Kanye West is at
the center of rap culture right now and his name has come up many times so far
in this course. After learning about the roots and past decades of hip hop and
the claim that hip hop’s golden age is over I began to wonder about the role of
the big names in rap today and how they relate to rap of the past and in what
direction they are taking rap in the future.
Kanye is known for his music, as well as his personal life, activism and
unconventional antics and attitude. Kanye is gaining even more attention than
usual these days as he begins the tour for his sixth album Yeezus. Today he is
adding to his name and reputation with the beginning of his over the top tour
that includes mountains, icebergs, nearly nude dancers creeping around the
stage and bejeweled full-face masks only taken off for Jesus. I think it is
interesting to look at Kanye as a microcosm of the rap world in the US today
and therefore to examine his tour as a concrete example of the state of the
music scene.
His tour has
received praise despite its dramatic tendencies, Rolling Stone wrote an article
with a comprehensive list of all the reasons the show is “incredible,” and
wrote that, “The show is crazily
entertaining, hugely ambitious, emotionally affecting (really!) and, most
importantly, totally bonkers. As for Ye being at least some kind of genius? To
paraphrase The Big Lebowski, he might be an asshole, but he's not wrong.” Kanye
has proved his dominance in the industry and his ability to pull off the
extreme but there are other realms he aims to infiltrate, he was quoted in a
recent New York Times article claiming that he is an “activist-type artist,”
and he went on to say:
“I’ve reached a point in my life where my Truman Show boat has hit
the painting. And I’ve got to a point that Michael Jackson did not break down.
I have reached the glass ceiling. As a creative person, as a celebrity. When I
say that, it means, I want to do product, I am a product person. Not just
clothing, but water bottle design, architecture, everything, you know, that you
could think about. And I’ve been at it for 10 years, and I look around, and I
say, wait a second, there’s no one in this space that looks like me, and if
they are, they’re quiet as fuck. So that means, wait a second, now we’re seriously,
like, in a civil rights movement.”
However, a few songs on Yeezus are receiving criticism from
the media as people question his above statement in relation to his lyrics.
On "Black Skinhead," he snarls
that the fact that he's dating a white woman makes white America look at him
like he's King Kong. Here's Lynskey:
"New Slaves addresses black stars’ addiction to white-owned luxury brands
and the lucrative racism of the prison-industrial complex but doesn’t bother to
join the dots between the two, let alone his mother’s childhood in 'the era
when clean water was only served to the fairer skin.' Whether Kanye thinks a
poor black man railroaded into prison for a minor narcotics offense more or
less of a 'new slave' than a rich one talked into buying a Maybach is
unclear."
These passages
illustrate the complex role he has created in the music industry today and will
continue to perpetuate in the years to come.
1 comment:
I too agree that Kanye West epitomizes a lot of what is going on in the rap world today. I believe that a lot of the social commentaries he tries to make get hidden in his ridiculousness that oftentimes makes you dislike him or discredit him. I remember at the beginning of the semester we saw the performance of Kanye's song in front of the lynching tree. This commentary on the racial history of America and its relation to present issues of race is an example of his using his lyrics to touch on present day issues.
In comparing the style of Kanye's promotional campaign as well as his lyrics to the rap of the 90s it is striking how stylistically the rap has changed but however how the same issues are still being discussed. The biggest departure I see is that rap has now become a part of "high" society. In the releasing of his song "New Slaves", West posted a video of his face on buildings all over the world. This promotional campaign captured the world's attention and was hailed as being groundbreaking in the advertising of music. To me it seemed like it transplanted rap into the center of society and made it the trendsetter and thing to be respected in the music world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVp1cr8J3q0
Post a Comment