Kanye West, Yeezus, 6/18/13 (TBC because who knows anymore)

Start your thinkpieces

Is it too early to call MBDTF Kanye's New Jersey?

808s iirc.

Nah, Graduation is his New Jersey. 808s is his Nebraska.

isn't that kim's due date

Or maybe not:

Wilson has retracted his Tweet, writing "Clarity: Kanye West album release date has NOT been confirmed. Apologies to Chris Atlas."

haaa it probably was kim's due date

LOL at music writers jumping on the hype train without considering it might be something a little more important to him

If it wasn't for the original Wilson post etc.

LOL at music writers jumping on the hype train without considering it might be something a little more important to him

― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Thursday, May 2, 2013 12:43 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

cryptically tweeting out the due date of his baby would be so gross

Wouldn't he have already known the due date a few months ago?

My guess is that it's both the due date and the album release date.

cryptically tweeting out the due date of his baby would be so gross

but v much in character

In what universe is a perfect score on pitchfork and 3 or 4 relatively inescapable singles considered a New Jersey?

why are people so desperate for opportunities to scream "New Jersey"

welcome to modern ILM, which is basically a neverending competition to be the first person to correctly call something passe

why are people so desperate for opportunities to scream "New Jersey"

we were too young for our parents to let us watch the "Living in Sin" video?

In what universe is a perfect score on pitchfork and 3 or 4 relatively inescapable singles considered a New Jersey?

http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/cersei-eyeroll1.gif

At least Ray J didn't pee on MBDTF.

I'm sure if Pitchfork had been around back then they would've given New Jersey a 10.0. It'll definitely get Best New Reissue someday.

Eurgh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIGTHxd--8c&feature=player_embedded

Kanye's "Wizard of Oz" Complex

So it's called "Yeezus"

So it's claimed, yeah. Supposedly the date IS the release date.

And since Daft Punk apparently programmed drums on it I'll just consider this phase two of the overall promotion plan.

Not since the "Girls" finale happening the night before the new Vampire Weekend single debuted have I felt like two different promotional campaigns were working together so seamlessly.

way to pass the baton like a true Olympian.

I just hope he doesn't plan on also naming his kid Yeezus.

Y. Kristo West

"I'd rather be a dick than a swallower" -- seriously? Repeated?

welcome to modern ILM, which is basically a neverending competition to be the first person to correctly call something passe
--far too much asshole flesh (DJP)

Hasn't it been this way since like2006

it has, but the point stands

stoked for the HANH

Hasn't it been this way since like2006

― steening in your HOOSless carriage (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Saturday, May 18, 2013 10:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Twitter going nuts that one of the SNL songs is basically Marilyn Manson's "The Beautiful People"

Alternately:

Darnell ‏
@Discountdracula
KanyeFDM

well this song sucks

whatever that was >>>>>>>>>>>> "new slaves" imo

also i'm betting that's what Daft Punk worked on:

Details surrounding his recording sessions remain scarce, but he has been in the studio with Daft Punk, who programmed drums for the album. “It was very raw: he was rapping—kind of screaming primally, actually,” Thomas Bangalter of the French duo told Rolling Stone.

i think this song will sound good in a higher quality recording, especially from 2:40 on. the lip syncing was hilarious and i'm loving the zordon vibes.

oh yeah i was talking about "new slaves"

oh is that a new song at the end? i thought it was a coda.

the cut's so abrupt that i think it's a different song. a really terrible kanye falsetto song.

can't tell if i'm really this or if it was irredeemably corn

"new slaves" the jam tho

good lord i should re-read my posts after i've been drinking

can't tell if i'm really into this or if it was irredeemably corny

It is very direct and he sounds very excited or worked up. Both of those things are good I think.

if this does actually sample marilyn manson i'm going with "corniest thing ever"

third listen, i'm digging this. i like kanye when he is in full-on self-serious, bordering on corny mode. i like MBDTF a great deal.

fucking hell

listening to it on headphones, yeah "Black Skinhead" is cool and totally destroys "New Slaves," which is barely even a song, sounds like an album intro or something.

it's just a short rap song over a minimal beat, i like it a lot

then again i have yet to listen to a recording of a tv performance on headphones

my one gripe with "new slaves" is it has that crescendoing coda that sounds a lot like "clique"

it just feels like some poorly rapped provocative (tm will ferrell) nonsense to me though

lol all i meant was i couldn't really make out the words to "Black Skinhead" at all when i watched it on TV but on headphones it came through much clearer and i was like yeah this is good

I love that he got the line "I came on her Hampton blouse and in her Hampton mouth" on live tv. Censor asleep on the job.

He seems angry - good. Very stark. Tony Stark. Sorry. I like this direction - opposite of the gross opulence previously.

The "swallower" line ruins "New Slaves" for me.

Why?

I really like all of this. I didn't care for Grad/808, detested the last one and only half remember the Jay/labelmates ones so I'm excited to be back on the kanye train after like a decade of being blazay about his stuff.

"It was very raw: he was rapping—kind of screaming primally, actually,” Thomas Bangalter of the French duo told Rolling Stone.

So this is his Plastic Ono Band. Awesome.

both songs are straight furnace (hi hoos!) except for that lame coda at end of new slaves

i'm really impressed that he was able to play this in 66 places across the world w/o a high quality rip or something leaking, good job kanye stree team

"i keep it three hunna like the romans" lol

judging from these two songs this album is gonna blow MBDTF out the water, im hyped

dying @ 'the beautiful people' comparison, that's great

I'm implausibly excited by this

"i'ma keep it 300, like the romans"

I woulda preferred i'ma keep it 300, like Dawn Richard."

WAY TO BE LATE K3V

haha i swear i was gonna make fun of that line first but my wifi crapped out

I love the Kanye vicious cycle. Get rich, write angry, asshole songs about people who think he is an asshole, get angry again, write another song about the response to people who think he's a dick, etc. Kanye smash. Meanwhile, most people dont give a fuck. Who are his enemies? Does he have enemies? Is he just paranoid for the the sake of the craft? Is he still into fashion? Is he still doing fan interviews over skype from exotic locations?

Where did all this anger come from? He was pretty chill, funny, fun, thoughtful, then he does 808s, then he comes back with a concept album about being an angry asshole. Did the death of his mom, grounding element, break him?

http://i.imgur.com/EkeLIM6.jpg

^^ ilx pre-covers yeezus ^^

josh otm

not having to answer to mom, especially after breaking up with his long term girlfriend, undoubtedly set him free to paint an uglier picture

idgi what the big mystery is, he's an unmoored stardom coke fiend on a provocation treadmill and his artistic rage is always chiefly directed at the prospect of the dying of his own light

we are all his mom now

now say that in the voice of George Will

Still they yacht me like Yeezus

Maybe this is his Faith, with a video of Kanye lighting a Bottega Veneta weekend bag on fire.

Er, Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1, that is.

these two new songs remind me of 808s, how stripped down they are, and when yeezy goes ham on the drums, reminiscent of chorus to 'love lockdown'

man the jump to falsetto in the new slaves clip is so him. "I'M MAD! MAD FOR EVERYONE! THIS IS BULLSHIT! AND...WHILE I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION...laaaaaaaaaa"

people say that's frank ocean but i'm not sure because kanye mouths the words in the video and they both have strained cracked falsettos

yeah even if he was lip-syncing to a sample or whatevs, it was a real moodkiller

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BKpCYkaCcAE_OZO.jpg:large

^^ apparantly that's the album cover. Looks like a golden placenta Kanye put into Kim. Or a Damien Hirst shite piece of art. Or both.

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=GNEV5QCMTX0&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DGNEV5QCMTX0

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=L6ZUktQ7p40&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DL6ZUktQ7p40

if youre in america u can just go to hulu.com and watc the performances there

i don't get how that's the cover art? it looks to me like a plain jewel case with some piece of plastic where the CD would be

#innovation

there's probably no actual cd inside and it's just a download code

or maybe the gold thing is the actual cd a la http://i.imgur.com/Z0053bk.jpg

proud black man's golden blob all up in your priveleged white middle american jewel case

has no one noted the gary glitter thing in black skinhead?

also i enjoyed his fake-dj-as-graphic-effect thing on SNL

anyway looks like the golden thing is just a sticker or something applied over a clear cd front, the actual CD is just a continuation of the black/white graphic

xp: yeah, rock & roll! just watched all this yeezy. fucking awesome. maybe love the initial street projection bit best of all, even with the "cheezy" coda. sounds like he's doubling down on the super-distorted sound of MBDTF, but taking it far enough to be interesting. punk-industrial political outrage over minimal beats suits him surprisingly well. excited.

love the packaging, too

All I can say, so far, is that I'm intrigued.

it'd be kind of cool if his "political outrage" were a little less vague and didn't end up with him fantasizing about raping another guys' wife, imo

his "political outrage" really seems to be another version of his own self-aggrandizing IMO

I'm not really sure what's vague about his political outrage here? Does he have to actually use the words predatory capitalism, racism and the prison-industrial complex for people to get what he's going off about in "New Slaves"?

Also not sure why you assumed the lyric about fucking a Hampton spouse implies rape (though it's still pretty skeezy even assuming consentual sex)?

Skeezus

i mean he comes pretty hard and clear in new slavesimo

Meanwhile the DEA
Teamed up with the CCA
They tryna lock niggas up
They tryna make new slaves
See that's that private owned prison
Get your peace today

like if you hear cca + private owned prison and don't think 'prison industrial complex' you're not thinking hard enough

i mean the first line on "power" is

The system broken, the school's closed, the prison's open

hoos & greer & jordan & everybody otm

I don't think social commentary has really been an album-wide priority on a Ye record since the debut, though. Curious to see if that actually changes here.

Social commentary -- the world outside -- exists as correspondences for his self-regard (a compliment and insult).

Red sticker looks like it may cover a Ye face.

i don't like the album art. i like the anger on those two tracks though.

surprised there's no Death Grips involvement, though there's still time

What up from the not so distant past:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylT16QB6Uig

kanye's post-808s trajectory has really been a case of the abyss gazing back

honestly a little surprised that he didn't pop up once on a ctrl-f of the ilx deadpool

i'm pleased about these songs! easy to lol at the marilyn manson sample/skunk anansie vibes but they pique my interest much like 808s did (and as MBDTF completely didn't) - looking forward to hearing more

lol you are literally just bringing up skunk anansie because the song is called "black skinhead" aren't you

I don't get why he sounds so angry on his solo-album, but much happier on his collaborative efforts? Never-the-less, I liked MBDTF and like the new songs.

a kinder hokier death grips.

is what the world needed.

i believe the album art is by jon r4fman, artist who did the google street view thing.

new songs sound almost nothing like death grips, pretty lazy comparison

Why is it being compared to Death Grips- because it's angry, messy, etc.? I've only heard the performances on SNL.

I'm just talking about the one snl song.

shouty, punky, industrialized rap music w rock samples, not a hugely surprising leap

the other song sounds like bad something else. only heard it once. and it was on the side of a building so kinda hard to tell what it sounded like.

up for pre-order on itunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/yeezus/id650229924

also yeah lol at "death grips" suddenly becoming autocorrect for raps with shouting

actually listening again you could compare the side of a building one to death grips too. the vibe. so corny. he's a cornball. he's a dick AND an ear of corn. corn is kind of impossible to digest after you swallow it.

Scott, please tell me you will review this once it drops

I don't get why he sounds so angry on his solo-album, but much happier on his collaborative efforts? Never-the-less, I liked MBDTF and like the new songs.

― Frederik B, Monday, May 20, 2013 7:41 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i feel like if you really listen to Kanye's verses on Watch The Throne and Cruel Summer they're not really that 'happy'

Lots of good points itt about the fruitless narcissism of Kanye's anger and the way he tries to aggrandise it by pegging it to some wider political point that he'll probably never mention again. I've fallen for that before.

i dig kanye as national avatar so when he gets petulant and enraged and namechecks abuses of late capitalism like he's being frogmarched into a dystopian future by his own id it works fine for me

^

Twitter going nuts that one of the SNL songs is basically Marilyn Manson's "The Beautiful People"

just listening to this for the first time now and was about to make the same comment

this is the greatest thing he's done since "Love Lockdown"

okay "New Slaves" is pretty dope too

Mellow Gold: The College Dropout - the instaclassic debut of a generational icon
Odelay: Late Registration - proof this is not a flash in the pan
Midnite Vultures: Graduation - more of the shtick
Sea Change: 808s & Heartbreak - can't do the shtick right now because WAHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Guero: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy - return of the shtick, sadness overcome but not forgotten
The Information: Yeezus?

mellow gold is pretty bad, does anyone consider it a classic? also you skipped the indie beck albums.

but don't let me fuck up your thinkpiece

mellow gold made spins top 100 alternative albums of all time upon release, and yeah i skipped side-projects and shit, this isn't a fucking scientific formula

that's like 15 hours of your life you'll never get back listening to those albums, anthony.

mellow gold is mostly great

One Foot in the Grave totally fucks up yr thesis tho nice ommission

Mutations too for that matter

think of what you could have done in that time. road trip to canada. acid trip. hot dog eating contest. all kinds of things.

scott that took me five minutes. this isn't a thesis it's a pair of testicles resting on your forehead

i'm surprised that a record store clerk would think that kind of bullshit takes actual time and effort

forehead? yr doing it wrong

dunno feels nice to me

i like these. i think i will actually want to listen to this album.

MBDTF always sounded closer to Watch the Throne than anything that came before it imo

no i meant listening to the albums is 15 hours of your life you'll never get back.

scott, why are you posting in this thread? you could be eating hot dogs, watching baywatch, google searching for pictures of cool helicopters etc etc

also a baffling thing for a record store clerk to say xpost

besides i'm a dude in my 30s you know I spent more than 15 hours listening to beck in my life

you could be eating hot dogs, watching baywatch, google searching for pictures of cool helicopters etc etc

― illegalblues, Monday, May 20, 2013 2:44 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Kids today can do all this at once.

yeah, but are they really getting the full experience of any of those things? sometimes less is more

I'd rather be eating cool helicopters, watching hot dogs, and google searching for pictures of Baywatch

You would do that, Tony Stark.

I prefer cool dogs and hot helicopters myself.

I'm just being silly. I know how much you dopes love beck and kanye. for what i's worth, I enjoy hearing loser and where it's at on the radio. I could never listen to a whole album of either of them though. seems like work.

scott have u considered that u have probably spent over 15 hours of your own life reading ilx posts about beck

I have not either! I think the first thread I started on ilx was about beck though.

I can read about lots of people though. reading is fun.

yeah, reading is cool. i was reading stuff on Larry Bird today and wow what a guy

Magic was better

Jordan game 6.

pffft, picking Magic over Bird is like picking ihop over a perfect ribeye

lol @ "Midnite Vultures: Graduation - more of the shtick"

Not the MV reception that I remember!

scattershot and nothing really sticks but at least he got it off his chest.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ernest-owens/kanye-west-new-slaves_b_3300051.html

when debating whether someone is worthy of their cult of personality, "hypocrisy" is always a tough move. Anyone successful criticizing the culture that allowed their success is a hypocrite. Hard to distinguish between the reasons a song doesn't resonate and why the singer doesn't come off as heroic. I think people tend to conflate that, esp with Kanye

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/on-listening-to-new-slaves-with-white-people

ugh why can't white people just understand anything

i thought it was more of a "capitalism makes slaves of us all" than a "black folks are still slaves" thing. i guess i was wrong.

the first thing i think of naturally is prime minister sinister pete nice's immortal line "ears hang trunk in a slave hold". but i would.

kanye fever:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2013/05/21/185781341/kanye-west-stands-alone

http://globalgrind.com/music/kanye-west-most-dangerous-black-man-america-blog

I'm a little iffy on Kanye's political stuff but that HuffPo piece is dreadful.

I hate to go down the "you just don't get this artist" road but man, that HuffPo piece. If you can listen to Kanye West and think he isn't grappling with the contradictions of promoting and lamenting "black materialistic adoration", then I'm not even sure we're listening to the same artist. How well he grapples with that is another conversation entirely, but it's not like he's unaware he's as much a product of the shit he's criticizing as anyone else is.

Also how hard is it to google an artist's charity work before insisting that they don't give back at all?

I don't even feel right using the word "promoting" because that implies some degree of aspiration. If there's one thing I've taken away from Kanye West music it's that for all the surface glammer of it, when it gets right down to it I shouldn't aspire to be Kanye West.

I'm a little iffy on Kanye's political stuff but that HuffPo piece is dreadful.

― Simon H., Tuesday, May 21, 2013 3:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

to be fair, you could see this about almost any huffpo piece

i really kinda hate "New Slaves" on a musical level, it tries to be super intense without drums and would probably be striking for that if that Meek Mill intro hadn't done the same thing 10 times more effectively a few months ago.

If you can listen to Kanye West and think he isn't grappling with the contradictions of promoting and lamenting "black materialistic adoration", then I'm not even sure we're listening to the same artist.

kind of feel kanye grappled with that much more smartly and also crucially more empathetically and emotionally on the college dropout and late reg - these days it's more like he's grappling with himself through the lens of it, though the grappling is definitely angrier

yeah. also the nature of his writing is so scattershot that he never really bears down and says much of anything, it's just a lot of signifiers and then he gets distracted and compares himself to Adam Sandler's character in The Waterboy.

i find it so weird that when i say my favourite kanye albums are the first two, people think i'm the weird one. songs like "all falls down" and "gold digger" had so much more insight and wit about this subject...

Well like I said, how well he grapples with it is up for debate and I agree with Lex re: earlier records handling it more intelligently, but just noting the contradiction like that HuffPo piece does as if that is by itself a novel observation about Kanye's music is such a surface read.

People think its weird to like Ye's first two albums the most?

depends on who you talk to, i think there's an emerging generation gap in his fanbase, happens to anyone who's this big for this long

I thought that was common knowledge. Kids huh

lex otm about the first album, although I prefer Graduation to Late Registration because the latter feels so damn long.

and the album ranking cycle begins again in earnest

he's def clearer and more controlled and has more perspective on dropout/registration but he also makes it p clear that if he ever becomes very famous and successful he will go insane more or less exactly like this. that's why you always see him with at least one of his watches. i wouldn't want the last few records to be any different because i really like that trajectory, from clever but besotted observer of the_beast to totally devoured inhabitant. i also like that, as omnipresent villain/lover/foil, consumer capitalism/amerikkka is almost totally indistinguishable from his own lusts. i think that's an important idea for an artist to enact and he couldn't have done it if he'd just kept writing college dropouts.

it really just bums me out, because for all his faults jay figured out a way to get to the same place while still comfortable in his skin. kanye is all pride, no dignity.

well, jay became a curator, no? that's why he never personally embarrasses himself. as a private citizen sure he's got way more dignity than kanye but as an artist in 2013 he's the guy who put together the great gatsby soundtrack.

also feel like there is something important in the "guy the president hangs out with" / "guy the president calls a jackass" dichotomy and if i were trying to make something useful out of my status as a hugely popular artist i would probably want to be the second one. even tho lol i'm sure kanye DESPERATELY wants to be the first.

not just the guy the president calls a jackass, but when the president does it, absolutely nobody says hey that's out of line or has his back at all, it's just yeah prez didn't hold his tongue

that's kind of a terrible place to be imo. it doesn't make him dangerous or counter culture, it just makes him a punchline.

late registration is the best, kanye's still a compelling artist post brain implosion, etc.

yeah, i'm not denying he's Often Ridiculous or saying that because obama calls someone a jackass (it was for swiftgate, right? he was indeed a jackass) that person must be fighting the power. if you're gonna make a kanye/jay comparison tho i think it's relevant: jay has chosen to be cool and quiet. i don't want to overstate the value of friction but i do think people overstate the value of smoothness.

xp

Lex I'm totally with you on kanye's first two albums

I dunno why I think he'll get back to that level, I keep hanging on

depends on who you talk to, i think there's an emerging generation gap in his fanbase, happens to anyone who's this big for this long

― my mans ray manzarek (some dude), Tuesday, May 21, 2013 7:47 PM (2 hours ago)

yep, same with jay

if kanye wasn't obnoxious and constantly contradicting himself he wouldn't be famous. that's his thing.. his albums are extensions of the drama of his public persona, in addition to being for the most part very good. it's his thing. he's supposed to embarrass himself.

People think its weird to like Ye's first two albums the most?

― Spottie_Ottie_Dope, Tuesday, May 21, 2013 7:42 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah it actually depresses me that people hold MBDTF in such high regard. 95% of the time i'm met with pure astonishment when i'm like "yeah it's definitely his worst album"

is it? i think graduation holds that title

fuck, let's rank these things

CD>LR>808s>MBDTF>Graduation

I don't really have an opinion of WTT, held off on listening to it until well after the hype died down and still haven't listened enough.

did i miss an album? i feel like i did

please do not do this

***RANKING KANYE***

ah ok

my bad

kind of feel kanye grappled with that much more smartly and also crucially more empathetically and emotionally on the college dropout and late reg - these days it's more like he's grappling with himself through the lens of it, though the grappling is definitely angrier

― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Tuesday, May 21, 2013 7:00 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

this is a salient point but on the other hand i'm not sure what other route he had except to shun superstardom which very few artists are going to do... he's definitely very wrapped up in exactly the things he's trying to examine now. but he still has the touch... "what's a black beetle anyway? / a fucking roach" comes to mind

i actually wish he was more political... one of the problems i had with MBDTF is that i don't give a shit about him choking out his GF and fantasizing about fucking porn stars

er, black beatle

http://lovelyrides.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Volkswagen-Beetle-Black-HD-Wallpaper.jpg

i actually wish he was more political... one of the problems i had with MBDTF is that i don't give a shit about him choking out his GF and fantasizing about fucking porn stars

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, May 21, 2013 11:06 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm gonna just start declaring that "Hell Of A Life" was low key his first song about Kim

kind of feel kanye grappled with that much more smartly and also crucially more empathetically and emotionally on the college dropout and late reg - these days it's more like he's grappling with himself through the lens of it, though the grappling is definitely angrier

― flamenco drop (lex pretend), Tuesday, May 21, 2013 7:00 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just another OTM on this. when i heard "all falls down" i was sort of knocked out because it felt like he was thinking about things that weren't really out there in rap music, and also weren't even necessarily out there in as interesting or thoughtful ways in cultural discussions more generally -- like he was actually opening up a discussion for some people. It was mixed but there was so much potential. And maybe "school spirit" wasn't as unique as a whole, but it was certainly something new as far as rap went. And then he's developed musically since then (even though his earlier productions are just as good, if different...) but it feels like even by the second album he was less able to address anything outside his own head, and i lost track for a few years and all of a sudden he was a punchline.

I'm glad he wants to try and turn things up lyrically but A) it was easier for him when he had a more explicitly goofy sense of humor [oh man "we don't care" got away with so much because it couched it as a gag -- "joke's on you we're still alive" is just brutal] and B) new slaves is really really incoherent.

http://3lc3lc3lc.tumblr.com/post/51064842008/who-will-survive-in-america-who-will-survive-in

yeah that's good apart from 1) i'm not convinced kanye really hates himself 2) kim kardashian is white?

she isn't?

she's ethnically armenian

most people in America consider Armenians white

that counts as 'white' in america fwiw

i'm just confused how excited ppl are about "kanye being political" when a) there's some obvious homophobic something something in the sword-swallower bit and b) the song is incoherent. i mean i'm excited about the potential of him being more lyrically interesting but...

the kardashians are only sometimes counted as 'white' depending on who's talking and also darker skinned armenians are just considered obv nonwhite on the face of it.

i've never thought of the kardashians, or armenians, as white tbh

i'm just confused how excited ppl are about "kanye being political"

idk why it merits excitement either, when as that blog itself points out, kanye has always been political (cf the knife)

i remain unimpressed by your ability to remain unimpressed

Despite his egotism and incoherence, I'm excited that he's taking on this particular topic. Corporate prisons and the overall justice system in the US is a major catastrophe that barely gets the attention it deserves. I have to applaud anyone who can bring more focus to such a seriously fucked up situation even if it's done in a less than perfect manner.

the kardashians are white - just look at how popular their show is

The "swallower" line ruins "New Slaves" for me.

Not unlike the mall/stall lines of N's in Paris.

I'm so out of the Kanye loop that I had no idea about his thing with Kardashian.

alfred that's being out of, like, the LIFE loop. people who have never heard a kanye song know that. no wonder you hate biographical criticism

at the grocery store I check out People's 50 Most Beautiful lists and read Vanity Fair. Dat's dat.

it's easy to remove yourself from celebrity culture if you never gave a damn about it.

i'm not sure how it's possible to keep up with kanye in any sense and have no idea that he's dating kim kardashian

anyway

there's some obvious homophobic something something in the sword-swallower

i don't think this is homophobic at all, it's just a pun

I kind of...don't? Not since WTT.

i'm not convinced kanye really hates himself

yeah i really don't buy this at all, either

Almost every solo thing Kanye has done starting with 808s has been dripping with self-loathing

i feel like he can be read that way, there's always been an element of self-loathing, 'i'd rather buy 80 gold chains / and go ignant'

xp!

maybe he loathes the position he's in in our culture but i don't think he loathes himself

i think there's an emerging generation gap in his fanbase, happens to anyone who's this big for this long

― my mans ray manzarek (some dude), Tuesday, May 21, 2013 11:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is def otm imo--in my encounters with deej's world of young people there's total awe over MBTF & even WTT which i have just never given half a good goddamn about

it can be hard to tell the two apart xp

i've always heard it as more solipsism x buying into the tortured artist myth

i mean doubtless he has moments of self-dislike, as all humans do, but i don't think it seems pathological

i can't believe that, of all people, ilx posters are unable to comprehend the overlap between anger at the outside world and self-loathing

damn

my beautiful dark twisted message board

lol n/a

i don't think this is homophobic at all, it's just a pun

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, May 22, 2013 10:47 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you... do know what a pun... is, right?

he listens to kanye west of course he does

do you know what homophobia is?

out of interest were the boston bombers considered white?

lex there were like 50 threads that dealt with that q

depends on who you ask ime

i never got the sense that the kardashians were considered white but i'll cede to kanye on this

well the question would be, were the kardashians considered anything else? if not, then they're white

^^^

ime people with heritage from that part of the world (turkey, the caucasus) who have lighter skin than people who'd be referred to as "black" or "brown" but who also definitely don't have standard white european features are just referred to by the nationality of their heritage (when it's mentioned)

the last parentheses is key

lex there were like 50 threads that dealt with that q

there was one, and i didn't read it because it was so -fast-moving

defining ethnicity by how much it's mentioned is kinda weird. we know there are certain things ethnic minorities can do to be less defined by their background, whether that's class/financial privilege or not living within their immigrant community

It's not really that weird when you consider that race in the US is defined by how far you deviate from being generically white/how easily your ethnicity can assimilate into being generically white.

defining ethnicity by how much it's mentioned is kinda weird. we know there are certain things ethnic minorities can do to be less defined by their background, whether that's class/financial privilege or not living within their immigrant community

I'm a lil sympathetic but see Sergio garcias comments today

DJP otm, you're either white or not white more or less

the kardashians mention their background all the time.

also smh at the idea that there's not some fairly obvious cultural context about men performing oral sex on other men without which the sword swallower line makes no sense.

so guyz is snooki white?

i also think that the way kim k has been depicted in the media has not been exactly the same as a roughly equivalent white woman eg paris hilton would have been depicted

what about vin diesel

theres a big difference between 'voluntary identification' and 'imposed identification'... i appreciate that Kim identifies as Armenian American but im not sure how much the public cares

vin diesel and the rock are two good examples of what it means when casting directors want 'ethnically ambiguous' characters

wtf

s clover are you white

i was looking up other prominent americans of caucasian (lol) descent, and wow, this dude has a crazy story

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Shalikashvili

I was half paying attention when I was reading that blog post and got really excited that kanye had a song called Black Seinfeld

s clover are you white

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Wednesday, May 22, 2013 11:52 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

here's a picture of me, u figure it out

http://www.hammillpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/hello-yes-this-is-dog.jpg

i've always thought of vin diesel and the rock as white too

I was half paying attention when I was reading that blog post and got really excited that kanye had a song called Black Seinfeld

― puff puff post (uh oh I'm having a fantasy), Wednesday, May 22, 2013 10:55 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wow you're going to get really pumped when you find out about wale

haha

part of kardashian's media story surely is that they are "exotic" looking

Hasn't Kim been treated in the media almost EXACTLY like Paris was, at least up to a certain point where their paths diverged? It was like one day the tabloids straight up swapped them out.

The saddest thing about that one line is he's been holding onto it since like 2002, but back then it was "we the nut bussas, and they the swallowers." If your devil's advocate defense of that line is it's not just gay men but also women who suck dick and aren't leaders then yeah go for it.

my interpretation of that line re homophobia is that it further demonizes being on the receiving end in gay sex (iirc there is/was a perception in the DL scene that a top can not really be gay). but i think it's a fairly overt play on words about people criticizing him for being an asshole & that he'd rather remain individualistic than conform to societal norms of niceness. i don't think he's making any comment about gay people.

he is not making a comment about gay people he is just demonizing being on the receiving end of gay sex ok

I just said he wrote the line ten years ago, before he was widely defined as an asshole!

"'i wrote that line ten years ago, before i was widely defined as an asshole,' west concedes."

he is not making a comment about gay people he is just demonizing being on the receiving end of gay sex ok

― da croupier, Wednesday, May 22, 2013 1:15 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

that's my devil's advocate reading of the line... i don't actually think there's demonization there

I just said he wrote the line ten years ago, before he was widely defined as an asshole!

― my mans ray manzarek (some dude), Wednesday, May 22, 2013 1:35 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

even then i don't see it as homophobic. it's sloppy or lazy as a metaphor maybe.

Won't begin to analyze the import of "We top of the totem pole"

it's a simplistic understanding of power relationships during sex that originally derives from homophobic/misogynistic roots but like j0rdan i'd call it clichéd or lazy rather than actively homophobic

I just don't get when people do the "gosh it doesn't bother me" shtick when it's obvious why it COULD bother someone.

well anything COULD bother someone

but anyway i'm saying it's not offensive full stop

I love how righteous jord has been lately about addressing charlemagne the god's mister cee comments, or writers who still say 'pause,' and get a little confused why he's so much more forgiving of things like this kanye line or what a. banks said about a$ap. mostly because I really respect his pov on these things and want to understand it.

but anyway i'm saying it's not offensive full stop

there is plenty of questionable shit that i'm able to overlook/contextualize/ignore/etc but the trick is not tell people that they're wrong to be offended by it just because you can

not to tell people, I mean. Debating whether something is a little racist or a little homophobic or whatever is stupid. "I'd rather be a dick than a swallower" can obviously be read as homophobic and if it slides into your grey area than good for you, buy yourself a cookie.

unless you're actually arguing you like the song BECAUSE of that line, then by all means argue its merit. If you're saying you like Kanye or the track IN SPITE OF it, then let people say they don't like it for the obvious reasons there are to.

The line bothers me more now than it would've in 2004, I can tell you. Not enough to dismiss the song or performance.

I didn't even realize Kim K was Armenian. I just thought she was just one of those southern european olive-complected motherfuckers. She's definitely white but not "good white".

I did get into a conversation a while back tho about how differently the Kardashians would be percieved if they dated white men instead of black.

if kim got famous off a sex tape with aj mclean and was currently pregnant with eminem's child, I dunno if things would be all that different.

haha my first reaction was "wouldn't the better analogy be Aaron Carter rather than AJ"

I hate the way my brain works sometimes

that scenario would drastically change what The Soup says about them, at least

i think there's still a lot of anxiety about the black male / white female pairing, from both sides

now dan forced me to think of Kanye getting famous off a blowjob from Barbara Bush.

xposts i can deal with this stuff in music in general otherwise i wouldn't be able to enjoy basically any hip hop. i mean the "behind doors dick-takers" line in 'shooter' bothers me every time i hear it but its still a great song. what i have a problem with is seeing a song praised for 'raising important issues' or w/e and then having something like this glossed over.

s.clover, have you ever heard robin thicke's original "oh, shooter"? It's literally the same song except for no shitty lil wayne lines piped in the instrumental breaks. Highly recommended!

Thicke was one of my candidates for alternate universe "I hit it first" guy instead of AJ

that is the nicest thing anyone's ever said about ray j

"trying to get a piece of cake / take it off of your plate / eat it right in your face"

The problem with that lyric is no multiple mentions of "Hampton"

I love how righteous jord has been lately about addressing charlemagne the god's mister cee comments, or writers who still say 'pause,' and get a little confused why he's so much more forgiving of things like this kanye line or what a. banks said about a$ap. mostly because I really respect his pov on these things and want to understand it.

― my mans ray manzarek (some dude), Wednesday, May 22, 2013 4:12 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

well i just don't think the kanye line is homophobic, i really don't.

banks is a little different. i don't really agree with her "outing" asap rocky but i did think that the incredible backlash against her in that spat was partly sexist and partly because people just want her to go away. i was simply making a point that making gossip public is not a new thing in rap music and that she wouldn't have been pilloried for doing so had she been someone else.

i like how you've decided he's making a play on words but only using one of the two meanings

you see he's saying he's a dick, but it's better to be a dick than to just blindly accept society...he is not ALSO saying you shouldn't want to swallow semen no sir how could you think it!

it's a wry utilization of a common homophobic conceit, not an endorsement of it

i mean what would even be the context in the song of him "endorsing homophobia"

christ i thought you were a gawker writer not a gawker commenter

it's a stupid line but why is the swallower assumed to be a man here, that's sexist imo

christ i thought you were a gawker writer not a gawker commenter

― da croupier, Wednesday, May 22, 2013 6:55 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

well your argument makes no sense so i'm not even sure what to tell you

i don't believe you can't understand how anyone could take that to be, at the very least, a homophobic metaphor.

xpost kanye is saying HE would rather be a dick than a swallower, and kanye is a man

like if you want to argue that it's maybe a reckless metaphor because some people will take it as an endorsement of homophobia i would disagree but at least accept it. but i don't see how anyone can read that line and think there's two meanings to it or that kanye is endorsing homophobia.

kanye is saying it's bad to be a swallower - a phrase that has (at least) two meanings. one is being one who accepts the world as it is presented to them. one of those is being one who performs oral sex on men. To say this is not a homophobic metaphor would be to suggest that kanye is making a play on words but not meaning half the play.

you can say "oh he doesn't really mean it, he's just trying to be witty". But if someone else is more sensitive to the subject, don't be facetious about it and pretend that one has to actively be advocating homophobia in order to make a homophobic joke.

Lex otm about this way up the thread

totally, but i'm not debating whether it's offensive "full stop" or "actively" homophobic. It's totally in the zone where if someone says it's offensive and homophobic they're not wrong.

xpost kanye is saying HE would rather be a dick than a swallower, and kanye is a man

― da croupier, Wednesday, May 22, 2013 6:57 PM (21 minutes ago)

well another way of looking at it is he'd rather be a man than a woman (or submissive in some sense)

another way of looking at it is that he'd rather be dick van dyke than a sword swallower

i agree w/ you more or less

Lex otm re: it being an invocation of fucked up power relations during sex. He's using a really sexist/homophobic but common shorthand to get his idea across, but whether he meant it as an endorsement of homophobia/misogyny is kind of irrelevant to it still holding up a pretty fucked up way of thinking.

i think he's endorsing dick nixon's politics over those of contemporary conservative icon, Utah Attorney General John Swallow.

well your argument makes no sense so i'm not even sure what to tell you

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, May 22, 2013 3:56 PM (55 minutes ago)

this is fucking bonkers. kanye's basically saying that he'd rather be a aggressive boor than a faggot/woman/weakling. in order to accomplish this, he's chosen a word that suggests homosexuality, femininity and weakness. crucially, the word "swallower" only suggests weakness because it implies homosexuality and femininity. to pretend that the important, meaning-generating portion of the double entendre simply doesn't exist is absurd.

see there's black sheep, and there's tommy boy/ but i'd rather be little nicky than the waterboy

the waterboy was a good movie, dont hate

that is literally like top 5 one of my least favorite movies i've ever seen

just one more important controversy stirred up by kanye west's controversial new track

i guess you had to be in middle school, grandpa xp

to start hating it

i was in 11th grade when it came out, and throughout my senior year, that was the movie my classmates would wanna watch if the teacher let the class watch a movie. it was hell. and i mean, i was in middle school when Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore came out, and those movies made me question just how juvenile i thought i was.

kanye's basically saying that he'd rather be a aggressive boor than a faggot/woman/weakling.

jesus christ you're an idiot

okay i probably shouldn't have said that but that line has nothing to do with femininity or "weakness"

billy madison and happy Gilmore are both stone classics... the waterboy was on a level below

i mean he spells out 100% of the dick/swallower meaning in the line that precedes it

he's saying he'd rather be called a dick but be able to do what he wants than to be someone -- if you want to read it literally -- who is "swallowing" what the media or the government tells you (or "swallowing" culture)

the way i read it, the metaphor does not imply weakness via a link to femininity or homosexuality, but via a link to passivity

okay i probably shouldn't have said that but that line has nothing to do with femininity or "weakness"

without casting aspersions, shit yeah it does! to swallow, in the sexual context that KW is clearly invoking, is to be feminized, submissive and (not to put too fine a point on it) gay. i mean, come on: "swallower" is also equated with "followers" and even "slaves". it's hardly a stretch to say that followers are sometimes viewed as weak relative to their strong leaders, and this is a call to arms, after all. kanye's saying he's a leader, and a dick in more than one metaphorical sense, and that he's proud of this position relative to the followers who swallow what dicks (like him!) spout.

i mean, you can interpret the implied gay slur out if you want, but i see that as willful blindness to a fairly blatant suggestion.

he's saying he'd rather be called a dick but be able to do what he wants than to be someone -- if you want to read it literally -- who is "swallowing" what the media or the government tells you (or "swallowing" culture)

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, May 22, 2013 9:15 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nmfBE3nsIQg/T4YRobx1LgI/AAAAAAAAA7Q/Zx_qqH5ARFY/s1600/jerry-seinfield-getting-up.gif

the way i read it, the metaphor does not imply weakness via a link to femininity or homosexuality, but via a link to passivity

it's strange to presume that the sort of generalized way you want to take "swallower" can be totally disassociated from the (rather obvious) context that everyone is pointing. i mean, yeah, he probably means it in that broad way. but there are a 1000 ways to say that without invoking a phallus and everything that goes along with it. it doesn't matter what he intended, ultimately.

When he finally comes out, we'll have to bump this thread and add another layer.

it's not generalized at all. the song -- which ffs is called "new slaves" -- makes the implication very specific. the opposite reading is the one that's generalized.

THINGS CAN MEAN MORE THAN ONE THING

everyone gets the meaning you're talking about. it's a super-obvious additional meaning, the engine that gives the line metaphorical bite, that you are failing to admit for no reason i can understand.

you know, that old cliche about swallowing culture, that thing that slaves do, duh

hmm yes it's almost as if "slaves" might have more than one meaning hmmm

person who swallows things?

hmm yes it's almost as if it's a metaphor hmm yes

I don't really care strongly about that line but j0rdan you're being dense

j0rdan can you please edit the rap genius entry, these guys are totally in the dark

hahaha if the implication of that post is that rap genius users side with your side of the argument, then i have some bad news for you...

man i miss deej

this "all vs one" thing is making me so nostalgic

i'd rather be one who excels than a viking

no i just think it would be hilarious classic RG shit if the entry for that lyric explained that a swallower is someone who is "swallowing" what the media or the government tells you (or "swallowing" culture)

hmm yes it's almost as if it's a metaphor hmm yes

of course it's a metaphor. but "person who swallows things" is not a typical meaning of the word "slaves". this metaphor acquires one of its primary dimensions from juxtaposition with the word "dick". dicks, as i'm sure you know, have been known to produce fluid. certain parties have been known to ingest that fluid. i would hope you could take it from there...

wait wait is that what's throwing deej?

sorry i mean jordan?

all you goons post all the same things

wow, all this over one rap lyric

it's a metaphor

What a thread.

not even a GOOD lyric, one of the worst in the song

you're gonna make me come to your hampton house and go bobby boucher

ha ok

honestly the SNL songs are second best to "Awesome" for me

to be clear, i'm not up in arms about the lyric per se, i'm just sick of people thinking their lack of personal offense over something like this means anything more than that they're either distanced or desensitized. also ironic coming from somebody who's written articles about the subject that get those "what's the big deal?" comments.

he'd rather be getting his dick sucked than be sucking some dick, is what he's saying. obviously like j0rdan says it's deeper than he doesn't want to suck dicks and has to be understood in the context of what the track is trying to say-- but i guess if it makes you feel uncomfortable, it makes you feel uncomfortable, even if you can listen past the surface meaning and i think everyone here is capable of that.

alright?

in the history of fucked up kanye lines, this one is mild and mediocre, too.

that's the thing "it's a metaphor" i get. "it's not offensive, because it's a metaphor" i don't. and yeah, the fact that people are bothering to defend a mediocre metaphor makes it rankle even more.

that's what i'm saying, though. people offended by it aren't stupid enough to not be able to see it's a metaphor. it's about not wanting to suck dicks and even if it's a metaphor, it's still offensive.

j-0 needs to quit trying to break it down rapgenius style for people that already get it.

or he could take on now she claim that i bruise her esophagus / head of the class and she just want a swallowship.

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

haha i forget that that hadn't been posted yet

when you guys gang up on me i'm always right though

uh

i wish i could like that post deej

when you guys gang up on me i'm always right though

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Thursday, May 23, 2013 2:05 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

well I guess a lotta n----- do gang bang / and if we run trains, we all in the same gang

Hi deej :-)

More projections tonight and through the weekend, apparently.

and uh there's multiple pictures floating around of one specific accidentally-leaked iTunes tracklist, for what that's worth.

I thought both of the SNL songs were dope

tracklist seems real, kinda weird

https://twitter.com/aclu/status/338080399299338240

Somebody post the track list

Lol "Ma$e"

yo I would pay mad dollars for a ye/mase collabo

mase was on cruel summer so it wouldn't be a surprise if he was on this album

Oh for real

I never bothered with the whole thing

So James Blake might be this album's token white guy?

And who is "Lonne Chia"? I can't find any info on this person.

the "lonnie chia" thing is so aggravating... it took me 1.5 seconds of googling to figure this out

http://lorinechia.com/

i'm admonishing bloggers, not markoP

thought that said "I'm astonishing bloggers" and was like damn dogg

Oh I Googled and saw the "Did you mean Lorine Chia?" but was too lazy to investigate further.

i'm astonishing bloggers / no dom P

I'm the blogger astonisher / East-coast punisher

"I'm astonishing bloggers"

srsly this is a lovely phrase

I'm gonna make a very low stakes bet and say the laeaked tracklist is fake, I am suspicious

wasn't that autotune ballad thing "Awesome" supposed to be on here? i also sorta doubt the only GOOD Music artist he'd put on here is John Legend (although I'm okay with no Pusha or Sean)

also no "Yeezy Season," which has been performed and spun at public events, feel like the fakers are just not being thorough at this point

tbf I looked on that beloved hive of insanity KanyeToThe and the general consensus is that "On Site" is the actual name of "Yeezy Season"

astonishing bloggers is the 21c cellar door

Hey Kanye, you know what rhymes with a word? The same word. Bam.

wasn't that autotune ballad thing "Awesome" supposed to be on here? i also sorta doubt the only GOOD Music artist he'd put on here is John Legend (although I'm okay with no Pusha or Sean)

― thot police (fadanuf4erybody), Saturday, May 25, 2013 2:47 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

my guess that "perfect" = "awesome"

"Perfect Bitch" was floating around as a possible Cruel Summer track last year, it's not the same song

kanyetothe has compelling evidence that it's fake

never doubt kanyetothe

good photoshop tho

when kanyetothe guys were the first to put "new slaves" projection footage on youtube, those guys were like going nuts in the YT comments patting themselves on the back and then going to war in the comments of any site that posted the youtube without explicitly crediting the kanyetothe guy who uploaded it, it was hilarious

i love that forum so much

so apparently the projections this weekend are just "New Slaves" again? that seems really kind of stupid, given that the whole impact of the idea to begin with was the element of surprise, of people having to go to catch the premiere of something they couldn't already basically see on the internet

REASONS TRACKLIST IS FAKE:

Lightning is the name of the sound effects

New Slaves shouldn't be 9 mins long

Track 3 isnt a single

God should be called I Am A God and we've been told it's a very long track

Jay Electronica lol

Perfect should be called Perfect ****

James Blake said he's not on the album

Tyler said he's not on the album

iTunes doesn't use a capital f when they put "(feat. ______)" in a song.

One of the Pictures says 2010 Roc-a-fella Records; The other says 2013 Roc-a-fella Records

CSI: iTunes

hahahahha "Track 3 isnt a single"

i love that forum so much

― J0rdan S., Saturday, May 25, 2013 11:53 AM Bookmark Flag Post

G.O.A.T

kanyetothe surely the best argument in favour of ilx avatars

those guys turned their wrath on me once when i posted something crediting hypetrak that hypetrak had found on KTT

it was the same day that one of martorialist's blurbs got me in trouble w/ a member of a ny rap crew for calling him a weed carrier. my instagram was a mess

OP of this thread is the goat message board post http://www.kanyetothe.com/forum/index.php?topic=456240.0

You're just scratching the surface, their miscellaneous section is a sub /b/ hellhole.

ARTICLES ABOUT HOUSTON PROJECTION: (Including Pitchfork we made it fam)

that place is literally dudes posting opinions w/out articulating why they think them, its like 'what if someone was raised on twitter' in forum form

when you put it that way it doesn't seem like a very unique message board

yeah that looks like "a message board" with "a particularly lucid usic post" at the top

do they copy and paste those images or do they get to choose from them like smileys?

that communicating-via-avatars/gifs thing is a genuine traffic getter from what i understand ~is vague~

i completely hate it

THEN I WAS LIKE http://likegif.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/middle-finger-gif-13.gif

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9627011/photos/dj.png

that post makes me proud to be on the internet

masterpiece

At least until you realise that they have a poster that takes pictures of his dumps and grades them a la pitchfork.

http://i.imgur.com/QuXSanN.jpg

Quality titles, looking forward to some Obama verses.

Macklemore! Jesus!! Fred D(urst?)!!! Barack!!!! IMMORTAL TECHNIQUE!!!!!

lol that person has a keane album

lol @ featuring Chief Keef and Barack Obama.

idk whether some of those titles being a bit too on the nose makes me think "obv a fake" or "obv real"

clearly fake

obv fake but still how kanye would it be to sample some lines from an obama speech and they put "feat. Barack Obama" in the title?

I really want them to be real

kanye should sample barack calling him a "jackass" at the beginning of a cover of Taylor Swift's "Innocent"

I was talking to Jesus the other day and he didn't say anything about being on the album, so I'm pretty sure it's fake.

Kanye couldn't even get the real Bernie Mac on his albums

More new tracks - On Site and I Am A God.

www.factmag.com/2013/06/10/watch-kanye-west-perform-two-brutal-new-yeezus-tracks-in-new-york/

my no-radio-rips, no-snippets, no-shoddy-live-footage policy is making this promo campaign VERY relaxing for me

random lex-asked policies

croissants

Fall off starts here.

i think the bounceback starts here!

Let's hope you're right.

sounds dope to me

i think the bounceback starts here!

― lex pretend, Monday, June 10, 2013 1:00 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bounceback from his massively successful song "mercy," which largely dominated 2012?

well clearly he means artistically

for the record i think lex is right

bounceback from his massively successful song "mercy," which largely dominated 2012?

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Monday, June 10, 2013 4:38 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

the flip of this is "bounceback from his widely panned 'cruel summer' which produced two dope singles and a bunch of ripe ass"

That wasn't really an album though.

Yeah nobody on YMCMB had to 'bounce back' from We Are Young Money

because it was better than cruel summer

It's more that there's no quality standard to meet for label comps, they're almost always a grab bag with a couple hits.

i dont think anyone looks at kanye as having slipped in the past year.

Yeah it's not like the things people disliked about CS were the Kanye parts (although "Cold" was ripe ass imo)

so of all the features to bring back...Bon Iver?

the sound was kinda muddled but i didn't realize it was bon iver until he said it after the album finished

the part that vernon is on is pretty dominated by keef from what i could tell

a few songs on the middle of the album are dominated by dancehall singers but he didn't say who they were which leaves open the possibility that it travis scott has also figured out how to morph into mavado

So you've heard it J0rdan? Are there any big songs on this? (Mercy big, Clique big, Monster big, etc.)

i think "on site" is on that level, but just talking stylistically. i don't think it's a radio single.

also the song that samples tnght/interpolates "down 4 my niggaz" (people couldn't really decide about this, lol) is pretty massive, but again not really a galvanizing anthem like "mercy" or "clique"

there's definitely nothing as straightforward as those tracks though, it's a very jarring album. a number of songs have, like, essentially smash cuts, where it will go abruptly from some nine inch nails shit into a blooming soul sample and back again.

i don't know if he was playing the album in order (and he sort of hinted that he didn't play the entire thing -- he played the same 10 songs twice) but if he did it starts with "on site" ---> "black skinhead" ---> "new slaves" and really gets into a nice rhythm before getting really bizarre right after (starting with the keef/bon iver song). it's sorta like watching an asteroid break apart or something. again, assuming he played the songs in order.

the CDQ of "black skinhead" is sick, it sounds a lot like "atlas"

i honestly had no clue "Mercy" would be a big radio record (or "Paris" for that matter), so i really don't expect to be able to call what will be a big single or not off this.

true. i mean, i could see "on site" or "new slaves" being a hit if he were to send either to radio but he may not

i wouldn't be surprised if it was 10 songs. WTT was a pretty concise 46-minute album.

feeling sorta stupid i skipped this listening sesh

oh well i'll hear it soon

a number of songs have, like, essentially smash cuts, where it will go abruptly from some nine inch nails shit into a blooming soul sample and back again.

"On Site" is definitely this. At the moment I think it's the song I'm most excited to hear completely. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrhOBk-G_60

so the abrupt switchup at the end of the "New Slaves" projection video is part of the album track, not an excerpt of a different song?

was "Baby, You're Awesome" played in the listening session?

yeah the "new slaves" bit is just a coda of sorts. the sound got really poor around that part and it was basically impossible to hear the vocals. kanye didn't mention frank ocean when he briefly listed collaborators so i think we're still in the dark regarding who exactly is singing that part.

he didn't play "baby you're awesome. part of me thinks it's because it wouldn't exactly fit the vibe of last night, but maybe it's just the "pinocchio story" of this cycle.

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1708812/kanye-west-yeezus-album-review.jhtml

wow, Caramanica got the big interview: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/arts/music/kanye-west-talks-about-his-career-and-album-yeezus.html?smid=tw-nytimesmusic&seid=auto&_r=0

lol the Dixie Chicks were almost the original Taylor Swift:

I remember when both Gnarls Barkley and Justin [Timberlake] lost for Album of the Year, and I looked at Justin, and I was like: “Do you want me to go onstage for you? You know, do you want me to fight”

He sure baits Kanye into saying nonsense.

C: You want the historical record to be right.

K: Yeah, I don’t want them to rewrite history right in front of us. At least, not on my clock. I really appreciate the moments that I was able to win rap album of the year or whatever. But after a while, it’s like: “Wait a second; this isn’t fair. This is a setup.” I remember when both Gnarls Barkley and Justin lost for Album of the Year, and I looked at Justin, and I was like: “Do you want me to go onstage for you? You know, do you want me to fight” —

C: For you.

K: For what’s right. I am so credible and so influential and so relevant that I will change things. So when the next little girl that wants to be, you know, a musician and give up her anonymity and her voice to express her talent and bring something special to the world, and it’s time for us to roll out and say, “Did this person have the biggest thing of the year?” — that thing is more fair because I was there.

tend to think Justin responded better to the loss

I am so credible and so influential and so relevant that I will change things.

BTW 311 I am ready to fight.

love this tho:

Since I did the Louis Vuitton sneaker, I’ve never been allowed to be in a continually creative structured place that makes product. I’ve had meetings where a guy actually told me, “What we’re trying to figure out is how we can control you.” In the meeting, to me! Why do you want to control me? Like, I want the world to be better! All I want is positive! All I want is dopeness! Why would you want to control that?

Architecture — you know, this one Corbusier lamp was like, my greatest inspiration.

^things you want to c&p over and over again

if anything on this record is as good as the abbreviation"'gevity" I am all over it

love that interview

tend to think Justin responded better to the loss

― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, June 11, 2013 8:34 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

more importantly, Justin responded better to every single win

Kanye is the Mozart of Cocaine Thoughts

JUSTICE

i agree with alfred that some of caramancia's questions are leading/trollish.

yeah it's pretty great

does he do a ton of coke? he sounds way cokey. i guess he always has though.

idk why he is the way he is. he does sound sheenian at certain points in this interview.

i would do a ton of coke if i were him. 2 tons!

really? that seems incongruous with what you said about being able to find fulfillment purely from the serenity of nature in the rebellion thread. anyway, kanye otm when he says:

I think the fact that I can’t sing that well is what makes “808s” so special.

the other day i listened to some 808s songs i've literally avoided since 2008. still can't deal. so much outright garbage on that album.

i agree it is uneven, but i like the overall concept of a sad "introspective" kanye record with a minimum of rapping and i think that when it works -- like on love lockdown and heartless -- it works really well.

great concept, shitty album

that's the thing: I don't care for introspective Kanye anymore, and on the CD and LR tracks where it worked he relied on narratives and reflections about other people. The introspection fed off his experiences with his mom, family dinners, etc. The beats helped too. From 2008 onwards celebrity as subject consumes him. He just isn't fun anymore even with the musical sophistication.

all of my defenses of 808s were based on kanye making an album that wasn't mbdtf as a followup.

jordan's got me interested in this one tho.

"So when the next little girl that wants to be, you know, a musician and give up her anonymity and her voice to express her talent and bring something special to the world".....

thought this was snowblind gibberish at first, but "giving up your voice to express your talent" seems a good formulation of the pop music machine....

So when the next little girl that wants to be, you know, a musician and give up her anonymity and her voice to express her talent and bring something special to the world, a man will be there to grab the mic and say she didn't deserve that award.

More like be there to say a black woman was more deserving.

Alfred nailed what's bothered me about Kanye for a while unthread

All he wants is dopeness!

There are so many lines in that interview I wanted to cut and paste here, but my god, it'd be less than fully fair to Kanye to post anything other than the entire thing.

why won't NYT publish the word "shit"

it's 2013

"I’ve been connected to the most culturally important albums of the past four years, the most influential artists of the past ten years. You have like, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Howard Hughes, Nicolas Ghesquière, Anna Wintour, David Stern."

Poll!

Those are some amazing answers. Great use of third-person and crazed historical comparisons.

"Beauty, truth, awesomeness. That's all it is."

Early draft of Ode on a Grecian Urn.

So when the next little girl that wants to be, you know, a musician and give up her anonymity and her voice to express her talent and bring something special to the world, a man will be there to grab the mic and say she didn't deserve that award.

― some dude, Wednesday, June 12, 2013 2:47 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hahaha this is EXACTLY what i thought

i feel like j-kwon could have been slotted into his list of great artists of the last ten years, between henry ford and walt disney.

i also want everyone to know that i hate jon caramanica.

Woild.love a pic of how Caramanica responded to each Ye line.

Still they got me like Yeezus.

I love how Kanye is so wildly, declaratively ambitious and inventive and pioneering and forward-thinking and broad-minded and in the end what he cares most about is winning more Grammys. That'd be like some self-professed great chef aspiring to get a sandwich on the McDonald's menu.

otm

hahaha

ikr!

Odub must contemplate

i like the elite gymnastics guys take on kanyes weird grammy obsession:

"when kanye attempts to make sense of the grammy awards, he refuses to settle on a position as boring as simple cynicism. he is completely aware of how out of touch and off the mark grammy voters tend to be - he sees that as a challenge. in his eternal, astonishing optimism about the power of art and creative achievement in the face of all potential obstacles he believes that in order to conquer the gordian knot of exotic wrongness that is the grammy awards, he simply needs to make something so good that even the legendarily inept grammy voters can’t deny it’s greatness."

"These McDonald's eaters WILL love my waygu beef panini dammit."

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4wobf7NRp1rxoylbo1_1280.jpg

i'm not sure that's 100% true, the interview touched on where that obsession seems to actually come from - kanye sees the grammys as a historical document. and not just the grammys - that's why he's obsessed with "changing radio" and probably with sales too - tangible markers of his achievements and success. it's this weird mixture of an extreme hip-hop mindset w/r/t awards etc, and an extreme indie mindset w/r/t the purity of ~art~, and the fact that he doesn't attempt to make them gel together is what makes him so...whatever. i'd say fascinating but it's not that fascinating. you're not sure whether he doesn't try to reconcile them because he's too dumb or coked-up to realise there's a disconnect or whether it's a very admirable #YOLO give-no-fucks thing.

also the ability to be confident in art-for-art's-sake and not need the grammys' validation at all is something of a privilege - the racial dimensions to being written out of history etc

What Kanye needs is a satellite radio station.

And a hug.

what he needs is a Grammy.

he has 21 of them!

Album of the Year, that is

if anything on this record is as good as the abbreviation"'gevity" I am all over it

― daft on the causes of punk (schlump), Wednesday, 12 June 2013 02:00 (11 hours ago) Bookmark

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

altho... it's not even an abbrev cos the way he uses it you can also have a short gevity

genius

brevity vs. 'gevity

gevity is the soul of twits

hmm idk now, is longevity a neutral term for duration or does it imply a long span

discount my 'gevity youll end up apologin'

The thing his statistical obsession reminds me most of is Michael Jackson's goal to make an album that sold 100 million copies -- it's looking for some kind of quantification of status. In Michael's case it seemed like a proxy for love, in Kanye's it's a more abstract form of respect, but either way it comes across as extreme neediness.

In the early nineties Neil Tennant, referring to the S-A-W acts who went on and on in interviews about"being about longevity," said the act of surviving in the industry for years is for artists itself a validation almost as powerful as a Grammy).

What Kanye needs is

http://www.pophistorydig.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/jackson-float-uk-1-310.jpg

i found 50% of that interview to be almost completely unintelligible

the grammys thing to me is that for a lot of these guys, the old systems of measurement are corrupted, so they no longer matter. they don't trust radio, don't care about singles downloads and see every successive album sell a little bit less than the last. how do you even measure success in the industry now? virtually no one is stacking multiple platinum plaques anymore. the grammys -- no matter how fusty -- have remained uncorrupted and simple. you make something dope and hopefully people vote for you to win. it's the only system of arbitration left in the music industry that hasn't been usurped by technology and recession.

the grammys -- no matter how fusty -- have remained uncorrupted and simple.

Ow my brain. (I see what you're getting at but OW MY BRAIN.)

give or take an al walser

The Grammy voters gather:

http://www.bayarea.net/~kins/AboutMe/Raphael_fresco/Raphael_SchoolOfAthens.jpg

but the typical Grammys show these days is nine tenths music. In the days of Kenny Loggins and Bonnie Raitt there was more time for bizzers to get self-righteous in front of a mic.

i.e. the Grammys look like Dancing with the Stars or The Voice

that is insane j0rdan

"the grammys -- the last simple, uncorrupted way of knowing whether a musician and their music have truly made an impact on the world"

fuck white America -- except Neil Portnow, I desperately need his approval

well there's a few reasons why artists -- even kanye -- still care about the grammys. winning awards is nice. there is a prestige factor. for rappers, especially, there's still some sort of mutinous element to winning a grammy, i think. but also i think artists see it as one of the last arbiters left that allows them to measure themselves up against their peers & predecessors. because the old ways don't really work anymore.

the-dream said this to me in an interview. it's sort of petulant but i think there's truth in it.

"I think I have the respect of my peers, and that's the only one that matters," says The-Dream. "I definitely don't carry a certain respect with social media or whatever it is, because what a person means in music doesn't mean anything today. What I'm doing means absolutely nothing to them," he says. "That's why as much as we want to speak out most of the time against the Grammys, the point actually is that those things are decided amongst our peers in music, on what's good or not."

...yay?

so it doesn't matter that Grammys ratings have gone down, that they're less central to the music industry or to what music fans think than they've ever been, that they don't even effect record sales as much anymore? somehow having a #1 song or a #1 album has lost its luster in some more profound way? idg

i think it's more that a trophy is a trophy, and they can pretend a Grammy actually means something concrete and indisputable in the same way as, i dunno, an Olympic gold medal or a Super Bowl ring, but it totally doesn't and everybody knows that.

sales are nice but pale to the raw purity of a for your consideration poster

will smith needs to have a talk with ye about patterns

look, i'm not saying that artists SHUOLD care about the grammys. but they do! even tho kanye says he doesn't, obviously he does. i think to artists -- especially in black pop, which has been hit harder in the collapse of the industry than white pop -- it's still seen as a more pure measurement of artistic credibility than, yes, charts/sales. kanye can't beat macklemore on the charts, but he just won two grammys.

lol macklemore's gonna win a gang of grammys next year isn't he

kanye can't beat macklemore on the charts, but he just won two grammys.

so what you're saying is kanye is old now

I'm predicting most of next year's Grammy's to go to either Justin Timberlake or Daft Punk.

i think to artists -- especially in black pop, which has been hit harder in the collapse of the industry than white pop -- it's still seen as a more pure measurement of artistic credibility than, yes, charts/sales.

Trying to take this at face value, and acknowledging that we've got two anecdotes via Kanye and The-Dream along these lines, this is still kinda hard to believe. I realize the Grammy voters en masse in 2013 aren't the same ones that, say, gave Jethro Tull the metal Grammy and all, but...

The first award for Best Rap Performance was first presented to DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince (the vocal duo consisting of DJ Jazzy Jeff and Will Smith) for "Parents Just Don't Understand".The ceremony was not without controversy; nominees Jeff and Smith led a boycott in protest of the award presentation not being televised, and some members of the rap community felt that more qualified artists were overlooked. After the 1990 ceremony, where Young MC won the award, the category was split into Best Rap Solo Performance and Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group.

These two categories were once again combined from 2012, as a result of a restructure of Grammy categories. It was the consequence of the Recording Academy's wish to decrease the list of categories and awards and to eliminate the distinctions between solo and duo or group performances.

1989: DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
1990: Young MC
2012: Jay-Z & Kanye West
2013: Jay-Z & Kanye West

Meanwhile I posted Josh's McDonald's bit over on Tumblr and that's caused a bit of discussion:

marathonpacks:

It’s tacky to “us,” but I think it makes perfect sense if you consider that Kanye considers himself a “professional creative” more than he considers himself an “artist,” and says as much in the interview. He namedrops Gil Scott Heron and Dead Prez, but via that interview, he’s thinking of his process and cultural positionality more in the lineage of designers and “image people,” aka the advertising, design, and branding worlds. Those people think of themselves as artists, too, only their work has a functionality and foregrounding of style that they can easily reconcile with the more romantic, “outsider” perspective we ascribe to transcendent artists. They also love rewarding each other for their brilliance in creating art-with-a-function. There’s nothing tacky about seeking the highest award your chosen industry has on offer if you choose this perspective, which Kanye clearly has. I bet he’d love to get a Clio for his pre-release projection stunts.

(also, I love how he puts David Stern in his Mount Rushmore of legends including Anna Wintour and Walt Disney. Honestly, I really love it.)

--

tomewing:

To the extent that the ‘function’ disappears. There are ad awards which are specifically ABOUT “effectiveness” (how well an ad drives sales) in which effectiveness is actually a mighty 33% of the judging criteria.

Sorry, work head on here. Kanye is pretty good at marketing, yes, and pre-release campaigns are the new music videos (or something), though how many of them make a success of records which wouldn’t have been highly anticipated anyhow?

so is Kanye an institutionalist or an insurrectionist?

is he eternal? or an eternalist?

is kanye possible?

Human, dancer

"jackass" aspect aside, i find it pretty hard to begrudge kanye's contradictory impulses re institutions like the grammys and don't feel he has any responsibility to resolve them

the grammys are a historical document now? i might have agreed with this when i was like 10 and used to read about the past winners in the world almanac. It's a big budget TV show that uses celebrities to help businesses sell shit, and not much more than that, with past awards being presented to such game-changers as "Afternoon Delight" and "Eric Clapton Unplugged."

gevity wins over grammys. if people still care about your music years later or if it gains popularity over the years, how is that less awesome than what your friends think right after it comes out? he says right in the interview that some of his biggest game-changers were polarizing. if some people dont understand it right away, obviously he won't be winning every award immediately.

yeah i mean...pretty much every award he hasn't won, he's been vindicated by a huge number of fans and critics and peers who would readily say he deserved that award. with that being the case he really doesn't even need to say anything.

"he really doesn't even need to say anything."

you must be new here.

lol

well i mean...he has a lot he CAN talk about in interviews, but he still talks about the Grammys as much as possible

it's almost as if someone who once called his crew the grammy family might be abnormally occupied by the grammys

dude should work it out in therapy and tell us what he figures out with the Plastic Kardashian Band

"tell me about your grandmother, kanye..."

not sure the world is ready for My Beautiful Dark Double Fantasy winning AOTY.

yeah i mean...pretty much every award he hasn't won, he's been vindicated by a huge number of fans and critics and peers who would readily say he deserved that award.

some people who are as successful as kanye -- across fields, from sports to politics to business -- are driven by slights that are minimal or imagined or so far in the past that normal people wonder why anyone could still care about such a thing. it's mania, basically, but it's also what keeps them motivated even after everyone in the world has told them how great and legendary they are. the example i always think of is albert pujols, who immediately hailed as one of the best players in baseball and very soon thereafter one of the best players of all-time. but there were still stories of, like, how he could never get over being drafted in the 15th round (or whatever). or how he could never get over the fact that the cardinals wouldn't offer him a contract that made him the highest paid player of all time, even though he had more money than anyone could ever want.

lol the Dixie Chicks were almost the original Taylor Swift:

I remember when both Gnarls Barkley and Justin (Timberlake) lost for Album of the Year, and I looked at Justin, and I was like: “Do you want me to go onstage for you? You know, do you want me to fight”

Dixie Chicks produced by Rick Rubin... #GrammyStrategy

i totally get the psychology of that. i also kinda think that if you don't keep that shit to yourself to some extent it can diminish your accomplishments. xp

Kinda like when FDR admitted that the worst blow he ever suffered wasn't polio -- it was getting rejected by the Porcellian Club in Harvard.

drake is already one of the most successful radio rappers of all time and yet!

Where was Drake when he won his first Grammy on Sunday for best rap album? The Toronto rapper, who recently moved to Los Angeles, won for his moody 2012 album Take Care. He has had 12 Grammy nominations since 2010, including three this year, but this was his first win.

At the moment his name was called, Drake was in the car, watching the pre-ceremony on his iPad.

"And then we just started going nuts. And we got out literally in the middle of the street — blocked cars. We all hugged. And then when I got back in the car I realized I had torn my suit," he said.

The happy rapper tweeted the mishap. "I just tore the sleeve off my Saint Laurent!!! Thank you all! I am so happy."

this is for winning an award that wasn't even deemed important enough to be shown on the actual broadcast

But on the other hand, Drake.

this is true

And I don't even ascribe that reaction to him being a black pop artist, I ascribe that to him being Canadian.

i'm not saying people can't be excited about awards they DO win, they totally should be. caring too much about the ones you don't win, though, smh.

"Mental pictures of Drake looking ridiculous"

The happy rapper.

kanye's response to the first question here seems pertinent to this discussion http://books.google.com/books?id=fyLttHWpa9EC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA60#v=onepage&q&f=false

it's a totally fair thing to say. he had a good year. but that was around the time he threw a fit because Gretchen Wilson won an AMA over him. that's the other thing, he doesn't just care too much about the Grammys, he's wilding out about VMAs and Kids Choice Awards and shit.

like i honestly think it's bad for hip hop that its most acclaimed artist, its bastion of cerebral non-gangsta music, is a such an idiot in some ways.

I think his ott emotionsl investment in awards nobody else cares about is an interesting, even endearing quirk. I like solipsistic Kanye though, poet of the psychological corrosiveness of celebrity. mbdtf is my favorite album by him.

that old Spin interview, wow.

Kanye To Radio: Drop Dead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppzAzjjH0ng

his attitude towards radio right now is so weird. like, he did that Rihanna remix being all "on the radio, man, I miss myself" after 6 months of "Mercy" and "Clique" blanketing the airwaves.

why does anybody still care about this guy idgi

he's a conundrum wrapped in a weirdo.

he's still trying to prove his coach wrong. every day he has to make the team. forever. i dunno, i don't actually listen to his music, i just read about him. kinda like eminem. or 50 cent. or yoko ono.

haha yeah me too. I don't think I've heard anything of his since "Otis"

he's a star/icon and a punchline and people take him seriously. critical types. kinda like puffy. theoretically, two people i wouldn't want to be stuck next to on an airplane.

i mean people take him seriously AND they kinda laugh at him at times. so, eminem and puffy. three people i wouldn't want to be next to on an airplane. and yoko. four people.

The trickster deity breaks the rules of the gods or nature, sometimes maliciously (for example, Loki) but usually with ultimately positive effects (though the trickster's initial intentions may have been either positive or negative). Often, the bending/breaking of rules takes the form of tricks (e.g. Eris) or thievery. Tricksters can be cunning or foolish or both; they are often funny even when considered sacred or performing important cultural tasks. An example of this is the sacred Iktomi, whose role is to play tricks and games and by doing so raises awareness and acts as an equalizer.

nobody ever took puff seriously, including puff. would love to be on puff's jet.

nobody ever took puff seriously

? idk if we're all working off the same definition of "seriously" here

Best Song on Diddy - Dirty Money's "Last Train to Paris"

this seems like a pretty serious thread to me

yeah there was talk of actually changing the name of the board to I Love Diddy around that time.

I miss his all-caps blog posts. All-caps tweets don't have the same oomph.

pretty sure the gap between the ilx perception of last train to paris and its public perception is larger than most things in the world, kanye's ego included

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgMFdX4VfrQ

http://twitter.com/iamdiddy/status/324958109468598274

lol

pretty sure the gap between the ilx perception of last train to paris and its public perception is larger than most things in the world

and it makes me sadder than most things in the world ;_;

then you lead a charmed life!

idk it comes across as pretty obvious why a guy so clearly concerned with achieving legendary status and working in a genre that hasn't always been recognized adequately by The Grammys would want to win THE big award they offer instead of yet another untelevised award in the particular niche they've thrown him into, even if The Grammys itself is nowhere near as relevant as it used to be.

Wanting, sure. It remaining a primary talking point even on his "this album is about not giving a fuck and not bowing to corporations" campaign is pretty sad, though.

he's a dumdum wrapped in the smallest fiddle rolled up in an enigma.

some dude otm w/ kanye and the grammys and awards show in general (only however much drake and whoever care about the grammys is how much kanye cares about the nick kids choice awards so you can imagine how much he cares about the grammys). this sketch predates the taylor swift incident by almost two years - http://www.hulu.com/watch/10349.

When were The Grammys relevant?

back when Milli Vanilli were big iirc

michael jackson won a lot of grammys & pop stars want to be michael jackson

which is kinda sad considering how un-awesome michael jackson's life was

i think the super bowl ring/gold medal analogy is apt. huge world audience. top of the world, ma.

its still a way to gauge hugeness/godliness. you can't do it with record sales anymore. or very few people can. hard to hit DMX numbers let alone vanilla ice numbers.

http://www.complex.com/music/2013/05/the-50-best-selling-rap-albums/

I thought the super bowl ring for musicians was uh playing the super bowl

since that is now the musical event with the largest audience

yeah that too.

I think that’s a responsibility that I have, to push possibilities, to show people: “This is the level that things could be at.” So when you get something that has the name Kanye West on it, it’s supposed to be pushing the furthest possibilities.

nice

sorry if this was posted already, but I think I'm changing my mind about this guy. He might really be a genius.
he might well be the andy kaufman of our time.

"I think what Kanye West is going to mean is something similar to what Steve Jobs means,
I am undoubtedly, you know, Steve of Internet, downtown, fashion, culture. Period. By a long jump.
I honestly feel that because Steve has passed, you know, it’s like when Biggie passed and Jay-Z was allowed to become Jay-Z."

- Kanye West

I wish Kanye would invent some cool new Apple devices

initial research indicates limited market for phone that interrupts all your calls with a message from Kanye

lol

My point was that the Super Bowl is actually universally acknowledged as important in football and actually means a winner is the champion team of pro football. Music has nothing that central that even remotely the majority of music fans can agree on, but the Grammys have enough symbolic weight to attract lames who think they can actually be 'champion of all music.'

" But the thing is, I don’t care about the Grammys; I just would like for the statistics to be more accurate. "

that was my favorite quote

Grammyball

my take: it's not the thing, but the principle of the thing. "why is there a music award that I am not winning?"

leaked!

HURRY UP WITH MY DAMN CROISSANTS

this album is so dope