Kanye the Confident
December 8, 2014 3:16 PM   Subscribe

Presenting: The Kanye West Self-Compliment Generator. Give me more Kanye-fidence.

USA Today compiled Kanye's most unhumble quotes and threw 'em all into a generator.
posted by ourt (84 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
Isn't Kanye West the Kanye West Self-Compliment Generator?
posted by mcstayinskool at 3:24 PM on December 8, 2014 [5 favorites]


Pocket Kanye
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:25 PM on December 8, 2014


Metafilter: I'm like a vessel, and God has chosen me to be the voice and the connector.
posted by 4ster at 3:32 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


Ok, but he's not always wrong.
posted by oddman at 3:45 PM on December 8, 2014 [8 favorites]


Man's a clot.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 3:49 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


I think Kanye West's arrogant pronouncements are like Miles Davis turning his back on the audience - a subversion of the expectations placed on black performers. In twenty years we'll have forgotten how many people didn't get it at the time.
posted by iotic at 3:49 PM on December 8, 2014 [23 favorites]


Nah, Kanye West is just an ass. He's basically what would happen if Chang from Community had any talent at anything.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:56 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


No, he's not that bright.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 3:59 PM on December 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


COME ON NOW! HOW COULD YOU BE ME AND WANT TO BE SOMEONE ELSE?

Someone please explain to me why this isn't an excellent thing to say and believe. There's enough assholes in this world who lack both his talent and his work ethic, who get a free pass because they hide behind a mask of socially expected humility (and/or white skin). Fuck 'em, and good for him.
posted by not the fingers, not the fingers at 4:04 PM on December 8, 2014 [25 favorites]


Okay, seriously, the colour of his skin just doesn't matter to most people who think he's an ass. Jumping up onstage in front of a teenager who has just won a big award is what makes him an ass, and it really wouldn't matter if he were white or purple or paisley.

Yes, he has talent. But he's a colossal jerk.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:08 PM on December 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


I don't know why we keep having these conversations about Kanye without everyone in the room acknowledging that it's a conscious performance. His personality is the act and the art. You don't have to like him, but at least give him that benefit.
posted by naju at 4:16 PM on December 8, 2014 [14 favorites]


Instead of calling someone a racist jerk, explain why what they just said did was racist jerkish.

To be fair, he hasn't done it again since.
posted by not the fingers, not the fingers at 4:19 PM on December 8, 2014


Then I guess I don't see much artistic value in stealing a once-in-a-lifetime moment away from a teenage girl, naju. I am comfortable with this.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:20 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


In a show designed for celebrity spectacle, a celebrity makes a spectacle of himself (and gets everyone talking about both artists for years)? I can think of worse things.
posted by naju at 4:22 PM on December 8, 2014 [7 favorites]


I love this, I just wish there were more. He must have more quotes like these. Like, a million more. Put me squarely in the "man's a genius" category. And I wish I had a billionth of his self-esteem. How many of us go through life thinking we don't measure up? How fucking awesome must it feel to consider your life and work and think: yep, doesn't get better than this.
posted by billiebee at 4:23 PM on December 8, 2014 [5 favorites]


I dunno, I kinda weigh that against all the other things he's ever done in his life, and then it doesn't bother me so much.

I mean, if you judge us by the worst thing we ever did, most of us wouldn't look too good.

(Also, I don't even think Taylor Swift is still mad at him about that.)
posted by box at 4:23 PM on December 8, 2014 [8 favorites]


a celebrity makes a spectacle of himself

...at the expense of a young girl for whom it was a hell of a huge moment. Gaga makes a spectacle. Grace Jones made a spectacle. Aretha Franklin makes a spectacle. David Bowie makes a spectacle. None of them do it by crushing some young person's moment.

I mean fine, if that doesn't count for you, that's cool... but please don't pretend that he made a spectacle of himself in a vacuum.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:25 PM on December 8, 2014


Kanye's talent is enormous and I love him as much as anyone can a person she doesn't know. I think his "egotism" has more to do with insecurity and less to do with conceit.
posted by sallybrown at 4:25 PM on December 8, 2014 [7 favorites]


Then I guess I don't see much artistic value in stealing a once-in-a-lifetime moment away from a teenage girl

Don't worry, she's won shit loads of other awards, and he helped make her really famous. And I've said it before and I'll say it again: he was right goddammit!
posted by billiebee at 4:25 PM on December 8, 2014 [10 favorites]


Aretha Franklin makes a spectacle. . . . None of them do it by crushing some young person's moment.

Someone needs to brush up on Aretha...
posted by sallybrown at 4:33 PM on December 8, 2014 [11 favorites]


Yeezus Christ, what an asshole.
posted by emelenjr at 4:34 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


Learn something new every day. Thank you, sallybrown.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:36 PM on December 8, 2014




This is no different than the stuff Charlie Sheen said about himself, and he was soundly (and justly) ridiculed and deemed by many to be mentally ill, a drug addict, or both.
posted by rocket88 at 4:52 PM on December 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


it was the mtv vmas - a place where lots of people have stormed the stage. taylor swift had earned plenty of awards up to that point and has earned many more after. it helped here pr-wise so much that at the time many thought it was a set up between their labels to enhance their profiles. kanye was druuuuuuuuunk - not an excuse per se but again tying back to the vmas, which have a pretty long history of drunken antics - weird how the only one that people seem to go on (and on and on) about is the one where the black man made the pretty young white woman upset.

beyond that, the only way someone can think that kanye is stupid and not engaging about race/wealth/ego/fame/etc is if they don't know anything about him beyond a couple public appearances and the song gold digger (or, i guess, if someone is being willfully obtuse).
posted by nadawi at 4:56 PM on December 8, 2014 [13 favorites]


That article andoatnp linked should basically be required reading for anyone with an opinion on the guy, as a starting point.
posted by naju at 4:56 PM on December 8, 2014 [4 favorites]


ah fuck that linked thread is a good reminder why discussing kanye on here is always a shit show and how much i miss Ad Hominem during these conversations. probably better i just find something else to fill my night with.
posted by nadawi at 5:03 PM on December 8, 2014 [2 favorites]


I'm suprised the buzzfeed article linked above doesn't reference Muhammed Ali* who was of course the first confident black person in the modern media age. Anyway, Kanye's seeming arrogance is backed by reviews and sales.

*Yeah, not really because to buzzfeed the world began when it began.
posted by vapidave at 5:07 PM on December 8, 2014


Charlie Sheen was/is playing a character too (he was probably also on too many drugs) and one would have to be pretty thick not to get that at least a little bit.
posted by atoxyl at 5:13 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Wish I believed in myself the way Kanye does.

Here's a fun but fake Kanye quote on his own ass that an NYT columnist thought was real:

"My booty is like Michelangelo level, you feel me? It's like a sculpture. It's like something that should be sitting in a museum for thousands of thousands of years."
posted by discopolo at 6:39 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


His zany quotes are the only thing I really enjoy by Kanye.
posted by orme at 6:44 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


Don't worry, she's won shit loads of other awards, and he helped make her really famous. And I've said it before and I'll say it again: he was right goddammit!

Oh please. He did it at EMAs in 2007---whined about losing Best Video as the band that won tried to appease him as he stormed the stage and grabbed the mic like he did before.

We need to talk about Kanye because there's something off about Kanye. No other artist ever does this even though half of them are coked out of their minds.Just Kanye. And he embarrassed Beyoncé and YOU DO NOT EMBARRASS QUEEN BEY!!!!
posted by discopolo at 6:50 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


feckless fecal fear mongering: “Then I guess I don't see much artistic value in stealing a once-in-a-lifetime moment away from a teenage girl, naju. I am comfortable with this.”

That was five years ago – in 2009. I probably did worse things when I was going through a divorce the same year. The difference is that Kanye West immediately turned around, publicly, and said over and over again that it was a huge mistake he was ashamed of, apologizing many times. His ticket sales tanked; he had to cancel a tour; he was basically a pariah for a good year because of that one stupid momentary lapse. The freaking president publicly called him a jackass. Taylor Swift was making a little less than Kanye before the VMA 2009 thing happened; ever since she's always made at least twice as much. Even today, when he's big, but she's bigger than he'll ever be.

If he hadn't made MBDTF, nobody'd care about him today. He'd be "that 'I-ma let you finish, but...' guy." To a lot of people, he still is that – but I think you have to ignore both who he is as a person and what he has done with his life to believe that's all he'll ever be.

So – seriously – if you can't think of a single thing to point to aside from that one dumb but minor thing he did five years ago, maybe tone down the "Kanye's a jerk!" talk. The guy works with a huge number of artists. He's crazy about guests and about sticking random folks on his records as well as just performing with various folks. So it's not like we don't have stories about how he acts. So – go on. Who has he been a jerk to in the past five years? Who has told stories about what an ass he is? I think you'll find that pretty much nobody says he's a jerk, aside from a few paparazzi he's tossed out of his garage at 4 in the morning and some sneering talk-show hosts who make fun to T-Swift for having a long list of ex-lovers just as readily as they'll mock Kanye for being "arrogant."
posted by koeselitz at 6:55 PM on December 8, 2014 [15 favorites]


(Also, note to Johnny Depp: being drunk off your ass while presenting isn't cute. Everybody needs to behave better.)
posted by discopolo at 6:56 PM on December 8, 2014


box: “Also, I don't even think Taylor Swift is still mad at him about that.”

Apparently she can laugh about it now. Here's a label she put on a jar of jam she gave to a friend last year. I don't think it bothers her much anymore, if it ever really did.
posted by koeselitz at 7:02 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


I think you'll find that pretty much nobody says he's a jerk, aside from a few paparazzi he's tossed out of his garage at 4 in the morning and some sneering talk-show hosts who make fun to T-Swift for having a long list of ex-lovers just as readily as they'll mock Kanye for being "arrogant."

He was a jerk to Jimmy Kimmel, who had to apologize to him.

He was also very weird during his fake apologies to Taylor Swift when interviewing with Matt Lauer. POTUS thinks he's a jackass. The President never says that kind of thing.

(I've been thinking that Kanye never would have done that to Pink. Pink would have clocked him in the snot locker. He certainly knew who to interrupt on stage BOTH TIMES.)
posted by discopolo at 7:03 PM on December 8, 2014


Jimmy Kimmel was a racist who had to apologize to him.
posted by koeselitz at 7:06 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


box: “Also, I don't even think Taylor Swift is still mad at him about that.”

Apparently she can laugh about it now. Here's a label she put on a jar of jam she gave to a friend last year. I don't think it bothers her much anymore, if it ever really did.


She's probably not but that's probably a credit to her personality and sense of humor, not that what he did was at all okay.

That jam went to Ed Sheeran btw
posted by discopolo at 7:08 PM on December 8, 2014


Well, nobody's said what Kanye did was at all okay. Kanye hasn't said that what he did was at all okay. It was just a thing, though, and it happened many years ago. And the reaction of utter and unstinting revulsion was deeply and problematically disproportionate.
posted by koeselitz at 7:10 PM on December 8, 2014 [6 favorites]


Jimmy Kimmel was a racist who had to apologize to him.

Well, did JUSTICE deserve having their moment taken away at the EMAs because Kanye wanted the award? You are really defending some inappropriate behavior here. It happened at least TWICE.
posted by discopolo at 7:10 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


THIS is talent? I must be old.
posted by dbiedny at 7:14 PM on December 8, 2014


discopolo: “Well, did JUSTICE deserve having their moment taken away at the EMAs because Kanye wanted the award? You are really defending some inappropriate behavior here. It happened at least TWICE.”

Well, maybe I just am guilty of not showing the proper respect for the precious, sacred moment that is the reading of the holy name at an award show, but even twice (and can we be sure that it only happened twice? I think so) doesn't convince me that he's the most hideously irredeemable sinner ever to walk the earth, as it seems to for some.

And it doesn't take away the clearly racist reaction the media has had to him from the beginning.

Don't like him? – that's perfectly okay. But don't buy into this horrible narrative that he's a terrible person just because he's a black man who says things like "I love being me."
posted by koeselitz at 7:22 PM on December 8, 2014 [9 favorites]


Kanye always struck me as a basically insecure person who has confidence coming from outside somehow. Who has suddenly found he's confident but never quite gets used to it. I don't know if it's fame, cocaine, or like actual mania though.
posted by vogon_poet at 7:28 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


I've bookmarked Richard Sherman And The Plight Of The Conquering Negro for when people criticize Kanye for being arrogant. I thought it put it well:

"When you're a public figure, there are rules. Here's one: A public personality can be black, talented, or arrogant, but he can't be any more than two of these traits at a time."
posted by yaymukund at 7:28 PM on December 8, 2014 [14 favorites]


I must be old.

You definitely must be! (Or just totally ignorant of any of the relevant musical/cultural context-- or else you would have said something of substance, right?)

I know even a lot of people who love Kanye hate Bound 2, but I will never not love it-- it's a beautiful/ugly compelling/frustrating slog, just like the fictional romance he's singing about, just like celebrity, just like his public relationship with Kim Kardashian. God, it's so good. And that video.

I guess I just feel like he can be an awesome jerk? Who says hilarious/amazing things and also apparently can't control his opinions at awards shows? I mean, the world is full of talented jerks, Kanye just happens to also be Kanye. I mean I can't get too mad since award shows are possibly the worst thing on television anyway. I doubt most people who care so much about Kanye's rude behavior at awards shows really even respect awards shows all that much.

In conclusion: KANYEEEEEEEEE
posted by stoneandstar at 7:30 PM on December 8, 2014 [7 favorites]


Apparently she can laugh about it now. Here's a label she put on a jar of jam she gave to a friend last year. I don't think it bothers her much anymore, if it ever really did.

She's probably not but that's probably a credit to her personality and sense of humor, not that what he did was at all okay.


She laughed all the way to the bank. Taylor Swift is a publicity ninja and she took that award interruption and used it to boost her earlier image and persona as a blameless martyr princess eternally surprised by the fact that she was a famous and well-regarded pop singer.
posted by sallybrown at 7:41 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


The 'Bound 2' video is brilliant. It's this infamous, deeply hated black couple superimposing themselves on super-cheesy white Americana kitsch, being tasteless and aesthetically awful in a million ways, self-mythologizing and outright daring you to talk shit. It's as much self-aware art provocation as anything else he's done in the past few years. It works like a microcosm of his entire career up to this point, and I have nothing but love for it.
posted by naju at 7:47 PM on December 8, 2014 [6 favorites]


Sobre gustos y colores no han escrito los autores.
posted by dbiedny at 7:56 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


sallybrown: “Taylor Swift is a publicity ninja and she took that award interruption and used it to boost her earlier image and persona as a blameless martyr princess eternally surprised by the fact that she was a famous and well-regarded pop singer.”

That's what's really and truly interesting about that whole thing. discopolo said above that Kanye was being calculating in targeting exactly the right people who wouldn't hit back; I'm not so sure (I'm not sure he was thinking so hard) but if he was it's interesting he chose her. Taylor Swift has been very, very careful in engineering her career, and one of the things that's clearly animated her decision-making has been the awareness that, as a self-determining young woman, she's always open to a host of constant criticisms (she's had too many boyfriends, she hasn't had enough boyfriends, her songs are too personal, her songs aren't personal enough, etc.) And even with her careful calculation, she's still taken a beating in a lot of quarters for writing about breakups (even in an aspirational, positive way, frankly) and for having (gasp) dated people.

So it's funny that she and Kanye West collided in this way – because they've both experienced the strange disruptions that come as a result of being famous. They were each other's disruptions, even – Kanye disrupted Taylor in an obvious way, and I think she saw it as the unfortunate moment of disrespect it really was – whereas that moment of disrespect has been turned into a lifelong scarlet mark for Kanye in a lot of ways, with this frankly disturbing overtone a lot of people give to it of him being a black man who violated a young white woman in this way. I mean: I don't think it was cool, what he did – it was terrible – but to say she was a "teenage girl," as though she were thereby somehow more fragile or vulnerable in that moment, is to misread her, and (I think) to misjudge her greatly. She was no more vulnerable than him or anyone else there that night – much less vulnerable than him, apparently.

I mean –

discopolo: “I've been thinking that Kanye never would have done that to Pink. Pink would have clocked him in the snot locker. He certainly knew who to interrupt on stage BOTH TIMES.”

Maybe, but I'm not entirely sure that would have worked out so well for Pink. She would have gotten some street cred, sure, but the debates would have been about who started it, about whether he deserved it, and people might (might) have talked about Kanye and Pink as being co-responsible after that. Taylor Swift was brilliant in how she handled that, though. She knew right away, I think, that not saying much of anything at all was the best way to go, because people would conclude that she was violated, or that she was disrespected, or something like that, but whatever they thought it would put her in a positive light.

Likewise, some artists – I'm thinking of Taylor Swift's nemesis Katy Perry here – might have responded with something to the effect of a public "Fuck that guy! He disrespected me, and I deserve an apology." But that might not have worked out so well for them. The public wants a certain set of things from its young pop stars, and one of those things is delicate vulnerability. Some current pop stars like Perry and Swift are fighting against that paradigm, but it still holds to a large degree.

So, yeah. Taylor Swift was super smart about that whole thing. And Kanye came to realize, I think, that he'd damaged himself immensely. Interrupting a Euro-bro dance band didn't get him on the radar, but interrupting a young female pop star awakened America's paternalism. And he had to pay for that. It's probably one reason why he hasn't done anything like that since.
posted by koeselitz at 8:01 PM on December 8, 2014 [8 favorites]


I dunno, if I were in Taylor Swift's position, I might have thought it was alarming at the time, but afterward thought it was the most hilarious story ever. Tons of people win awards and nobody remembers anything about it, but EVERYONE remembers "I'ma let you finish, but.."

One thing I kind of enjoy about Kanye is that he seems to lack any kind of filter. He just says whatever he feels, and it is 100% sincere, even if it seems rude or bizarre - it might not be THE truth, but it's HIS truth. And I know that whatever thing he said or did that everyone is talking about at the moment, he did it on purpose, fully committed, and likely knowing that people were watching.

I am not always a fan of his, but I trust him.
posted by louche mustachio at 8:01 PM on December 8, 2014 [3 favorites]


I don't think anybody's really trying to die on the hill of West interrupting Swift at the VMAs. It was rude, full stop. At the same time, there's a history of singling out successful people of color for their arrogance while letting the same kind of behavior slide when it comes from successful white people.

This kind of criticism almost always comes with a colorblindness disclaimer, like saying West would have equally been an asshole if he were white. While that may be true as far as the individual intent behind the criticism goes, we're all embedded in our cultural context, and in that cultural context, it very much does matter.

Since whiteness is valued and any other skin is despised, a person of color speaking up about their worth is always necessarily different from a white person doing the same. When the entire weight of mainstream culture sends you the message that you don't matter, that you're not a real person, not the kind that counts, and that real people -- you know, white people -- can use or hurt or kill you whenever they want without consequence, saying not only that you count but that you're great or the best is an act of defiance. There's an Audre Lorde quote people bring up when talking about West's performance of ego: "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare."

West in particular is a focal point for this kind of criticism, not just because he speaks often and loudly about his own worth, but also because he is a black man who failed to be completely anodyne and invisible around a white woman. The very idea of this hits the White Berserk Button; see also the stick Richard Sherman got for his interview with Erin Andrews . (On preview: jinx, yaymukund!)

I like both West and Swift. I think they both get a lot of junk criticism for failing to perform their socially-allocated roles: for West, that of the subservient black man; for Swift, that of the subservient, good woman. I'm not saying West is beyond criticism or reproach, but I think that criticism has to come with an awareness of the cultural context he's reacting against.
posted by amery at 8:04 PM on December 8, 2014 [8 favorites]


Ok, people want to harp on Kanye interrupting T Swift 5 years ago as reason to dislike him? I'll go back even farther to 2005 and the "George Bush doesn't care about black people!" Katrina broadcast interruption as a reason why I'll always love him.
posted by TwoStride at 8:15 PM on December 8, 2014 [23 favorites]


I like my entertainers to be entertaining. Go on Kanye.
posted by jimmythefish at 9:21 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]


Dave Chapelle talks about the first time he met Kanye. Worth watching the whole clip but the Kanye stuff starts at about 4:30.
posted by jimmythefish at 9:32 PM on December 8, 2014 [1 favorite]




the one where the black man made the pretty young white woman upset.

White woman's tears they call it on black twitter, the most dangerous thing on Earth if you're a black man, as nothing upsets white supremacy so much as seeing this.

And that moment was quite instructive in seeing how white supremacy works: structural discrimination of black artists, especially black women in favour of less talented but pretty blonde women ignored because a black man spoke out of turn, with another black man, Obama, dragged into it to serve as the voice of black respectability scolding its feckless brother.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:06 AM on December 9, 2014 [6 favorites]


To say nothing of these types of memes floating about on Facebook, which seem purely designed to set up the old "good negro, bad negro" dichotomy.
posted by iotic at 2:51 AM on December 9, 2014


structural discrimination of black artists, especially black women in favour of less talented but pretty blonde women ignored because a black man spoke out of turn

That's what annoyed me about the whole incident. He was calling out the fact that Beyonce, this amazing artist with a video so iconic that the President did his own homage as did countless others, was snubbed in favour of a ridiculously anodyne song and video about Romeo and fucking Juliet (original much?) that just happened to be sung by a pretty young white girl. He was just saying what people were thinking. But - and I hope this analogy isn't offensive - like with Ferguson, the message is lost because "oh he was so RUDE about it!" in the same way as people say "well they've lost their point as soon as they start rioting". Sometimes points need to be made in forceful ways, and what I love about Kanye, as louche mustachio says, is that he says what he feels. That point needed to be made and no one but him had the balls to make it in the moment, totally spontaneously, and because he really felt it, without a meeting with his PR advisors first.
posted by billiebee at 3:10 AM on December 9, 2014 [2 favorites]


I find Kanye to be highly overrated as a rapper (he is not good), correctly rated as a producer (he is amazing, but not near as unique as he thinks), and wildly underrated as an entertainer (there has not been a more entertaining figure in pop culture for a long long time). And, clearly, there is a massively problematic dimension of race and gender politics going on with the ongoing criticism of the VMA thing, which seems so long ago that it's hard to imagine people caring still--even if those people were actually involved. I think Taylor Swift was and is fine. Kanye showed himself to be a bit of an ass with that, but who the fuck cares? They're all millionaires, and don't need defending from that kind of situation.
posted by still bill at 4:18 AM on December 9, 2014 [3 favorites]


That's what annoyed me about the whole incident. He was calling out the fact that Beyonce, this amazing artist with a video so iconic that the President did his own homage as did countless others, was snubbed in favour of a ridiculously anodyne song and video about Romeo and fucking Juliet (original much?)

Nope, not the Taylor Swift video that won but whatever you want to believe.
posted by discopolo at 4:32 AM on December 9, 2014 [1 favorite]


Oops sorry! It was that other masterpiece of original storytelling where the geeky girl wins the hot footballer from the slutty cheerleader. I stand corrected.
posted by billiebee at 4:44 AM on December 9, 2014 [3 favorites]


Just to put the VMA thing aside for a moment, a question for those more schooled in Kanye’s work: what make’s his work innovative? ‘Cause when he does the self congratulatory thing he seems to compare himself to artists of the past who’ve made serious innovations in their field a fair bit, and for me that’s what grates in his self congratulation even though it’s entertaining and provocative and all - I don’t hear anything that new in his work. Is it his politics around class/race/consumerism/power/celebrity permeating between art and life-as-art? His provocative sampling? To me these seem like amped up versions of stuff that’s come before. He can be a jerk all he likes, if he is the genius he says he is what is it that Kanye the artist adds to hip-hop?
posted by threecheesetrees at 4:51 AM on December 9, 2014


Kanye is pretty innovative, musically, with this later stuff: 808s is the first real example of someone in his position using autotune to sing-rap the way he did on the album, and it's also a rare rap album in its overall sound, scope and content. MBDTF is, I suppose, innovative in that it's a mainstream rap record that sounds pretty harsh. The earlier stuff is not that innovative, it's just kind of Native Tongues meets Just Blaze/Heatmakers, but I like the first record, and I like half of the second; just really solid hip hop. His work earlier, as a producer, is all very very strong but not really innovative, I don't think. He gave Jay Z and Scarface and Camron some great beats, but nothing very earth-shattering in its newness (Just Blaze and Heatmakers mastered the sound before Kanye did, I'd say, and besides Kanye just moved away from it once it really really took off anyway, to his credit).

I'm not a huge fan of Kanye, and I don't think he's nearly as innovative as some people rate him to be. There are probably about 100 better rappers within a mile of you right now. As a producer, he's very very good, although again maybe not THAT innovative (he also borrows a lot from other producers, but that's not a bad thing, really), but just very solid and reliable for new-ish sounding stuff.

For me, his biggest achievement is as part of the Just Blaze/Kanye/Heatmakers movement in a very specific era of Roc-a-Fella records. The sound those three mastered was so so welcome in rap, even though it wasn't totally 'new' (Diamond and other DITC dudes had been getting there for years, for instance). It revolutionized rap radio for a while. It really gave Jay Z what he needed to cement himself as one of the best ever. It gave an amazing and coherent backdrop to Freeway, Camron, Beanie Sigel, Peedi Crack, etc., and they all worked so well with the basics of the sound that, to me, it's crazy to not rate Kanye as a top producer of the last 15 years or so. I don't like 808s or MBDTF--they are not good records to my ears--but I don't need them to understand and appreciate how talented Kanye is.
posted by still bill at 5:10 AM on December 9, 2014 [4 favorites]


FFFM, I didn't notice it before, but it's kinda not cool to do the 'white, black or purple' thing. That's not good for anybody.
posted by still bill at 5:13 AM on December 9, 2014


Thanks still bill, that nudges me on my way to a more informed opinion. Think I've got some listening to do.
posted by threecheesetrees at 5:30 AM on December 9, 2014


David Lee Roth stole the mic from Beck. The Pop-Up Video guy stole the mic from, I think, Carson Daly? Granted, both (white) guys were on their way to irrelevance already, but nobody seems to remember either event with the passion they remember Kanye stealing the mic from Taylor.

Like, hi, that shit's not unprecedented, and it never involved the President before.
posted by Peevish at 5:46 AM on December 9, 2014 [1 favorite]


Also, fuck taylor swift, and the unclassy way she continues to bring that shit up just to get some sympathy.

Is it seriously necessary to say "fuck Taylor Swift" like she has personally rejected or insulted you? It's really unnecessarily hateful. She's not bringing anything up, we are discussing it. Well, there was an attempt at discussion before everyone decided Kanye/Chalie Sheen-esque levels of self-promotion were normal and that Swift was just some conniving and manipulative woman taking advantage of poor Kanye feeling his feelings.
posted by discopolo at 5:48 AM on December 9, 2014 [3 favorites]


Also, saying "fuck [her]" for being unclassy. That's rich.

David Lee Roth stole the mic from Beck. The Pop-Up Video guy stole the mic from, I think, Carson Daly? Granted, both (white) guys were on their way to irrelevance already, but nobody seems to remember either event with the passion they remember Kanye stealing the mic from Taylor.

To be fair, Carson Daly is weird and who cares about Beck or David Lee Roth? They're from forever ago. Are ppl watching that stuff from before supposed to care or remember?
posted by discopolo at 5:54 AM on December 9, 2014


why care or remember what happened at the vmas 5 years ago? that's forever ago in pop music. anyone mad that little mama rushed the stage on jay-z and alicia keys a couple years later? also, beck is nominated for a best album grammy this year right alongside beyonce and ed sheeran. but really - if the only thing someone has to say about kanye, and judge him wholly on, is something he did 5 years ago while drunk at the vmas then i wonder why they don't have anything better to do with their time.
posted by nadawi at 6:21 AM on December 9, 2014 [2 favorites]


My favorite thing Kanye ever said:

Society has put up so many boundaries, so many limitations on what’s right and wrong that it’s almost impossible to get a pure thought out. It’s like a little kid, a little boy, looking at colors, and no one told him what colors are good, before somebody tells you you shouldn’t like pink because that’s for girls, or you’d instantly become a gay two-year-old. Why would anyone pick blue over pink? Pink is obviously a better color. Everyone’s born confident, and everything’s taken away from you.
posted by elvissa at 6:53 AM on December 9, 2014 [8 favorites]


for people who are wondering why kanye is seen as influential to hip hop, this conversation from r/hiphopheads talks a little bit about it (with some disagreement). it's from two years ago so it's going to miss the yeezus era, but i still think it's making good points. here's another conversation that raises the question of how hip hop would be different if kanye had died in the car wreck and we never got through the wire or anything from him after that.
posted by nadawi at 6:57 AM on December 9, 2014 [1 favorite]


David Lee Roth has sold more albums than Taylor Swift.
posted by JPD at 7:27 AM on December 9, 2014


I am a reasonably enthusiastic fan of Kanye's music and production, but I LOVE his public persona. I see him as a nearly flawless embodiment of Nietzschean will-to-power, and it will never cease to delight me.
posted by Aubergine at 8:14 AM on December 9, 2014 [1 favorite]


That's my view to a T although I'm getting a little squicked out vis-à-vis the Kim thing. Its starting to feel a little manufactured art projecty. Like the bastard of Koons, Warhol and Henry Higgins. But maybe I underestimate her.
posted by JPD at 8:49 AM on December 9, 2014


I don't like 808s or MBDTF

808 is extremely influential, and its best songs are really, really good. I don't know that I would listen all the way through at this point. MBDTF is great and spectacularly diverse on the production side - of course he had a lot of help on that one - and pretty solid lyrically by his standards. I don't get how it could be seen as a weak point but you're not the first person to tell me that.
posted by atoxyl at 1:03 PM on December 9, 2014


Just to provide a bit more insight into what I, personally, consider Kanye's strengths, here's a list of links to what I think are his best beats. This is totally off the top of my head, so I might have missed some obvious gems. But these are all remarkably well produced songs.

Jay Z, Beanie Sigel, Scarface- This Can't Be Life
Beanie Sigel- Nothing Like It
Beanie Sigel and Freeway- Nowhere
Scarface, Beanie, Jay Z- Guess Who's Back
Cam'ron- Down And Out (this is the best rap beat of the 2000s, in my opinion, and one of the best displays of Cam's singular style)
T.I.- Doing My Job

These are all excellent examples of Kanye's ability as a producer. Most of these came out during his rise and subsequent run as a Rocafella producer, and I think that shows just how much he was killing it for a while.
posted by still bill at 1:06 PM on December 9, 2014 [2 favorites]


Atoxyl: yeah, nothing past the first 2 appeals to me at all. By that point he'd abandoned the sound of his that I really liked (good for him, I think he grew a ton as an artist, but not in a direction I was interested in). Same for Yeezus, which is actually what I had in mind when I mentioned MBDTF sounding 'harsh' earlier. I don't like either record, though, so moot point (I should mention that I do like harsh/industrial sounding rap, quite a bit even; my favorite producer of the 90s was El P, and my favorite rapper right now is Elucid, and both make some very harsh stuff, but I don't like Kanye's version of harsh for some reason).

Also, as much as I revere Kanye for his Rocafella-era sound, I think Just Blaze was just a hair better at the time. Obviously, though, Kanye has far surpassed him in terms of evolving artistically.
posted by still bill at 1:11 PM on December 9, 2014


This guy doesn't know his place. Doesn't he understand that he's just a black guy? [...] Come on people. Stand up against black men who think they're all that.

The problem I have with this is that it seems to suggest that a judgment that someone is a self-important jackass can never be correct if it's a black man. And that would mean that it's impossible for a black man to be a self-important jackass. I believe in equal opportunity when it comes to being a self-important jackass. (Although I understand and agree with the point that black people are often judged harshly for merely having healthy self-esteem.)
posted by uosuaq at 2:24 PM on December 9, 2014


i think when you look at the white people kanye's jackassery is often compared to you see harsher judgements at work. it's not that non-white people are immune from being jackasses, but that they are put in that box much quicker than white dudes.
posted by nadawi at 2:29 PM on December 9, 2014 [2 favorites]


To repeat, I agree, but I found hal_c_yon's comment a bit extreme.
posted by uosuaq at 2:51 PM on December 9, 2014


i think when you look at the white people kanye's jackassery is often compared to you see harsher judgements at work. it's not that non-white people are immune from being jackasses, but that they are put in that box much quicker than white dudes.

My gut feels like you're right, nadawi, but I'm trying to think of an example. Charlie Sheen clearly lost it. Tom Cruise's couch jumping and Scientology weirdness and offensive PPD treatment comments clearly made him seem off his rocker. John Mayer is extremely weird and a total narcissist who thought he was an intellectual giant without bluntly saying it and he's thought as pretty pathetic as a human being and was criticized for his offensive comments.

James Franco, I noticed, isn't getting any flack anymore for trying to creepily hook up with a 17 yr old fan last year.

But Kanye pretty bluntly just says,"I'm the most creative musician ever, my videos are the best, etc. Nobody is a genius like me."

I'm trying to think of a white entertainer that didn't get mocked for explicitly telling people they were a genius or smarter than everybody and that no one was on their creative/intellectual level. Tom Cruise and Charlie Sheen are my best examples. But there must be someone else. (Kirk Cameron with his crazy religious stuff?)

Who is not getting mocked/losing respect for their delusions of grandeur?

(And saying,"I love being me" or "I get to go dope stuff" is fine and honest, but just railing about how you're a genius---it's easy to lose respect for not having any humility.)
posted by discopolo at 5:36 AM on December 10, 2014


i'd be surprised if there's someone in the rap game who hasn't said they're the greatest. and those comparisons are exactly what i'm talking about - charlie sheen is a drug addled crazy man who puts his children in danger and is a woman beater - going so far as to have shot one. he is regularly compared to kanye. why? because kanye is over the top? because he thinks he doesn't get his dues? same with tom cruise - tom cruise has used his celebrity to try to shame women into not seeking treatment for postpartum depression he also used religion to poison his kids against their mother. kanye has never done anything so damaging and dangerous.

this clip isn't about kanye, but i think it's pertinent to the conversation about how black men are treated, especially if they speak out against white supremacy and demand what is owed to them - katt williams discusses dave chappelle.
posted by nadawi at 9:13 AM on December 10, 2014 [4 favorites]


"I'm trying to think of an example"

Simmons and Stanley from KISS are know as pretty arrogant and self-aggrandizing aren't they?
posted by oddman at 10:04 AM on December 12, 2014


Oh, ffs. This is so ridiculous.
In 2012 Ice T directed a documentary, Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap, where he basically interviewed all of his friends about the artistry of MCing. Every single person interviewed talked intelligently about the music they make. Kanye talked about himself. He's a fucking narcissist, plain and simple.
posted by P.o.B. at 1:28 PM on December 13, 2014


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