Kanye West ft. John Legend, The-Dream, Ryan Leslie, Tony Williams, Charlie Wilson, Elly Jackson, Alicia Keys, Fergie, KiD CuDi, Rihanna & Elton John: All of the Lights

Elvis wasn't able to submit his part before the deadline.

Full disclosure: I haven't watched this yet.

Brilliant (Chune in tonight @ 8).

1. I want a suit tailored exactly like that one.
2. I bet some of this sounds crazy over beats.
3. Kanye will convince the world that he's a great lyricist by sheer will.

Jay-Z ft. Kanye West - Hate (or Hater, something like that) DJ Aziz EXCLUSIVE!!!

You Feeling Like You Run It, Huh? Now You Know How I Feel

By now, you've probably heard Kanye outrap Jay-Z on "Run This Town." It follows in a long tradition of challengers beating aging greats and nobody caring. Leon Spinks took the heavyweight championship from Muhammad Ali. But, that's not exactly analogous. Muhammad Ali was always an athlete driven by conflicted emotions. All his flashy dancing and ducking in the ring disguised a mind looking for angles to unleash destruction. Everything Ali was, he was in a boxing ring - mouthy, generous, ruthless, joyful and charismatic.

Because of the public personality Ali had and the one Jay-Z has (not to mention that Kanye>Spinks), a flabby Ali being outboxed by Spinks is not quite the same as Kanye's scenestealer on "Run This Town." A better example may be when Ricky Davis dunked on Michael Jordan. Jordan, like Jay-Z, is not comfortable giving himself over to his public. There is an impenetrability about both of them, a wary awareness that most eyes are on them and a tension in their shoulders as if they're braced against that responsibility. They are not uncomfortable in the spotlight (because they know how good they are), they're just not fully themselves there. Instead, we see two-dimensional superheroes - Jay-Hova and Air Jordan, dodging bullets and defying gravity. In fact, a determination to actualize the myths created around them seems to be both of their motivation to succeed. MJ wanted to be the greatest player ever because he needed to be the champion that Nike/Gatorade/Hanes had created. In public, he flattened himself so that he could be a better fit for everyone. Endorsements begat championships begat endorsements and the tongue-wag was trademarked. Over 25 years of public life, there was only one moment when the cracks appeared - clutching the trophy and crying for his lost father. Jay's image control is even better. A poor kid from Marcy rapped like he was the man until he got on the lists and, eleven albums later, I can't name a single song that Jay's sounded really real. When the beat calls for something somber, he spins a yarn (usually in third-person) about how in order to survive you gotta learn to live with regrets. It can be brilliant (like on the underappreciated In My Lifetime cut, "Lucky Me"), but it's a crutch. He can't see 'em coming down his eyes, so he's gotta make the song cry.

Back to Jordan: During the first year of Jordan's second unretirement, what should have been a sedate (and likely sleep-inducing) mid-season matchup between the Cavs and the Wizards was given a jolt by Ricky Davis, the perpetual knucklehead. Oblivious to protocol, Ricky broke the cardinal "no-meaningful-quotes-during-pregame-press-conferences" rule and promised to dunk on Michael Jordan when the Cavs met up with the Wizards later in the season. Unfortunately, no YouTube footage exists of the actual incident, so I have to rely on the vagaries of my memory. In the waning moments of the game, Davis reached into a passing lane and was able to poke an errant pass away. Sprinting towards the basket with the ball, no player was in the vicinity of Davis except for Jordan who was well back. Davis slowed down to entice Jordan's natural defensive instinct. MJ turned on the hustle to try to save a bucket. Just as the greatest player to have ever graced the hardwood closed in, Davis leapt up and put down a fairly pedestrian one-handed jam. Then, he celebrated like Jordan after he gutted Ehlo's Cavs.

You see, Tyree Ricardo (Ricky) Davis idolized Michael Jordan. He taped every one of MJ's NBA on NBC games, humming the theme song in his excitement. As soon as the game finished, Little Ricky would rewind and watch it again looking for the sleight of hand behind Jordan's magic. Soon Ricky became the Michael Jordan of his podunk Iowa town, wearing 23 for all his high school and AAU games. Come senior year, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill still hadn't offered him a scholarship despite the letters (handwritten and increasingly desperate) that he'd sent to Dean Smith. The Heels weren't interested because they already had an explosive swingman in Vince Carter and rumors of Ricky's erratic behavior had begun to surface. So, like his hero MJ, Ricky decided he would go the biggest school in his state and wear 23. After a year at Iowa, he entered the draft early (even though he wasn't a certain first-rounder) so that he might still have the opportunity to play against Michael. He was picked 21st by the Charlotte Hornets - he took it as a sign that he was finally going to North Carolina. But, before Ricky got the chance to play against him, Jordan retired a second time. The Hornets found Ricky later that day in an equipment closet playing "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" on an unplugged electric cavaquinho.

Ricky Davis had that Wizards game circled on his calendar with sparkles and hearts from the moment he heard that Jordan was coming out of retirement. Jordan probably didn't know what team he was playing until the day before. To advance, you have to kill your idols.

There's A Thousand Yous, There's Only 1 Of Me

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Yeah, he's a twat but c'mon..

You Worry Bout the Wrong Things

Ugh

Rock n roll is supposed to stand for all these ideas. You know, youth, rebellion, the open road, gawky white-boy dancing. In contrast, hip-hop, at its root, seems to stand for one thing: ambition. The all-consuming ambition to get enough money to get somewhere better than here. The single-minded ambition to extract joy from squalor. The ambition that drives you to change nigger to nigga - to turn an epithet on itself.

And if hip-hop, distilled, is about ambition, who's a better ambassador for it than Kanye West. Mr. West, a nerdish plain-looking producer, has stated (on several occasions) that his goal is to be the most important person in pop culture. With its video premiere on the Ellen DeGeneres Show and its focus on melody over rhythm, 808s and Heartbreak is his ostensible attempt to take a step in that direction. (Spoiler alert: he fails.)

It seems to me that the moment for an extended exploration of the merits of autotune has passed (and may have passed with Roger Troutman, a long while ago). Judging from 808s, Kanye disagrees with me and sets out to prove that there's still a place for the vocoder - with patchy results. Some songs run too long, bleeping and screeching interminably. Others mine territory that T-Pain has already planted his flag firmly upon. Most are shockingly poor lyrically. Seriously, an artist with as many lyrical clunkers as Kanye should know that a glacial tempo does him no favors. He should know better than to force us to ponder just what he means by "When I grab your neck /I touch your soul."

The few tracks that are neither too long, too derivative, or too clunky are absolutely brilliant. "Streetlights," a ballad to his ambitions, employs autotune more as a vocal corrective than as a blunt instrument. The austerity of the track expertly matches the simplicity of its emotion. Kanye uses space here better than he has on any song ever and the result is an understanding. YOu can circumvent the words and music and connect directly with the meaning. However, this is not the best moment on the album. That distinction goes to "Paranoid," a song, with its nods to New Order and (New Wave synth pop in general), that stands in stark opposition to the plainness of "Streetlights". Unfortunately, amidst its propulsive percussion and synthesizer swirls, there's also the undeniable sound of an unfulfilled promise.

You have to question the purpose of this album. Kanye did not need this album and the world was not clamoring for it. West would have been better served putting a little more consideration into a followup. Instead, he's now given ammunition to his detractors. The promise of College Dropout was fulfilled by Late Registration and surpassed by Graduation. In the process, a bona fide pop star was born - complete with tantrums and meltdowns. In a recent interview, Kanye talks about all the new worries that he has. He talks about the burden of fame, about his interests in art, architecture, fashion and interior design. He goes on to say that he doesn't play hip-hop in his apartment because the apartment is way too nice.

Whatever studio he made 808s and Heartbreaks in must be really swanky.


Songs That Are Better Than the Ones on 808s and Heartbreak:
Au Revoir Simone: Paris (Aeroplane remix & Friendly Fires cover)
Josh Rouse: Sunshine
Black Milk ft. Royce da 5'9": Losing Out

(see the sidebar for albums that are better than 808s and Heartbreak)

It's All a Put On

These guys use male cosmetics...often

Bloggy blogger blogs blahgs blah blah. Interesting observation, musical precedent or emotional tie-in. Show off knowledge of sample, producer, artist or template - whichever is most obscure (and therefore most impressive). Use dashes and parentheses - (a lot)...but don't forget to use ellipses.

Commingle street parlance with two-dollar words so that you show them suckas you still on that hood shit. End beautifully.

And there you have it.


Young Jeezy ft. Kanye West: Put On
(oh yeah, also try and debut tracks way before everyone else has heard them.)

As I Recall, I Know You Love To Show Off

Diplo's such a naturally-skilled DJ that he can usually create a banger on autopilot. He proved that on that Pitchfork mix he made last year. And he does it again with Kanye's "Flashing Lights." Basically, he reshapes the most danceable track on Graduation into what it always longed to be - a Euro-house track. And effortlessly.

Kanye West: Flashing Lights (Diplo remix)

2007 in Review: Flashing Lights

His Goyard's so hard, he's Hugo's boss.

Kanye's stated goal for Graduation was to make rap music for the masses - songs with "stadium status." Curiously, his conception of mass-appeal rap was a hip-hop/electro fusion. From "Stronger" (which repurposes a highly-popular Daft Punk track) to "Can't Tell Me Nothing" (which is very synth-heavy), electronic music leaves its fingerprints all over Graduation.

On "Flashing Lights," though, Kanye does what he does best. That is, he copies directly from a template. Where other producers snip obscure samples or chop up familiar song sections until they are barely recognizable, Kanye usually keeps his samples unscathed. Next time you are bored, play Curtis Mayfield's "Move on Up" and Kanye's "Touch the Sky" back-to-back. Few other producers are so brazen with their sampling. Naturally, he'd fall back into his familiar habits and just make a techno song somewhere on Graduation instead of a techno-influenced song. That techno song is "Flashing Lights" and it is awesome. The stuttering synths and driving beat are techno-by-numbers, but in the context of this rap song they regain some of their original power and grandeur.

Download:
Kanye West: Flashing Lights

PS - The Daft Punk & Can't Tell Me Nothing youtube links in this post are hilarious.

Lupe Fiasco and the Cult of Image

This is what the eff I'm talking about: comics and the Qur'an? Really homie?!?!

Lupe Fiasco has been on the receiving end of a message board/blogosphere shitstorm as of late. Or, about as much of a shitstorm as a bunch of rap geeks at Okayplayer can muster. The reason for "Fiascogate" is that Lupe forgot some lyrics to Tribe's "Electric Relaxation" during VH1's Hip Hop Honors. I'm just surprised anyone was watching.

Lupe's excuse for flubbing the lyrics was that he never listened to A Tribe Called Quest as a youth. He never encountered "Electric Relaxation" until his label (at the request of VH1 and, to a much lesser degree, Q-Tip) asked him to do the show. In fact, Lupe says that 8 Ball & MJG were far more important in his development as a rapper. He even throws out a convoluted argument that MC Hammer could be considered as more important to rap music than ATCQ. Lupe, whose first album did not go gold, bases this particular bit of idiocy on the fact that MC Hammer sold more records than ATCQ.

Ummm....there is no way that MC Hammer is better at anything than A Tribe Called Quest. Correction: There is no way that MC Hammer is better at anything than A Tribe Called Quest except profligacy. He can waste money way better than all 3 members of Tribe combined. Amendment: There is no way that MC Hammer is better at anything than A Tribe Called Quest other than profligacy and he's probably a better dancer too.

Whatever, you get my point. Lupe's argument feels forced. It feels like the response of a man cornered by unexpected backlash. But, Lupe brought this on himself. The best response to all of this would have been no response. If Jay-Z can totally ignore Cam'ron's jibes; Lupe Fiasco can ignore a few bloggers. But, it's not surprising to see Lupe in this teapot tempest. Just as Kanye gets irked whenever a pizza-stained critic scrawls that he is arrogant or overrated, Lupe gets pissed at every piss-ant blogger that doesn't love him. And for the same reasons.

This picture makes me slightly uncomfortable.

Last year, Lupe got into a protracted war of words with chotchbag extraordinaire, Byron Crawford, because Crawford was doing what Crawford always does. Namely, he was disparaging an artist and an upcoming album...this time it just happened to be Lupe and Food & Liquor. Crawford's beverage of choice is haterade (is it in you?), so I stopped reading his half-formed amateur commentary. This would seem to be the sensible route; but, Lupe didn't take that road. So, Lupe and Byron got into a long-winded Internet squabble.

It was as bitch-like as it sounds.

Like Kanye, Lupe is too easily influenced by outside opinion. And, just like Kanye, Lupe is barefacedly guilty of cultural appropriation. I don't think that these things are unrelated. Kanye went from popped-collar prep to high-topped hipster in 6 weeks. We don't believe you, you need more people. Lupe repeatedly shouts out SB dunks and skate culture, but is not exactly a skater. He talks about how much he loves anime at every opportunity. He collects toy robots, even featuring one prominently on his album cover (as shown at the top of this post). Pretty much, he reps whatever is hot on Hypebeast this week. If your public persona is that trendy, it makes sense that you are going to be hyper-aware of what fans and Stans think of you.

But, it also makes sense that Lupe works to present an image that appeals to a wide swath of hip youth culture. That's just good business. However, the constant effort to be everything to everybody can leave him stretched a little thin. It makes his interests seem more calculated than heartfelt. Worst of all for him, it opens him to reproach. In the end, it may just be that Lupe needs a good manager. A sensible person that will not let him fly off at the handle and make ridiculous statements, fashion or otherwise. Or, maybe, Lupe needs to concentrate on making more music that he likes and let his image work itself out.

In other news: Tiggalo (Phonte of Little Brother) apparently leaked his own album. It's really interesting the way that some artists (Radiohead, Lil Wayne, and now Little Brother) are now approaching the shambles formerly known as the music industry.

Here's the album for now:
Little Brother - Get Back

Buy Get Back now