You’re right about the superficiality and all the negative societal consequences thereof, especially on young girls, and you make a good point about all the surgery. However, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with posing nude, and so on.
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Sorry, but the above portion is just silly. ‘Most talented musician of our generation’? If so, it is a very sad generation.
Kanye produces slick 4 minute pop songs and is an outstanding marketer which fits because the Grammys have little to do with musical talent and a lot to do with slick 4 minute pop songs and marketing. The Grammys are all about sales and popularity.
There are a kajillion musicians with more musical talent than Kanye. However, musical talent and record sales having nothing to do with each other. In fact, there appears to be an inverse relationship once the musicianship reaches a certain level. The truly outstanding musicians tend to sell less because the market is smaller. The jazz and classical folks are generally outstanding musicians, yet the sales are exceedingly low compared to the latest 3 chord pop song with a 4 note melody. The general population doesn’t want outstanding musicians, they want 4 minute pop songs that are easy to hum. Anything more complex than that gets pushed to the side.
And then asses like Kanye start believing that they are amazing musicians when, in fact, they are just amazing at selling 4 minute pop songs .
Slee
A note, while I do listen to a lot of more complex music, jazz, classical and progressive stuff, I do like me some good old 4 minute pop/rock/punk. Hell, I love The Ramones.
Yes, I’m glad you mentioned that. Though you ought to draw some distinctions in the final paragraph; The Ramones were primitive, but they were the real deal, touring in a van for decades.
I think there is in regard to how Kim Kardashian has gone about it. She got famous for a sex tape. She posed for Playboy, a magazine that promotes promiscuity among other things. When her stardom begins to waver, even slightly, she gets fully naked for some little magazine. Overall it sends the message to use your body to get what you want.
Oh, and *superficiality *was the word I was struggling to think of, thanks.
Not that I care about any of these people (and they certainly don’t care about me) but…(if true), this is a bit telling:
Beyoncé album: 27 songwriters and 19 producers.
Kanye album: 49 songwriters and 25 producers.
Beck album: 1 songwriter and 1 producer.
Your tastes may vary of course but at the end of the day, it’s about West being a rude, vain, likely mentally-ill little man. The music, in this instance, is secondary.
And a Ramones song went 4 minutes? Maybe on Animal Boy but that’s about it.
Who’s to say what defines promiscuity?
More importantly, I’m not sure that this is what you’re getting at, but Playboy has indeed reinforced patriarchy, despite its being much classier than the hardcore porn industry and in some ways (racially, among others) quite progressive. This made me think of something: There have been quite a few women involved in sex-positive art and activism, and many have gotten naked in the process! They’ve done some awesome work to challenge patriarchy, sex-negativity, commodification, superficiality, heterosexism, and all the rest, and while I know where to find their work, I don’t have any of their names immediately springing to mind.
It’s the same in the music world, lest anybody think I’m hijacking the thread. It’s often indistinguishable, when you look at the Riot Grrrls and other feminist musicians. It raises an interesting question: Would I want them to be as famous as Kardashian, her husband, and the rest of the Grammy crowd?
I don’t think I mentioned anything about sales, have I? In fact, West’s most lauded albums have been disappointing in terms of sales.
I refer to Kanye West as arguably the most talented musician of our generation because being a musician is more than simply being able to play an instrument or sing a tune. Being a musician also entails putting together a song and an album. IMO, musical talent is more than technical ability. Creating new sounds. I don’t rely on sales on making this argument, but critical acclaim. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is considered a critical masterpiece. Pitchfork Media named it the best album of the first half of the 2000s. Entertainment Weekly named it the 8th Greatest Album of All Time. NME ranked it 24th Greatest Album of All Time. At the same token it didn’t sell all that well, especially compared to his earlier work.
As they say: “This.”
I like the magazine, not just for the beautiful women and the presentation of sophistication and sex but for great fiction that they have published. Some of Stephen King’s best stories were originally published in Playboy. However, I have a difficult time supporting a magazine which promotes a promiscuous lifestyle. Hefner, himself has cultivated a marketable persona that’s synonymous with his magazine, and that’s of the sexually promiscuous male who dates and sleeps with multiple women at a time. It’s level of pornography has been surpassed for some time now, but that only means that getting nude for all the world to see solely for money has become commonplace. Mainstreaming that doesn’t make it any less detrimental in my mind.
It sounds to me those are very different circumstances than the ones Kim Kardashian has involved herself in.
Kanye sounds like a retard in his songs. Race has nothing to do with it.
[quote=“Drunky_Smurf, post:130, topic:712209”]
Kanye sounds like a retard in his songs. Race has nothing to do with it.
[/QUOTE]shrug
“A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”
[quote=“Drunky_Smurf, post:130, topic:712209”]
Kanye sounds like a retard in his songs. Race has nothing to do with it.
[/QUOTE]Did you post the wrong song? I don’t see anything approaching “retard” (in your words) in Bound 2.
Maybe this is just me being a fuddy-duddy, but to me there’s a HUGE difference between “most talented musician of our generation” and “most talented POP musician of our generation”. Is Kanye West more talented than, say, Gustavo Dudamel?
I’m not saying he’s NOT. I know next to nothing about Kanye, and it’s not prima facie impossible to think that he’ll be as remembered in 40 or 50 years as the Beatles are today. But the language that you (and others) in this thread use pretty much ignores the existence of entire swaths of very talented musicians who don’t happen to generate pop songs and “albums”.
West talks like a subliterate moron, and it’s not racist to point this out. It’s not like his skin colour makes him incapable of forming complete sentences.
I’ll also admit that I’ve only heard one song of West’s in full, and that was the godawful “Bound 2”, which demonstrated not just no talent, but negative talent, as if Tommy Wiseau decided to take to a sampler. A randomised music generator would have a better chance of producing something listenable.
I’m not some “rock or bust” guy. I have all of Daft Punk’s major releases and like a lot of funk and the best of the disco/post-disco era.
So is “Bound 2” some kind of outlier? Is there a track by West that encapsulates his musical genius?
I personally would nominate Through the Wire. But for his popular songs, I think “All of the Lights” does a good job, too. And, well, as a Daft Punk fan you’re probably gonna hate this, but “Stronger,” too.
Bound 2, FWIW, was nominated for a Grammy ;). Best Rap/Sung Song or something similar - “Monster” by Eminem and Rhianna won the award.
As a Daft Punk fan, you may like “Stronger” or not (Daft Punk gave Kanye permission to basically remix it), but also Daft Punk co-produced quite a bit of the album “Yeezus” - “Black Skinhead” is probably the best song they co-produced on the album.
The album “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” is brilliant all the way through, but “All of the Lights” as pulykamell stated is good, “Power” as well, and “Runaway”.
And then some of the stuff from his early albums - I think everyone knows “Gold Digger”. On the same album was “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” (about conflict diamonds). I’ve always loved “Jesus Walks” on Kanye’s first album as well.
So what you’re saying is that we should stop reading this thread and listen to some Paul Simon instead? An excellent idea. I concur.
And what is the progressive message of Kim and Kanye?
Be a big booty hoe?
Precisely. I get so sick of the virgin/whore dichotomy.