Music Kanye West

I like to listen to audio of the meltdown and pretend it's his reaction in the Manchester United dressing room after tonight.
 
Mciahel Goodman said:
Eminem's freestyle is prewritten. Still great, though.
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Most people don't realise that most rappers go into these radio talk shows/interviews with prewritten rhymes. If its good there's nothing wrong with it. As a matter of fact, major labels are against their artists spitting 'new material' off the dome in commercial or promotional appearances.
 
Loublaze said:
Most people don't realise that most rappers go into these radio talk shows/interviews with prewritten rhymes. If its good there's nothing wrong with it. As a matter of fact, major labels are against their artists spitting 'new material' off the dome in commercial or promotional appearances.
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Yeah, it's really only underground artists that go completely off the dome, usually on a lesser platform. The bigger the audience, the lesser chance the freestyle is actually a freestyle.

You can find genuine freestyles of all major artists on Youtube, and tell within seconds that they're freestyles because they have very little cohesion, and the subject matter switches at random.



This is a freestyle. But even this will contain parts of ideas for verses.
 
Mciahel Goodman said:
Yeah, it's really only underground artists that go completely off the dome, usually on a lesser platform. The bigger the audience, the lesser chance the freestyle is actually a freestyle.

You can find genuine freestyles of all major artists on Youtube, and tell within seconds that they're freestyles because they have very little cohesion, and the subject matter switches at random.



This is a freestyle. But even this will contain parts of ideas for verses.
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Wouldn't be out of place on Em's first few albums, absolute class. Proof was quality, RIP.
 
I always thought Kanye was a kind of joke/parodee character. I didn't realise so many people took him so seriously. Why?

I mean some of his music is ok...decent even. I get why people would like it, but he's always been such an idiot that you have to wonder if it's on purpose or some kind of act.
 
Loublaze said:
Kanye is immensely talented
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This is the problem with Kanye, or more accurately Kanye's fans. Talented yes. Immensely talented? No. In fact I'd even argue it's impossible to make such a call considering his 'talent' is production, an area where the creative credit for a song is near impossible to pin down unless you actually witnessed it's creation. Take Black Skinhead, for example. That track has 10 writers and 11 producers credited - Including Daft Punk and Lupe Fiasco. Yet to listen to it it doesn't sound like something that required such an extensive staff. Power (one of my favourite Kanye beats) has 20 credited writers! That's a lot of people. Even for someone like Dre, who also gets too much credit for his back catalogue. But because it goes out under Kanye's name, the majority of people get the natural impression he sat on his own in his bedroom and invented it from scratch.

He's certainly a less musically proficient producer than someone like Pharrell or John Legend, and the bulk of his work is sample based, which - while certainly a talent in itself - is something inherently harder to attribute creative credit for. Even the argument that he's uniquely experimental is vastly over played. He's released non-hip hop sounding things under the banner of hip hop, but it's not like he's created a new genre, sound or culture. This latest album, for example, sounds like an above average mid 00s RnB album, and the idea this is in anyway progressive simply because it's released by an artist who doesn't usually do that kind of thing is barmy. It'd be like the Arctic Monkeys releasing an album of early 90s grunge and being lauded for changing the face of rock music.

I do think he's talented, but I consider him about around the same level as Pharrell, which is no insult. The only difference being that Williams doesn't have a publicity team pumping out the message that he's the most significant artist of his time. Kanye's current inflated status is as much the product of insanely successful suggestive marketing as it is his undeniable talent.

Subsequently I can't help but think anyone who actually buys this message is a bit of a suggestible dolt. The kind of person Derren Brown could convince was on Mars, or who thinks Steve Jobs is the greatest inventor of our age.
 
Mockney said:
This is the problem with Kanye, or more accurately Kanye's fans. Talented yes. Immensely talented? No. In fact I'd even argue it's impossible to make such a call considering his 'talent' is production, an area where the creative credit for a song is near impossible to pin down unless you actually witnessed it's creation. Take Black Skinhead, for example. That track has 10 writers and 11 producers credited - Including Daft Punk and Lupe Fiasco. Yet to listen to it it doesn't sound like something that required such an extensive staff. Power (one of my favourite Kanye beats) has 20 credited writers! That's a lot of people. Even for someone like Dre, who also gets too much credit for his back catalogue. But because it goes out under Kanye's name, the majority of people get the natural impression he sat on his own in his bedroom and invented it from scratch.

He's certainly a less musically proficient producer than someone like Pharrell or John Legend, and the bulk of his work is sample based, which - while certainly a talent in itself - is something inherently harder to attribute creative credit for. Even the argument that he's uniquely experimental is vastly over played. He's released non-hip hop sounding things under the banner of hip hop, but it's not like he's created a new genre, sound or culture. This latest album, for example, sounds like an above average mid 00s RnB album, and the idea this is in anyway progressive simply because it's released by an artist who doesn't usually do that kind of thing is barmy. It'd be like the Arctic Monkeys releasing an album of early 90s grunge and being lauded for changing the face of rock music.

I do think he's talented, but I consider him about around the same level as Pharrell, which is no insult. The only difference being that Williams doesn't have a publicity team pumping out the message that he's the most significant artist of his time. Kanye's current inflated status is as much the product of insanely successful suggestive marketing as it is his undeniable talent.

Subsequently I can't help but think anyone who actually buys this message is a bit of a suggestible dolt. The kind of person Derren Brown could convince was on Mars, or who thinks Steve Jobs is the greatest inventor of our age.
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A lot of those points could apply to someone like Bowie too, couldn't they? Adopting pre-existing sounds rather than coming up with any sort of new genre, relying heavily on talented collaborators, using myth-building to bolster his reputation? Yet people would have no issue describing Bowie as extremely talented.

In truth it actually requires a lot of talent to do all those things. An album like MBTDF certainly makes use of a lot of collaborators but it takes an awful lot of talent to pull those different strands into one cohesive sounding album under your name too. It's just a different type of talent.

You say he's roughly on the same level as Pharrell but Pharrell has never made an album as good, as acclaimed or as likely to be remembered as MBDTF, has he? I don't think it really matters how Kanye managed it, all that matters is that this is the level of material he has released.
 
Crackin post by @Mockney

BTW why does his music need so many writers and producers? As far as I know all the music of bon iver, bon iver is written and composed by one Justin Vernon, all of that on Helplessness Blues by one Robin Pecknold.
 
amolbhatia50k said:
Crackin post by @Mockney

BTW why does his music need so many writers and producers? As far as I know all the music of bon iver, bon iver is written and composed by one Justin Vernon, all of that on Helplessness Blues by one Robin Pecknold.
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Yeah, can someone shed some light on this?
 
So Kanye is the Apple of music, perfectly decent in its own right without being particularly special, but marketed better than anything to the point where an awful lot of people think it's the pinnacle of excellence.

I like that analogy.
 
amolbhatia50k said:
Crackin post by @Mockney

BTW why does his music need so many writers and producers? As far as I know all the music of bon iver, bon iver is written and composed by one Justin Vernon, all of that on Helplessness Blues by one Robin Pecknold.
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Generally on rap songs producers, samples and even references to other people's lyrics get writers credits i.e. Michael Jackson is credited as writer on King Kunta however that is not to say Kanye doesn't use a shitload of help to make his music now. He makes rap by committee now because I don't think he has anything new to bring to the table, I think he's more interested in fashion but because music was his first passion he still feels obligated to make it.
 
VorZakone said:
Yeah, can someone shed some light on this?
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A comparison can be made with George Martin and The Beatles. In the beginning, West did the production almost solo. Things got more complicated and lots of stuff was incorporated with West's role merging to conductor.

Not that I'm saying West is/was as good as George Martin.
 
ArmchairCritic said:
Generally on rap songs producers, samples and even references to other people's lyrics get writers credits i.e. Michael Jackson is credited as writer on King Kunta however that is not to say Kanye doesn't use a shitload of help to make his music now. He makes rap by committee now because I don't think he has anything new to bring to the table, I think he's more interested in fashion but because music was his first passion he still feels obligated to make it.
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Yeah, not that I disagree with the point but this guy who's done very little else gets 15% or whatever of Uptown Funk because they say "don't believe me, just watch" which happens to be in one of his songs. It could be something like this with Kanye's songs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinidad_James
 
VorZakone said:
Yeah, can someone shed some light on this?
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In Kanye's case, the writing credits are bulked out by the legal requirement to accredit the writers of the songs he's sampling.

And if you look at his earlier stuff, he was often the sole producer. Over time he's become more collaborative - and why not? He's still the main creative force behind his albums and songs. It's a really pointless attempt to downplay Kanye's talent, in all honesty.

As for him not creating a new genre or whatever; he is widely credited with changing the hip-hop/pop scene with College Dropout and Late Registration.

I always enjoy it when it posters assert their beliefs with such uncompromising certainty.
 
unchanged_lineup said:
Yeah, not that I disagree with the point but this guy who's done very little else gets 15% or whatever of Uptown Funk because they say "don't believe me, just watch" which happens to be in one of his songs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinidad_James
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All Gold Everything came out before and clearly it had an influence (as minor as it might seem) on the Bruno Mars song hence the credit? What's the issue here, Kanye credited Future and Drake on Facts for taking Jumpman and adapting it for his own ego. I think more than anything it's just to avoid legal cases. It's pretty normal in rap music AFAIK.
 
TooBias said:
As for him not creating a new genre or whatever; he is widely credited with changing the hip-hop/pop scene with College Dropout and Late Registration.
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He did, without Kanye and Andre 3000 I'm not sure guys like Kendrick, J.Cole and Drake thrive on such a mainstream level, he helped paved the way for them IMO.
 
Mockney said:
This is the problem with Kanye, or more accurately Kanye's fans. Talented yes. Immensely talented? No. In fact I'd even argue it's impossible to make such a call considering his 'talent' is production, an area where the creative credit for a song is near impossible to pin down unless you actually witnessed it's creation. Take Black Skinhead, for example. That track has 10 writers and 11 producers credited - Including Daft Punk and Lupe Fiasco. Yet to listen to it it doesn't sound like something that required such an extensive staff. Power (one of my favourite Kanye beats) has 20 credited writers! That's a lot of people. Even for someone like Dre, who also gets too much credit for his back catalogue. But because it goes out under Kanye's name, the majority of people get the natural impression he sat on his own in his bedroom and invented it from scratch.

He's certainly a less musically proficient producer than someone like Pharrell or John Legend, and the bulk of his work is sample based, which - while certainly a talent in itself - is something inherently harder to attribute creative credit for. Even the argument that he's uniquely experimental is vastly over played. He's released non-hip hop sounding things under the banner of hip hop, but it's not like he's created a new genre, sound or culture. This latest album, for example, sounds like an above average mid 00s RnB album, and the idea this is in anyway progressive simply because it's released by an artist who doesn't usually do that kind of thing is barmy. It'd be like the Arctic Monkeys releasing an album of early 90s grunge and being lauded for changing the face of rock music.

I do think he's talented, but I consider him about around the same level as Pharrell, which is no insult. The only difference being that Williams doesn't have a publicity team pumping out the message that he's the most significant artist of his time. Kanye's current inflated status is as much the product of insanely successful suggestive marketing as it is his undeniable talent.

Subsequently I can't help but think anyone who actually buys this message is a bit of a suggestible dolt. The kind of person Derren Brown could convince was on Mars, or who thinks Steve Jobs is the greatest inventor of our age.
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Kanye > Pharrell (placeholder for longer post)
 
ArmchairCritic said:
All Gold Everything came out before and clearly it had an influence (as minor as it might seem) on the Bruno Mars song hence the credit? What's the issue here, Kanye credited Future and Drake on Facts for taking Jumpman and adapting it for his own ego. I think more than anything it's just to avoid legal cases. It's pretty normal in rap music AFAIK.
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Ah, what I meant was I wasn't strictly disagreeing with the original point by amolbhatia50k.
 
ArmchairCritic said:
He did, without Kanye and Andre 3000 I'm not sure guys like Kendrick, J.Cole and Drake thrive on such a mainstream level, he helped paved the way for them IMO.
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Exactly.

You might not like his music, you might not like him; but there comes a point when you have to think that maybe, just maybe, all the music journalists, critics, other musicians, and fans, aren't 'dolts'*, and acquiesce to the possibility that he is a genuinely unique talent. He has some of the most critically revered albums of all time - but, yeah, of course, those critics are just buying into the hype. Those critics and fans of College Dropout, when it first came out, were just buying into the hype, despite that being his first album and the Cult of Kanye, as it exists today, being almost nonexistent back then. Then you look at the songs he has produced outside of his own work - as one example, he was a key contributor to The Blueprint, an album that remains one of the seminal hip-hop albums.

You have to analyse Kanye West within the hip-hop/pop scene of today, within the contemporaneous space in which he is making music - and you see that nobody is doing what he's doing. There's always a tendency amongst people to downplay acclaimed and popular artists by asking, "What's so special?" - Damien Hirst, Jackson Pollock, Warhol, and many others have all received such questioning. Hell, if you look at most of the Beatles' songs, most semi-proficient musicians could learn to play their songs within a day. The point is, they did it first. All important artists did what they did first, and that's where Kanye West's importance lies. The combination of his talent, ambition and madness all coalesce to form a singularly unique creative force, whose impact on the modern music scene should neither be underestimated nor disparaged.

*Which is a ridiculously patronising thing to say, not sure why some random Internet person thinks he can denigrate a whole mass of people just because he doesn't agree - profound, unjustified arrogance.
 
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TooBias said:
Exactly.

You might not like his music, you might not like him; but there comes a point when you have to think that maybe, just maybe, all the music journalists, critics, other musicians, and fans, aren't 'dolts'*, and acquiesce to the possibility that he is a genuinely unique talent. He has some of the most critically revered albums of all time - but, yeah, of course, those critics are just buying into the hype. Those critics and fans of College Dropout, when it first came out, were just buying into the hype, despite that being his first album and the Cult of Kanye, as it exists today, being almost nonexistent back then. Then you look at the songs he has produced outside of his own work - as one example, he was a key contributor to The Blueprint, an album that remains one of the seminal hip-hop albums.

You have to analyse Kanye West within the hip-hop/pop scene of today, within the contemporaneous space in which he is making music - and you see that nobody is doing what he's doing. There's always a tendency amongst people to downplay acclaimed and popular artists by asking, "What's so special?" - Damien Hirst, Jackson Pollock, Warhol, and many others have all received such questioning. Hell, if you look at most of the Beatles' songs, most semi-proficient musicians could learn to play there songs within a day. The point is, they did it first. All important artists did what they did first, and that's where Kanye West's importance lies. The combination of his talent, ambition and madness all coalesce to form a singularly unique creative force, whose impact on the modern music scene should neither be underestimated nor disparaged.

*Which is a ridiculously patronising thing to say, not sure why some random Internet person thinks he can denigrate a whole mass of people just because he doesn't agree - profound, unjustified arrogance.
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I really do not care what critics or others say. Kylie Jenner has fans, should I value their opinion? Other musicians usually don't say anything bad anyway, self-interest you know. Music journalists, who gives a feck about them anyway? Music is subjective, not objective. I think Kanye has some good songs, and he's definitely talented, but overall his music in general is just not my cup of tea. The songs I liked were his earlier stuff by the way. Recently looked up Bound 2 on YouTube and it was horrendous.
 
VorZakone said:
I really do not care what critics or others say. Kylie Jenner has fans, should I value their opinion? Other musicians usually don't say anything bad anyway, self-interest you know. Music journalists, who gives a feck about them anyway? Music is subjective, not objective. I think Kanye has some good songs, and he's definitely talented, but overall his music in general is just not my cup of tea. The songs I liked were his earlier stuff by the way. Recently looked up Bound 2 on YouTube and it was horrendous.
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Where did I say you have to like his music? In fact, in the very first line, I wrote: "You do not have to like his music."
 
Flamingo Purple said:
You do realise it's possible to not like a unique talent, right?
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Do I indicate that I don't? He may be a unique talent, I just don't like most of the music he puts out. I don't dislike the talent, I dislike the music.
 
VorZakone said:
Do I indicate that I don't? He may be a unique talent, I just don't like most of the music he puts out. I don't dislike the talent, I dislike the music.
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Fair enough. It just seemed you were disagreeing with TooBias' point that maybe the music critics aren't 'dolts', and that he is in fact a unique talent.
 
Mockney said:
This is the problem with Kanye, or more accurately Kanye's fans. Talented yes. Immensely talented? No. In fact I'd even argue it's impossible to make such a call considering his 'talent' is production, an area where the creative credit for a song is near impossible to pin down unless you actually witnessed it's creation. Take Black Skinhead, for example. That track has 10 writers and 11 producers credited - Including Daft Punk and Lupe Fiasco. Yet to listen to it it doesn't sound like something that required such an extensive staff. Power (one of my favourite Kanye beats) has 20 credited writers! That's a lot of people. Even for someone like Dre, who also gets too much credit for his back catalogue. But because it goes out under Kanye's name, the majority of people get the natural impression he sat on his own in his bedroom and invented it from scratch.

He's certainly a less musically proficient producer than someone like Pharrell or John Legend, and the bulk of his work is sample based, which - while certainly a talent in itself - is something inherently harder to attribute creative credit for. Even the argument that he's uniquely experimental is vastly over played. He's released non-hip hop sounding things under the banner of hip hop, but it's not like he's created a new genre, sound or culture. This latest album, for example, sounds like an above average mid 00s RnB album, and the idea this is in anyway progressive simply because it's released by an artist who doesn't usually do that kind of thing is barmy. It'd be like the Arctic Monkeys releasing an album of early 90s grunge and being lauded for changing the face of rock music.

I do think he's talented, but I consider him about around the same level as Pharrell, which is no insult. The only difference being that Williams doesn't have a publicity team pumping out the message that he's the most significant artist of his time. Kanye's current inflated status is as much the product of insanely successful suggestive marketing as it is his undeniable talent.

Subsequently I can't help but think anyone who actually buys this message is a bit of a suggestible dolt. The kind of person Derren Brown could convince was on Mars, or who thinks Steve Jobs is the greatest inventor of our age.
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Just to break down the Power credits…

Kanye West - Production, Vocals
Larry Griffin Jr. - Production
Mike Dean - Production, Guitar, Bass, Keyboards
Jeff Bhaskar - Production, Keyboards
Andwele Gardner - Vocals
Ken Lewis - Vocals, Engineering

Francois Bernheim - Afromerica Sample
Jean-Pierre Lang - Afromerica Sample
Boris Bergman - Afromerica Sample
Robert Fripp - King Crimson Sample
Michael Giles - King Crimson Sample
Greg Lake - King Crimson Sample
Ian McDonald - King Crimson Sample
Billy Carter - Cold Grits Sample
Harold Cowart- Cold Grits Sample
Jimmy O'Rourke - Cold Grits Sample
Ron Ziegler - Cold Grits Sample
 
MikeDean_1612553a.jpg
 
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