Do you like Kanye West?

Cafe Society
141

You’re not alone on this I have never heard the song and have no desire to hear it.

When I see the name Kayne my mind goes to this guy
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://static9.imagecollect.com/preview/560/1b29be36c5ffc72&imgrefurl=http://imagecollect.com/celebrities/kayne-gillaspie-pictures-38903&h=600&w=400&tbnid=N8F96yHmXsw0AM:&tbnh=186&tbnw=124&docid=wTrb3NOYdkq-NM&itg=1&usg=__UiyeDfSY19Ritys776vS533MBOE=

Then I have to stop and think oh wait a minute, he’s the other Kayne, the arrogant prick who jumped up on stage and tried to take some country singer’s award and who married one of the Kardashian whores and names his kids stupid shit like West by Northwest. Didn’t he have a thing with Beyonce or something, the one who is married to J Lo’s ex?

I didn’t even know he was a musician, I thought he was famous for marrying a Kardashian and being an ass.

He’s supposed to be something special but now he’s broke and he thinks the guy who invented FaceBook (or is it Google - do you know a google is a 1 followed by 100 zeroes which really should be 10 google because 100 zeroes throws the commas off) should bail him out. I don’t know why he thinks that but maybe that is what arrogant pricks do when they become famous - after all, ‘you can take the man out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the man’. Even the cuntess knows that, it’s what she caterwauled in, ‘Money Can’t Buy You Class’, and a caterwauling it was, you’d think somebody would have told her not to embarrass herself that way.

However, Gold Finger is a pretty good song
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D1nK7q2i8I
You really have to wonder how ‘Pussy Galore’ made it past the censors back then, or is it censers?

I suppose I’m showing my age by remembering these gold diggers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtXsBoLx95g

Whenever I hear a name like his my mind just jumps all over the place because none of it important enough to take the time to sort it all out.

142

If those had been done as successfully as you think, you’d think they’d have created an army of imitators like West’s music has done.

I think his wikipedia page indicates some views on his innovative work:

I’m sure they all aren’t aware of anything prior to 2001 ;). But believe what you will.

143

For example, here is a Pitchfork article on the immense impact of 808s and Heartbreak (including its direct influence on Drake, The Weeknd, Future, etc), which was considered to be a flop when it was released:

144

Umm, again, success has nothing to do with innovation. Pat Boone wasn’t innovate, but he was successful. Like Kanye, he’s the imitator.

None of that addresses any innovation he’s made, it’s just some opinions of critics without anything to back it up. Bowie wasn’t particularly known for being popular and selling records. In fact, his most innovative records are still not regularly played on the radio. Most contemporary listeners still find them hard to listen to. His biggest selling record is almost undoubtedly his least adventurous. Kanye’s popularity actually makes it a lot harder for me to believe he’s innovative.

Hey, maybe they know about music prior to 2001, they don’t appear to have thought very hard about it if they’re using those claims to backstop his aspirations to being hailed as a musical genius.
And on preview: Madonna had a lot of imitators. People who claim she’s a musical genius are going to have a tough row to hoe with me, as well. People imitated her because she was popular, not because she was actually doing anything innovative musically. So, that argument gets as far with me when you apply it to Kanye.

145

Did Madonna create seemingly new subgenres of music? When hip-hop writers talk about how utterly influential and innovative West has been within the genre, I tend to take that seriously.

As for Bowie, I’m fairly sure that people would consider his experimental phase in the early 70s to be quite innovative… as well as quite popular (Ziggy Stardust, Young Americans, Low, Heroes, etc).

146

Never heard of The Village Voice Media, Complex or Pitchfork. Why should I care about those douchebags opinions of a douchebag?

147

Hell, if you’ve never even heard of either of those publications, why should I care about your opinions?

148

The Station to Station - Low period is generally thought of his most innovative. It’s far from his most popular. Bowie admits that the Ziggy character is an amalgamation of several characters and persons (such as Iggy Pop). He actually did collaborate in some musical innovation at that time, but he truly needed Ronson. Also, if it had stopped at that point, he would probably be remembered as an oddity placed stylistically somewhere between The Crazy World of Arthur Brown and The Doors. His genius was that he actually changed himself into an artist that had absolutely nothing to do with the last version of himself in the span between two albums, and the result was still goddamn good.

And even in the experimental music arena, Bowie knew he wasn’t the “musical genius”. He hired the people who were already making the sounds he wanted. Eno had already made albums that sounded very like those records, and Bowie was self consciously trying to adapt those types of sounds to pop music, not creating new sounds.

In contrast, you have Kanye. He pretty much started out playing a character who thinks he’s a god, but is really a jackass. He’s been that character for about a decade now. Bowie would have gone through about 5 styles in that amount of time, and wouldn’t be so dumb as to think he’d single handedly created new sub genres of music because this record sounds a little different this time around.

149

Sounds exactly like Kanye. Listen to College Dropout, then 808s and Heartbreak, then My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and then Yeezus. Those are 4 completely different albums - it’s incredible that its done by the same artist.

Musical geniuses are just the people who can play x amount of instruments, they are people who can combine various different influences to create new sounds. There are plenty of people who consider Bowie a musical genius for his ability to meld sounds and do things no one else was doing before, or do things just enough off-kilter from what others were doing that it sounded brand new.

FWIW, Station to Station hit #3 in the US charts (#5 in the UK) and Low was #11 on the US charts (#2 in the UK). So definitely popular.

Entirely incorrect. The pink polo, backpack wearing super insecure College Dropout character is far different than the Shutter Shades, suited up confident Graduation character, for one. And it isn’t Kanye who is talking about new subgenres, it’s the music press.

150

I have to agree. Say what you want about Kanye the person or persona, the guy’s got a lot of talent and I love his music, even though rap is not my main listening genre (although I do enjoy it.) The guy is constantly reinventing his music, and those four albums showcase it pretty well.

151

Good for you. And 7 albums is impressive, until you realize that Zappa released 82 critically acclaimed albums prior to his death. 20 were released after he died.

But, lets take Frank Zappa for a moment. Besides writing highly complex and listenable music in a bunch of different styles (Doo Wop, Classiscal, Jazz, rock…) he influenced a huge number of people across all kinds of genres. For example, George Clinton (P Funk - “Every black musician should listen to Frank Zappa”), Paul McCartney (Beatles -McCartney “regarded Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band as The Beatles’ Freak Out!” Freak Out! being a Zappa album) and a ton of other players considered Zappa a giant influence.

On top of that, the number of musicians who played with Zappa that went on to critical or commercial acclaim is huge. Adrian Belew (King Crimson, David Bowie), Dale and Terry Bozio (Missing Persons), Steve Vai (solo, David Lee Roth, Whitesnake), John Lennon (obviously already famous), Tina Turner(!?!), Chester Thompson (Weather Report, Genesis, Santana, Phil Collins), Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson, Linda Ronstadt, Mike Keneally (everyone. This guy is a monster guitarist and his credits run from Screamin’ Jay Hawkins to Dethklok). And that is just a partial list. A very short list, Zappa played with a huge number of people.

On top of that, Zappa wrote classical and his works were recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra.

The breadth and depth of Zappas work is insane.

Slee

152

I never said I didn’t think Zappa was an amazing talent. He was incredibly prolific and quite the polymath. However, I consider musical genius to be more the ability to create something new - I find West more accomplished there than Zappa.

153

I sampled a handful of Kanye and it was painful.

I’m harboring a theory that his grills are picking up signals from N Korean submarines. That explains his ego as well and the bizarre tweets. He’s really Kim Jong-un incarnate.

154

I’ve heard them, they all sound like a West rap record. Not at all like the differences in Bowie’s work which span from glam rock to not rock at all. West could have put out a record that wasn’t a rap record, but he hasn’t.* Additionally, I consider Bowie to be a genius entertainer, but not a musical genius. So even if you do convince me that Kanye is even as good of an entertainer, you haven’t answered my original question.

I’m pretty sure you meant to say “aren’t” In the first sentence of this. Either way, you’re arguing with someone who’s not here. I consider people who can play several instruments to be musically trained, not a genius. The days of being able to play an instrument well and being convincingly hailed as a musical genius are long passed. Hendrix may have been the last one, and he was dead before I was born.

When the man had seven #1 (UK) records, that qualifies as not very popular. He has six platinum albums, none of that era sold as well as they.

Those are really costumes. I don’t see the early era behaving/performing in a different way from what he does now.
And at this point, I’m pretty much tired of deflecting assertions without much in the way of content to back them up. If you want to try to continue to convince me that he’s a genius, go ahead. So far, you’ve just made me more sure that he’s not.

*And I like rap, own a bit of it. I just like rap that appeals to me. West’s doesn’t.

155

I really don’t understand this at all. 808s and Heartbreak isn’t really a rap album at all (what, West raps on 2-3 songs on the entire album?). In addition, Bowie’s well known work is generally in the rock genre. It appears to me that for those who are more on the guitar-ish side, all hip hop seems to sound the same, for those on the hip hop side side all guitar-ish rock can sound the same. I mean there are plenty of folks who think, say, “Ziggy Stardust” and “Fame” sound the same - due to both being guitar rock-ish type of songs.

I feel that I’ve made quite a few arguments and backed them up with the words of music critics. If that doesn’t sway you, then I don’t think anything will. Do you feel that anyone in the field of hip hop qualifies as a musical genius? Or is it only for guitar folks in the modern era ;).

156

I’ll be honest and say that I’m not super-convinced by ISiddiqui’s “Kanye as genius” arguments, but I would like to hear from more people who like rap music, but don’t like Kanye’s music, since I don’t have much use for the opinions of people who have general disdain for rap, or don’t consider rap to be music, etc., in these sorts of discussions. I generally tend to feel like Kanye is very innovative, relative to his peers, but only moderately innovative in a larger musical sense. His strengths are definitely more as a producer than a rapper, though: Black Thought, he ain’t.

FWIW, I consider myself a martial arts movie fan, and the first time I’d heard of Raid was twenty-five minutes ago.

157

You’ll love The Raid. Don’t want to overhype it either-- but, nah, you’ll love it.

The Rap Critic, while not a Kanye hater, does make some funny videos mocking him and his excesses, while analyzing objecively his work.

158

I like some of his songs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co0tTeuUVhU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L53gjP-TtGE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZwMX6T5Jhk

As a human being, though, he strikes me as being an utterly self-absorbed, arrogant jerk.

159

In terms of production and style, they’re hip hop albums; which is probably the term I should have used. I also think of Maxinequaye as a rap record, but it’s really trip hop, with plenty of singing on the songs.

I’m a musician, and I’ve dealt with the music press*. Even when a critic gives you a good review, you know they only vaguely know what they’re talking about, and it isn’t really helpful to listen to them. If you want to convince me, you’ll have to actually talk about the musical innovations he’s made. I haven’t heard any that stand up to even cursory scrutiny.

The people who actually gave birth to rap were certainly geniuses. From what I understand, none of them became household names. The people who first commercialized it (and they are names in many households) weren’t necessarily geniuses, but they knew a good thing when they heard it.

I don’t know if they’re actually the first, but if they’re actually the first people to make rap sound as uncomfortable as an Edvard Munch painting, Public Enemy certainly were a collective genius. Even if they were rapping about what a nice guy I was, that sound was crazy. I don’t know who came up with the idea that they could make rap that intense, but that was a sea change.

I’d also like to think of Tricky as a kind of musical genius. He’s the first person that I’m aware of that made a moody, dark record in the hip hop vein. But again, while I like a lot of music, I am not well versed enough to know he’s the first, but he predates any I know of.

But even those are strokes of stylistic genius, that were generally limited to broadly affecting their genre. People who actually change the complete course of music are very rare - once a century if you’re lucky, and not always that often. Even then, most changes usually happen via groups of people slowly changing music over generations. No famous geniuses are necessary, everyone stands on the shoulders of previous giants. Even in the fast-changing 20th century, people who advanced music in something other than an incremental fashion are rare.

So after all that bloviating, if you’re still here; here’s an example of who I think qualifies as a musical genius from the 20th century:

Les Paul. He almost invented or has a claim to inventing both shredding and the solidbody guitar. He (as far as I can tell) did actually invent sound on sound and multitrack recording and intentional studio manipulation of music, even if he wasn’t the first to have a release using it. Pretty much everyone would sound very different, or at least would have sounded very different much later, if he hadn’t been working so hard at not sounding like everyone else.

My cite (yes, I’ve posted this here recently, but it’s accurate) is Lover from 1948. There’s nothing that sounds like the second half of that recording before it was released. You couldn’t get that multi layered sound from one brain without using some variation of his technique, and nothing could produce that speed and accuracy without it until programmable synths became available.

*Ahem, local music press. Don’t think I’m trying to impress you.

160

FWIW, I did read all of that “bloviating” and thought it well worth the read. Thanks for that. I think that we may have slightly different definitions (and that’s fine) - in baseball terms I’m a “Big Hall” Genius moniker bestower (jeez, that’s wordy, but I hope you get the jist), while you are a “Small Hall” Genius moniker bestower. I think stylistic genius definitely qualifies in my listing.