American Mozart
By David Samuels
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/american-mozart/8931/?single_page=true
Intense, emotional, and frequently out of control, the hip-hop superstar Kanye West allowed his antics to turn him into a national joke and to earn him the criticism of two American presidents. Would a massive concert tour with his friend and rival Jay-Z offer the troubled rapper a taste of redemption—or disaster?
Whatever you think of the many controversies he has ignited, you must admit that Kanye West is at least some kind of musical genius, ranking among the top five producers and the top five rappers of the past decade. (His singing, by contrast, is kind of a joke.) Every one of his five solo albums has gone platinum, and he has sold 30 million digital downloads of his songs, to become one of the most downloaded musical artists of all time. He has won 18 Grammys—the most of any artist in the past 10 years—while serving as a backpack-wearing icon of black nerd chic. Kanye’s power resides in his wild creativity and expressiveness, his mastery of form, and his deep and uncompromising attachment to a self-made aesthetic that he expresses through means that are entirely of the moment: rap music, digital downloads, fashion, Twitter, blogs, live streaming video. He is the first true genius of the iPhone era, the Mozart of contemporary American music, intent on using his creative and emotional gifts to express the heartbreaks and fantasies of his audience.
In addition, though, Kanye West is, according to the president of the United States—the first black president of the United States—a “jackass,” a narcissistic monster who tore a massive hole of self-regard in the American cultural quilt.
Worse even than the president’s epithet, which he first offered on September 14, 2009, is the near-universality of his verdict, which has been echoed for years on talk shows and gossip sites across America. Most painful of all, perhaps, was the classic “Fish Sticks” episode of South Park, which portrayed Kanye as a designer shades–wearing egomaniac who is so humorless and devoid of self-awareness that he can’t comprehend a simple joke about fish sticks. Being represented as the most humor-impaired man in America by the South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker may have actually hurt more than what the president said.
Kanye West – Stronger (Creative process featuring Timbaland revisited)
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the best quotation:
Joe Sax 6 months agoCreativity ? For god’s sake. They just added some random lyrics and a drumtrack over a Daft Punk track that was already good. Timbaland has never been original. Even his name is not original. He samples and steals from everybody else, so i certainly can’t see where the creativity is.
And the video is not original, either. It borrows a lot from Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira.
I know what i’m going to do next: i’ll rap over a Cassius track and i’ll make a video stealing from Dragon Ball Z. I’ll be a millionaire and then the n00bs will talk in the forums about “my” creativity.
the rest of debate is vailable at: http://www.vimeo.com
Kid Sister ft Kanye West – Pro Nails
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