But before I respectfully disagree with Danny I'll agree with him. Kanye is a huge leap forward in the hip-hop/R&B world. His recent singles have the artistic vision and musicality that the genre has been begging for since the late 90's.
But it is not the leap that hip-hop/R&B needs, and it is not the blending of hip-hop/R&B and rap that will save both genres from being more than an interesting footnote in history. Kayne's artistic vision provides a nice candy shell around a hollow tasteless center that is his lyrics. When you cut through all the smoke and mirrors, you find Kayne is not doing anything different than anyone else in the hip-hop/R&B world. He's just doing it artistically. Don't be fooled by flashy music videos.
Kayne is also a horrible live performer who uses intricate stage set-ups and flamboyant effects to detract from his horribleness. I don't believe artists whose live performances fall so flat, will ever be able to significantly change a genre. How will listeners ever be able to trust the musician?
There is absolutely no need to sacrifice the complexities of rap lyrics so that they my be fit into a musically styled song, and there is no excuse for a musician to be so horrible live. To illustrate this I provide two examples.
The first Gnarls Barkley. Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo blend masterfully the musicality of Danger Mouse with the gritty rapping and gospel singing of Cee-lo. With this blending there is absolutely no sacrifice of lyrics, which remain complex, extremely dark, and not centered around the ego of the performers. The song "Crazy" was a huge leap forward which brought to the mainstream good rap, good beats, good singing, and generally good music. Not to mention a unified artistic vision that is astounding on the album, in the music video, and live. In the future Gnarls Barkley will continue to evolve and significantly contribute to not only rap and hip-hop/R&B but to evolution of music as a whole. Behold!
The second example is Lupe Fiasco. I'm not going to belabor the above mentioned points, so I'll be brief. Genius lyric, musicality, artistic vision, good live, and a mainstream recognition. He knows he can't sing so he doesn't try. Behold...again!
Kanye is not evolving anything but interesting videos and bad music. We are about as lucky to have Kayne as we are to have T-Pain. I am equality concerned about Kayne's lack of a fulfilling life as I am about T-Pain's love of a stripper. And now for something completly different.
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hahahahaha Pappy it took something special to get you to write a post and what was it that would spark such passion? A hatred for Kanye hahah
ReplyDeleteJust briefly:
While I don't necessarily love Gnarls I do think they have been good to hip-hop/r&b. BUT a Star Wars themed performance? Come on that was lame 20 years ago.
And Lupe...I think he's awesome. He's a much better rapper than Kanye and one of the finest out there. And hes one of the few to say some new shit (peep the lyrics for Streets on Fire, incredible actually)
And, while having not seen Kanye, have heard that he is actually incredible live. He just had that catastrophe that was bonnarroo
wow we have some weird sadistic obsession with the future.. but the artistic creation that is the kanye music video is incredible. i was on my toes tryin to figure out what the next morph would be. sickkkkkkkk
ReplyDeleteDammit you've all been fooled, smoke and mirrors, SMOKE AND MIRRORS!
ReplyDeleteAnd it's not just the star wars performance, it's every performance. You may not like them, but they're going to be putting out music that will revolutionize the way we think of music. Mark my words.
Yeah I'll dump something on you. You know your brain will turn to mush if listen to too much Kanye. I also heard he eats puppies, I'm just sayin'.
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