i hate to sound like a difficult customer, but i just asked for one track and maybe that could have come with the elevator pitch as a bonus, but instead i got arguments before the supreme court. the very points you make become obscured by the barrage of further arguments, questions, challenges, exhortations, etc. let's go slow here.

so please let me refocus this:

"Everything I am" (Please listen to this and tell me what about it is offensive.)
"Diamonds of Sierra Leone" (Not the remix, the album version)
"Champion"
"Jesus Walks"
"Can't tell me nothin" (Check it! Humility!)
"Good Morning"
"Who Will Survive in America"
"So appalled"
"See Me Now"
"Gorgeous"
"Hey Mama"
"Big Brother"
"Roses"
"My Way Home"
"Crack Music"
"New Day"
"Murder to Excellence"
"Made in America"

---

of aaaaaaaaall these-- which one is the champion? i sincerely wanna try it, but help me out here. less is more.

name just one. the best one. just that one. no prejudicial commentary/intro/nothing. i'll listen and hear for myself, and if i have questions i'll ask for myself. deal?

LESS IS MORE.

I thought I sent you a PM telling you that "Runaway" was, in my opinion, the best song Kanye's ever done and possibly the best hip-hop song of the century. ? But this is tough because you've asked for a specific thing, and I'm not sure Runaway is the best starting place considering what you've asked for.

I think it's the best song in Kanye's catalog. BUT, it's easy to misinterpret. Also, it's not a solo performance, but a collab with Pusha T. So bear with me.

I think that "Everything I Am" is probably the song you need to hear. It's all Kanye, heart and soul. Read the lyrics on Genius or something after you spin it.

Anyone want to suggest something else? Louder and NR are probably still more knowledgable about Ye than I am... so I would defer to them if they made other suggestions.

Jesus, it's not even that I care if you like him or not, Slambang. I just want you to dig around a bit before you start saying you hate everything he stands for. It's not fair to you. I'd put the same energy into a discussion with someone who hated the Beatles because of that damned "bigger than Jesus" quote.

okay! i'll check it out tomorrow. thanks!

"Everything I Am" is a really good choice.

"Jesus Walks" and "Family Business" came to immediate mind as well. But "Everything I Am" is great. Yeah.

while i don't think that one song can capture the whole essence of an ever-evolving artist like Kanye, "Everything I Am" seems like a fairly good introduction. and yeah so is "Family Business".

Yeah, I considered "Jesus Walks" because it's a good example of how serious Kanye is about shedding light on the inequities of the American experience. Also, it's such a classic that even non-fans like SuchFriends can appreciate...

But "Everything I am" is one of those Kanye cuts that is so deeply personal and unhindered by the status quo of the genre that it all but invalidates the claim that there is nothing more to Kanye West than Louis Vuitton, chest thumping and nut busting.

so i listened to "everything i am" a few times

the music wasn't terrible-- i actually liked the piano. and a nice mellow beat.

as for the lyrics-- yes they weren't awful but nothing great either.

the terrible rhymes are part of the genre so i won't count that against him

but the content is basically:

memememememememe
what a great boy i am
memememememememe
people talking about me
what a great boy i am
memememmemememe
etc.

o wait there was this funny moment at the end when he says his 15 seconds are up-- that was good

i definitely don't hate it, but would i call it the greatest thing of the century? no ai weiwei

okay i'm going to go listen to "jesus walks" after i clean my ears with some ornette coleman-- ha ha ha

then i'll also give "family business" a try

FINALLY

"family business" did it

great lyrics at last-- the gospel shit i do not dig much but it's forgiven

jesus walks same thing-- best line probably But if I talk about God my record won't get played

great production all around as well-- you can notice in the slightest detail

the music doesn't do it for me much, but i wasn't expecting different

hey is that from the gatorade commercial? the jesus walk thing?

okay fine, i won't look at him with repulsion again (i think-- ha).

maybe after some relistens i'll start liking it ha ha ha ha

we'll see

ps- i made the mistake of starting to listen to the whole "college dropout" album and i ended up turning off that disco shit midway

Why we even wasting time talking about old Kanye shit when Priest just dropped another jewel on us?? If Ye thought his rap wasn't on the radio because of a few quasi-genuine references to Jesus, Killah Priest is officially banned from the mainstream for speaking the real that no other rap, shit no other artists of any genre, have put out.

...and the beats?? Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit..

Such an uneven album.

easily my least fav Kanye album, even Kanye called it a "failure" at some point. but it's still an important album which has some incredible songs.

while his early stuff generally have more depth, i think that a Sonic Youth fan would likely find the production on Yeezus a lot more appealing than The College Dropout and Late Registration.

Ok, well, since every album is so different, maybe you could listen to at least a few tracks from each album.

I know those first two records don't really sound like "best shit ever" material to a lot of folks. And while I think they're great, I also know that they're hip hop records, and that they don't really blow you away. Graduation is the high point of the first era. A perfect hip hop album.

The real "wow, best shit ever material shows up on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and is hinted at and toyed with on 808's & Heartbreak. These albums transcend the genre, as do Watch the Throne, Yeezus and even Cruel Summer. If you're interested in hearing the stuff that really blows the roof off of contemporary music, you'll probably want to put in the effort to listen to these albums.

Everyone should hear My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy from start to finish.


But do what you want. Just let me know if you ever listen to Runaway or the rest of MBDTF. I'm dying to know what you'd think. Seriously!

Never say i don't try to contribute but all yall ever wanna talk about is kanye this and kanye that..

It's my least favorite too, but I still think all the songs are good, and that some of the skits are even still worthwhile.

Late Registration is brilliant to me, and I really wish it had fewer skits, because the music is just excellent, and the production is subtly brilliant, with it baroque and chamber music elements, jazz tones and orchestral arrangements. I don't think it's at all boring, but I admit I do sometimes get bored listening to College Dropout.

Everything else, though. Shit. If I hear the intro to the first track, I'm locked in.

The skits are terrible imo.

i listened to college dropout because the non-vomity songs were there!


i clicked on your link and got an error message


oh yes-- my mind had erased them


i'll give it a try one of these days

I agree w/ louder tho, everyone should hear Dark Twisted. It is brilliant.

Here's my longer take on 3 Kanye album if ya'll are interested

Kanye West
The College Dropout
2004, For a long time Kanye West was just a name printed in liner notes. Thanks to a string of good-to-great beats for Jay-Z, his name started to get brought up as one of the up-and-coming producers to keep a serious eye on. But nobody knew this guy could rap. Not until he go into a terrible car accident and recorded a song about it with his jaw wired shut. It was an odd way to introduce yourself to the world as an artist. But in a sense it's also fitting. From his very first single Kanye established himself as impulsive. This is a guy who says something because he needs to - right now. The College Dropout was hugely anticipated and went through many leaks and changes before it finally saw release. And when it finally dropped it was greeted with critical and commercial acclaim. The thing is, while it's certainly got plenty of great songs, it doesn't hold together very well as an album. First off, it feels overly long thanks to an overabundance of skits that feel like they derail momentum rather than create some thematic glue. But this is a debut album, and as such it's an interesting one. Kanye discusses materialism on "All Falls Down," religion on "Jesus Walks," and bounces between his more backpacker roots (see collabs with Common, Consequence, Talib Kweli, Mos Def) and his Roc-A-Fella future (see collabs with Jay-Z, Freeway). There's also some touching moments like his reflecting on family ("Family Business") and the outro where he narrates the journey that ended with this album. There's a sort of frustrating charm to it all. It is certainly a nice starting point, but as a debut fails to live up to the hype that was created for it.


Kanye West
808's And Heartbreak
2008, When Kanye announced his fourth album would feature him singing in autotune on every track... well, that didn't sound too promising. But when the final product was revealed it turned out that this would be a defining moment in his career. Here Kanye boldly ventures off into new sounds that would be a precursor to an entire sub-genre to follow. I'm not saying there would be no Drake nor Cudi nor Weeknd had it not been for 808's And Heartbreak, but I am saying they wouldn't sound like they do. While Graduation started thinking globally with an ear towards French electronica, here Kanye's pallet is far more interested in 1980's synth-pop and even touches on industrial. He's comfortable here to let the beats ride out long after his vocals have ended, allowing songs to stretch out and make themselves at home for as long as they feel natural to do so. Equally interesting is the lyrical content. Forget the fact that almost all Kanye vocals here are sung rather than rapped - this is a dark, atmospheric album. One which exists under a dark shadow of the passing of Kanye's mother; the breakup of his longtime girlfriend; and the struggle to make sense of his newfound fame. This is "Love Will Tear Us Apart" for the rap crowd. It's an album so interesting, so ground-breaking and so damn good that it felt baffling to me at the time. But repeated listens reveal so much to reconsider, slowly making it clear that this is a total masterpiece. It's even more impressive when you realize it was recorded in less than a month.

Kanye West
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
2010, I've often compared Dark Twisted Fantasy to Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral. I mean, nobody dies at the end. But it feels like an album-length examination of a soul descending into madness. This is the voice of somebody so unhappy - nay, disgusted with their self, but repurposed as a work of art. And if that title sounds cinematic, it should. Kanye recruited an insanely talented and expensive cast to make this album a reality. While it's rational to view 808's And Heartbreak as a grieving album, this record feels far more cathartic. There's heaps of debauchery and guilt that get piled on to the point where lines are blurred and it becomes a chicken and egg scenario. Key line: "the plan was to drink until the pain's over/but what's worse? The pain or the hangover?" At times the album may feel decadent, but it seems more a study of loathing. All of the fame and hype here is embarrassing or a letdown. The flashing lights are a burden. Indeed the glass is half-empty everywhere on this album. Kanye lets the death of his own childhood hero - Michael Jackson weigh heavily. He's upset about airplane seating. About drinking. About drugs. About women. Take "Runaway," a sprawling opus to his inability to have a functional relationship with a woman. Or the major hit, "Power," which is basically a self-deprecation when Kanye spits the line "no one man should have all this power." This is one of those albums that's it's possible to talk about for hours. You can talk about the production - and producers involved. You can talk about the myriad guests - fucking Chris Rock doing a long outro about being a cuckold. Or how about the insane samples? I mean who the fuck licenses an Aphex Twin sample... from Drukqs? The point is that this album is a sprawling mess of a masterpiece. One that I really could talk about for hours, but instead would insist you listen to.

Did i break the thread?

i dont know-- i repped you

Hey, I mentioned this just yesterday. To you!

Good shit, huh?

I know you mentioned it, hence why im posting about it too.. it doesn't dive as deep as PWOWR but it continues similar themes and imagery while not sounding like its trying too hard to be some kind of continuation. The beats are different enough to be a progression into a different direction. This is not the let down that recent follow up records have been with so many rappers and its not one of those records that you skip past weak tracks cuz its all good aas a composition. While it doesn't piece together quite as seamlessly as PWOWR it still feels like a record, when so many new hip hop records sound like mixtape (eg tracks just thrown together with no sense of narrative or cohesion)..

I do know what you mean. The line between "mixtape" and album is blurring, especially as more and more retail mixtape a show up. I really don't like unofficial mixtapes, full of recycled beats and DJ shout-outs. God! So annoying!
But I think artists like Killah have been able to use the mixtape model and exchange/purchasing templates to make true albums on his own terms. Probably good since the guy's never going to be a mainstream success.

And yeah I like this new joint too. It does sound like a progression in many ways. I'm enjoying it a lot. I am also loving the new Czarface record from Inspectah Deck/7L & Esoteric. Good times for the underdogs of the Wu family.

Love is a strong word. But I like the Czarface a lot. Kind of has a similar feel as the new CanOx album actually.

urr...... no.

how about you just continue to chef it up and go about yr business.:)

Whoops I think I mixed up my "Diamonds..." and recommended the comparatively vapid version. Hmm. You guys know the one I mean.

NR: nice little write up of MBDTF, man. I feel like we have a really similar understanding of what the album is about, and that makes me think that it's tapping into some archetypal shit. That there's a universality to it all, and that this is why songs like Runaway and Blame Game come off as more sad and mournful and desperate than chauvinistic.

Also, I agree with your 808's breakdown. For a long time it felt like Kanye's "crossover" pop icon album... Like his version of Michael Jackson or Prince. But the more time goes by the more I hear echoes of post punk and synth, and definitely industrial. I feel like the "Love will tear us apart" comparison is particularly apt. Nailed it, bro.

so true.

new D'Angelo interview: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/21/ar...l-protest.html

the extent of respect people afford kanye west would be far greater were he born without a mouth. he's very much a symptom of rap's proclivity for total hypocrisy, trying to split the difference between generalised hallmark 'emotional heft' bullshit (which, were it presented on a commercial for a bank would be derided for cynicism but strangely enough when heard atop undoctored samples of soul records is somehow illustrative of the presence of an auteur) and inarguably sickening, misogynistic hyper-masculine gloat bullshit, but is particularly offensive in that he purports to be far more than everyone else; his ego isn't some minor element in his whole fucking circus, it's the foundational tenet, and as a result of that you have to bring west the individual into it as demonstrated via west the artist, and he's a nigh on illiterate hackjob moral absolutist fuckwit whose unadulterated idiocy is passed off as the ramblings of a genius, a mind so deeply burdened by designs for shoes made by children in shanghai sweatshops that his being a cunt is somehow excusable.

also find it ironic that for a man who essentially spent an entire record railing against a notional white culture and his peoples' subsumption into it, considering that he made a fucking synthpop record, that is, the greatest sadsack whiteboy style of music ever created.

his production on stay the night is fun though

Thanks!

this is the kind of shit why you get negrepped so much, ya kalb

but since you mentioned i'm eating an amazing tomato salad w/ fresh-baked bread & a mega-pitcher of sangría made w/ EVERPEACH which is a liquid you probably know a lot about being from yorya.




???

No offense, but this is comically over-the-top and totally unfair. I'm guessing you're aware of this, and are just havin' a bit of a rant for entertainment's sake, which is fine.

But if this isn't at least 50% snark, then I would be remiss if I failed to address the rhetorical corner-cutting, and the faulty reasoning hidden in this jungle of superfluous verbiage.

For instance: that implication that by making music that some have subjectively categorized as "synth-pop" (a genre that you subjectively characterize as "sad sack whiteboy music") Kanye forfeit his right to be pissed off about racism?
That is, of course, totally absurd, yes? Not just absurd or illogical but, like, five different kinds of dumb as well. And you're not dumb, so knock it off.

:)

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haha

ha ha ah ahahahaaa

thank you

if you did this for entertainment like severian says, thanks for the entertainment

but if this is a lot of what you see, i believe you.

i see some of that. i don't see enough though, to really argue my point.

i still have to listen to the other things i havent'

i love a debate though, when everyone falls in liNE it's fucking BORING

synthpop is objectively the sound of the white man's internals, as much is essentially inarguable; it's inherently white music about inherently white problems. so to bemoan the co-opting of your own culture by a power which has actively exerted power over you for centuries only to blatantly copy that very culture (for which he harbours an apparently vehement loathing) is, what do you call it, the very fucking definition of hypocrisy. you can't engage with a system and reap its benefits for your own ends and then subsequently complain about how it's altogether more sinister, that's ridiculous. you're not subverting anything you're just an idiot.

but again I mean you're getting me away from the fact that kanye west's music is insipid trash. am I seriously meant to believe he's a genius because he gleaned inspiration from a lamp like are you fucking shitting me? his purported vision is in no way befitting of any kind of congratulatory bullshit, much less on the level he in actuality receives, and the literal enacting of that vision is done by producers who evidently have (in some cases, fk u hudmo & evian christ you hacks) considerable talents as compared to kanye's half-baked moral grandstanding/exhibitions of relative self-loathing so as to justify his innumerable hypocrisies ('the delicate polymath torn apart by internal fragilities'). I find it remarkable that he can be so priggish about his work when his contributions essentially amount to him ranting about how much pussy he's eaten.





hehehehehehee

essentially I take umbrage to the fact that hip hop in general is held to entirely different standards with regard to innovation, integrity etc. and I see west as being symptomatic thereof. but that's a whole other canna chick peas.

B L A C K I E & $AMMYq - I'm So Wet 2015

this is funny and mostly true.

somewhere in there is the whole 'whites stole the blues from blacks so why can't blacks steal synth pop from whites' argument. it's there.... I went there. is it too soon? im not going to argue that. it's stupid.

just wouldn't be surprised if it came up.