flurry of references and threats, he’s paradoxically both more restrained and animated here.  Halfway through his verse, right before he segues into a conversation with his father in which he raps both sides: “And nine times out of ten, niggas don’t pay attention/And when there’s tension in the air, nines come with extensions.” Kendrick’s not as grizzled as Pusha, and maybe he doesn’t have the same type of resume to flaunt, but when it comes to backdoor meaning unveilings and crafting unforgettable images, well, he’s virtually unparalleled.  King Kendrick.

4. earl sweatshirt - doris//kanye west - "new slaves (prod. lots of people)"

Over the last twenty days of December (and obviously 2013), I’ll be writing about my favorite twenty albums and songs of the year, one a day.  Not best. Not most influential.  Not most likely to land on a Complex slideshow.  Just my favorite, ranked in order.

4. earl sweatshirt – doris

There are a lot of problems with Earl Sweatshirt’s return to the music scene: he lets himself get buffeted around by Domo Genesis and Vince Staples, he’s lost the tongue-in-cheek defiance that laced Earl, his voice is locked into a singular monotone pitch.  But even given his unfortunate habit to mutter and drawl the majority of his verses, Doris still provides an incredible snapshot into the life of The Internet’s Prodigal Son.  Earl was brought to fame by the Internet in a way that very few other celebrities have been – and most pointedly, he missed his own rise, having not made his return from Samoa until he’d already become the subject of a massive Internet movement (Free Earl).  Earl’s an immensely talented artist (really, he makes golden children like Joey Bada$$ look comparatively amateurish) that hasn’t really gotten it all together yet, and Doris is a way for us to watch as he puts it all together.  He’ll let Domo walk all over him on “20 Wave Caps” and just sit back as Tyler, The Creator turns his own song (“Sasquatch”) into a Wolf leftover, and then he’ll spring a masterpiece like “Sunday” or “Chum” on us.  Part of the thrill is watching as spectators, knowing that brilliance is within reach, anticipating the next flash of transcendence.  Earl’s an imperfect artist, and Doris is a reflection of that state as much as it’s a reflection of his anger, despair, and rebelliousness. 

4. kanye west – “new slaves (prod. lots of people)”

“New Slaves” might encapsulate Yeezus and its attitude better than anything else on the album or anything Kanye West might say.  It rattles into action with a slow buzzsaw synth quickly drowned out by distorted, unintelligible layered prattling before the first lines even hit acapella.  Kanye and Co. are twisting familiar choir samples into the backing for a soundscape far more aggressive and cutting than anything we’d been used to as a fanbase – and if the cold synths weren’t a good enough indication of Kanye’s newfound anger, well, the second verse probably did the trick.  That is, if you can even call it a verse, as it’s a mash of repeated lines and increasingly accusatory one-liners (like the now iconic “fuck you and your corporations, y’all niggas can’t control me”).  It’s unclear how much of what Kanye is saying is actually factually correct (I’m pretty sure you can read and sign contracts, Kanye), logical (up for debate whether the DEA and the CCA are actually teaming up), or justifiable (there’s a whole ‘nother discussion to be had about the hypocrisy stretched across “New Slaves”).  But forget all of that for a second, and recognize that this might be the bluntest and stripped-down Kanye has ever been, especially as he descends into particular madness towards the end of the second verse.  This is the song from Yeezus that’ll stand the test of time.

And we haven’t even talked about that outro.  That outro.

5. danny brown - old//pusha t - "numbers on the board (prod. don cannon & kanye west)"

Over the last twenty days of December (and obviously 2013), I’ll be writing about my favorite twenty albums and songs of the year, one a day.  Not best. Not most influential.  Not most likely to land on a Complex slideshow.  Just my favorite, ranked in order.

5. danny brown – old

While 2011’s XXX was practically built to be a critical darling, Old (by design) is a lot more divisive.  From its pseudo-double-disc structure (Side A sports a more traditional Danny Brown, while Side B is all massive festival material) to his general disregard for the types of songs that made him an indie darling a couple years ago (needless to say, songs like “Smokin’ & Drinkin’” completely lack the heart-baring transparency of songs like “XXX”), this is Danny striking out for a different musical path.  But does that mean he’s put out a worse album? Hardly.  It’s not just that Danny’s making a different kind of music, he’s just flashing a different skill set from the one we’re used to. For one, Danny’s the rare artist that can restrain himself from descending into repetitiveness even when he’s crafting bangers like “Dip”: it’s not all just “girls, molly, girls molly.”  It’s easy to forget amongst the rattling basses and seizing synths that at his core, Danny’s from the gutters of Detroit – that is, until he hits you with a line like “Bankroll in my pocket so everybody know me/Went home and gave my mama three hundred for some groceries” (“Side B (Dope Song)”).  It’s tough to say an artist going through musical changes is ever staying true to his roots, but that’s certainly what Danny’s doing.  Getting better, too.  Who’d have predicted that the man putting out Detroit State of Mind mixtapes a few years ago would be disguising escapism as mosh-pit churners?

5. pusha t – “numbers on the board (prod. don cannon & kanye west)”

“Unorthodox” wouldn’t be a bad way to describe the first single off of Pusha T’s first studio album with G.O.O.D. Music.  The beat is brilliantly executed minimalism, riding off kitchen-pan percussion and a couple buzzing bass notes, a hip-hop instrumental stripped to its very core.  The hook is a quick one-line snarl (“Ballers, I put numbers on the board”) interjected seemingly at random between short verses, and halfway through the song, Jay-Z circa 1997 busts through in the form of a sample for a half-bar.  But at the same time, as unconventional as “Numbers on the Board” might be in relation to the rest of 2013 hip-hop, it’s still the same Pusha.  Same push-ya-top-back chin thrusts (“Your SL’s missing an S, nigga/Your plane’s missing a chef”) and same slick drug rhymes (“I might sell a brick on my birthday/thirty-six years of doing dirt like it’s Earth Day, God”).  And, of course, the same love for stripped-down beats – we can thank Pharrell and Chad Hugo for that affinity.  This one is as raw as the kilos Pusha moved way back when.

7. run the jewels - run the jewels//kanye west - "blood on the leaves (prod. kanye and his friends)"

Over the last twenty days of December (and obviously 2013), I’ll be writing about my favorite twenty albums and songs of the year, one a day.  Not best. Not most influential.  Not most likely to land on a Complex slideshow.  Just my favorite, ranked in order.

7. run the jewels – run the jewels

There’s something about rap duos that captures the imagination: is there anything quite as entertaining and impressive to watch as two rappers trading bar after bar, verse after verse?  But even as far as rap duos go, El-P and Killer Mike mesh together incredibly seamlessly; it’s been a while since we’ve seen two rappers so at ease giving and going.  Even if their resumes don’t exactly suggest “soulmates” (El-P came to fame as one of the New York underground’s most prominent rappers, while Killer Mike’s a figurehead of Atlanta), it actually makes a quite a bit of sense: they’re both hard-hitting, and they both evidently don’t give a shit.  El-P has been perfecting the art of musically capturing the apocalypse since he began his career, but this might be the best produced album of his career (it flits from sound to sound without dwelling too long on any set of menacing synths, and it never lets up).  Hooks like “DDFH”’s “Do dope, fuck hope” don’t seem overly fatalistic or out of place here.  But what makes Run the Jewels one of the best rap albums of the year is El-P and Killer Mike’s banter; it’s hard to believe this partnership came together last year.  Mike on “Banana Clipper”: “Producer gave me a beat, said it’s the beat of the year/Said El-P didn’t do it, so get the fuck outta here.”

7. kanye west – “blood on the leaves (prod. kanye and his friends)”

Rightfully so or not, most of the coverage swirling around “Blood on the Leaves” has to do with the two samples Kanye  chose to make up the song’s spine, Nina Simone’s plaintive and racially-tinged rendition of “Strange Fruit” and an altered version of electronic duo TNGHT’s “R U Ready”.  The suggestion (and criticism) is that Kanye, true to form, is twisting a shallow love story into a racial affair, and that sits well with few.  But I’ll set aside the sample flips for a second (which is hard to do: even though the loops are simple, the effect is initially discordant but ultimately brilliant).  Even beyond what Kanye and Co. are doing behind the boards, this is Kanye at his most dark, accusing, and self-effacing (again, true to form).  Kanye’s not a good singer, we can get that out of the way right now.  But this is sharp, stripped-down Kanye, and his words strike like daggers even if he’s not hitting all his notes; the hook is haunt-your-dreams material.  And that’s not even including the song-ending verse.

17. ka - the night's gambit//busta rhymes - "thank you feat. q-tip, kanye west & lil wayne (prod. busta rhymes)"

Over the last twenty days of December (and obviously 2013), I’ll be writing about my favorite twenty albums and songs of the year, one a day.  Not best. Not most influential.  Not most likely to land on a Complex slideshow.  Just my favorite, ranked in order.

Today’s a triple post, because unforeseen (and very happy) circumstances prevented me from keeping up on my list. But the hustle never ends.

17. ka - the night’s gambit

It’s easy to draw lazy comparisons between Brownsville's Ka and Long Island's Roc Marciano – they’re both top-tier word artists, remarkably adept at scrawling lyrical pictures of New York ghettoes, and they’ve clearly got close to zero need for the spotlight.  But while you can practically see Roc spraying his words from side-to-side like one of his song’s AKs, dealing out rapid-fire rhymes like a deck of cards, Ka moves much more deliberately.  Each line’s almost whispered, nearly obscured by the halting guitar loops that he relies on for his production, and while Roc drags you right into the action, Ka’s the one sitting across the table from you in the aftermath, telling you what he saw.  The Night’s Gambit isn’t driven by aggression, but it’s just as cinematic and gripping as the work of his frequent collaborator.  I could go on and on about how haunting Ka’s music is, how his lyrics dig themselves into your brain, how his declarations that “if this ain’t meant for me, nothing is” seem to be vacillating between defiance and resignation.  It’s hard to tell whether Ka’s stories are brags or confessions, and indeed, he seems to flip between the two depending on the song.  But whatever it is, it’s powerful.

17. busta rhymes - “thank you feat. q-tip, kanye west & lil wayne (prod. busta rhymes)”

While Kanye West and Lil Wayne don’t actually kick any lines, instead being relegated to hype man duties, “Thank You" might actually benefit from the lack of 21st century star power.  By letting Busta and Q-Tip take the spotlight, the two get to kick up the charisma and chemistry that made Busta such a frequent collaborator with A Tribe Called Quest.  The jazzy, high-tempo instrumental’s the perfect soundscape for the two rappers to drop a couple decades, flowing like it’s 1993 all over again.  I’m a sucker for any song that discards hooks in favor of eight-bar cypher trade-offs, but it works truly to perfection here.  It really is like they’re having tons of fun – Busta even sinks into his Jamaican accent for his third verse.  Maybe it’s the perfectly-timed usage of Alicia Myers‘ "I Wanna Thank You" as a sample mid-song, but it’s impossible not to let the song’s infectiousness roll you along.  Shake ya hips.

Some thoughts on Kanye’s string of interviews from today:

• A lot of the time, Kanye really does have answers to the hard questions being posed to him - he just chooses to bury them under tons of posturing and barely related stories.  When he got asked on the Breakfast Club about choosing Jay over Dame, he couldn’t answer the question without talking about his “visionary streams of consciousness.”  Just answer the question, Ye.
• Unacceptable to explode at Sway.  Unacceptable to call himself a slave.  Both points I’m just not willing to debate.
• It’s a good thing Angela Yee was on the Breakfast Club along with Envy and Charlamagne, because Kanye was about to get ripped apart a couple times.  Rightfully so.
• Charlamagne is honest and fair to Kanye, not much more you can ask for.
• Kanye’s rationale for the video of “Bound 2” kinda makes sense.  Still dumb.
• If I hear the phrase “2pac of product” again I’ll hurt something.

I’ll wait for the Boston show to make a judgment on how cool this is. But name me another rapper that’d do this.

why we should listen to demos

The last week brought us new material from Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, and Nas - —but not in the form of new, official singles, mixtapes, or albums.  Instead, the constantly churning depths of the Internet have spat out three of their demo tapes, dating back to 2003, 2001, and 1991 respectively, from far before they reached the levels of fame they’ve now achieved.

Naturally, none of these efforts are exactly the epitome of musical transcendence—.  They’re rough (the sound quality of Nas’ 1991 demo tape is almost unbearable at times), cringeworthy (imagine the uproar ‘Ye might cause if he released a song called “Never Letting Go (The Stalker Song)” given Rick Ross’ “UOENO” scandal), and, frankly, quite average at times.  But no one downloading these tapes should expect these tapes to be on par with these artists’ more developed masterpieces.

Instead, these hip hop artifacts provide valuable insight into what musical progression really means.  Today’s hip hop industry has been split open by the advent of social media and the proliferation of technology.  I could feasibly walk out of a Best Buy with a condenser USB mic, Pro Tools, and everything else I need to record my own abysmal but professional-sounding debut mixtape.  And once it’s done, I don’t have to stand on street corners and peddle my work, because I can then proliferate my tape with a little social media savvy to the entire Internet community through Datpiff, Facebook, Twitter, and Internet forums.  As a result, hip hop heads are being simultaneously exposed to a previously unimaginable amount of talent and an equally unimaginable amount of futility.  Anyone has a chance at success, but at the cost of industry saturation.  Things have changed.

So what’s most compelling about these three demo tapes is their ability to throw us years back in time to when today’s stars were trying to give away their demos on the streets.  We’re being transported back to when Nas was a skinny 19-year-old on the streets of Queensbridge, praying he’d make it as an emcee.  We’re listening to music from when Kanye was just the guy who gave Hova a couple hot beats on The Blueprint and no one believed he’d succeed anywhere but behind the boards.  We’re being taken back to when Kendrick Lamar was just a kid in Compton, christening himself the YNIC before he had his high school diploma.  These tapes represent rare opportunities to take our heroes down a notch or two to our level, because there’s something inherently humanizing and endearing about mediocrity.

Yet, that’s not the real reason that we should be listening to these tapes, because they’re certainly not about ridiculing our legends.  The real takeaway from Nas’ tape shouldn’t be your perceived right to look at Nas and think, “He used to be pretty average.”  No, it’s not about projecting “old them” onto “new them.”  It’s about using the “old them” to contextualize the “new them.”  You know where they came from, and that gives you a unique insight into just about how much work they had to do to get where they did.

Kendrick wasn’t born churning out smooth jazz/hip hop hybrids like “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst,” much like Kanye wasn’t born a troubled experimental hip hop artist and Nas wasn’t born painting arguably the best images of New York.  They came from somewhere a lot lower, a place that we’ve been granted a privileged glimpse into.  These tapes aren’t about gaining a sense of misguided arrogance.   They’re about gaining a new, deeper sense of appreciation for the music we’ve come to love so much over the years.

4/27/13.