WOEBOT

Kanye West+++

We don't tend to go in for much in depth album analysis here at Woebot. In fact you don't see much formalist texture-talk either. We leave that to Simon, Tim and Marcello. Them fellas do it better. I guess I tend to concentrate on the Geo-political, the Rhizomic Span TM, the interface with kulcha, being essentially what excites me. Also because, as Mark K-Punk remarked to me, it can be somewhat confusing hear people eulogise music YOU'RE NEVER GONNA HEAR in great detail. Sometimes I wonder that I have any material at all to post here, that I manage to pluck this endless stream of guff out of thin air, without recourse to deep-listening and elaborate description. However I thought my proclamation of 31st March was verging on the bald, and realised I still had time to properly nix Marcello's big review of the LP (grins, he'll be shaking his fist at me! Respekt as ever to MC), though of course Simon's shared his feeling with us about it already. Damn it's annoying always having to rely on the shops for this material. I was pissed to see that on the CD of this there was a sticker with glowing reviews from a whole bunch of half-life journals proclaiming it to be a masterpiece, cunts who got sent this as a promo probably last year where it sat gathering dust in their in-trays beneath the Amy Winehouse rekkid. Boo hoo!

I'm not really jealous, it's just fun giving the inkies a bit of a boot in the arse! Ha!* Did anyone else see the "Face off with the net" article by an Owen Gibson in the New Media Section of The Guardian. I'm going to have to type out a section cos the twats have made it impossible to read stuff online without being a member of the website. The context is the collapse of The Face:

"...few commentators have mentioned the simple fact that for anyone under 21 today, the internet now performs the job that culture-performing magazines once did. Only far more effectively. When teenagers from Abergavenny to Ayr are downloading music by bands that have yet to grace the pages of any magazine, tapping into global culture from Tokyo to New York and writing about their own lives on their own blog or fansite, a monthly magazine telling you what's hot and what's not soon becomes redundant."

So they trot out a whole bunch of hopefuls like Neil Boorman at Sleaze, Paul Mardles at Jockey Slut and Andy Capper at Vice in the UK who believe the website versions of their magazines will help save them from extinction. Wow look I just alienated three powerful magazine editors! Well not really, I mean if these mags can loosen up a bit (half-joking, and hire the likes of y'all on my links bar!!!) then the future might not be so bleak for them! Certainly Vice appears to be flourishing. Of course this plays into the recent suggestion of Mark K-Punk's that this particular blogipelago should coalesce and start a magazine. Unfortunately that would be the precise way to kill whatever energy is left in the circuit. Also why a magazine? That's like taking five steps back, though even a website would be turd-like. Can you imagine having to hastle Luka to deliver his copy on time! C'mon young Heronbone, we need that piece on caterpillars Monday morning sharp!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, the Kanye West LP. What pushed me into doing this wee thing was reading the following review in my favorite beloved journal The Wire. And fingers-crossed this won't get me in any trouble:

Dejected bear mascot thinks college is a bunch of ho/frat hooey and a Cosby sweater so he samples Michael Bolton and turns a nail file into a Trans Europe Express hi-hat. Spat clever rhymes through a busted jaw (talk about suffering succotash) over Chaka Smurf. One line about Mercedes and mayonnaise was pretty much all it took for Chicago's Kanye West to convince Roc-A-Fella he could rap, despite wilfully mispronouncing Versace. "We don't Care" reactivates Monster Magnet's "School Free Drug Zone" campaign as a kiddie chorus taunts "We weren't supposed to make it past 25/the jokes on you we're still alive".

The next interlude ("Graduation Day") talkboxes with Jesus amid gospel wails of clap and strings. Then there's the corny Daft/Chromeo talk-box on the even cornier "Workout Song". The dope to wack ratio of innovative talk-boxing songs here is 2:1. Not Bad. "Last Call" is a Source interview in search of a song, Ikea shopping trip included. This unrefundable 11 minutes is better spent doubling up with electric sliding granny of "Family Business". The piano almost gets stuck in the sappy seats of Hornsby's Range Rover, but Nopac, it's much better than THAT song. A swaying hymn, "Spaceship" finds West with the retail blues and the self-deprecating consequence sort of at peace at being recognised as an extra in an old Busta Rhymes video."

I can't fucking believe I just typed that out. That was WORK! Dave Tompkins, who wrote this, is one of the big boys so as far as I'm concerned he can put up with a likkle sniping. I thought this was the WORST, most unsympathetic, cranky and pinched record review I have ever read. I think what's at stake is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Kanye West is up to. As I see it, "The College Dropout" is some kind of cultural tabula rasa. It's like someone standing up, and saying with wit and charm "Yo chill with the studio gangster bullshit!" The fact that it's on Roc-A-Fella, not some crappy independent label ought to make this doubly significant; you know *everyone* is going to buying it. Kanye West has forged some totally improbable detente between backpackers like Dilated Peoples, and the Neptunes' club banger crowd. It's a really heartfelt record that has one finger in a sympathetic understanding of ghetto life and another in that of the middle-classes (notice the shifts in "Family Business" between the black family beleagued by cockroaches and the family eating apple pie).

1. We Don't Care.
What I like about this song:
•The catchy chorus given by a bunch of under-tens: "Drug dealing just to get by, stack your money till it gets sky high"
Why:
(Smirks) That's inspired, using kids to do the lyrics. More than that, pitching them up against a gospel choir.

2. All Falls Down.
What I like about this song:
•Syleena Johnson's tortured hopeless vocals.
•Lyrics: "She's dealing with some issues that you can't believe, single-black female addicted to retail"
Why:
You can half hear Linton Kwesi Johnson railing against the "Black Petty Bourgeois" when listening to Kanye West. I guess BPB was big in the seventies, but I don't think what Tompkins dismisses as "retail blues" on evidence here and in "Spaceship" is an insignificant thing. Surely "Bl*ng" has meant Black America is consumed with capitalist desire? Are these not the problems which affect everybody?

3. Spaceship. (8/10)
What I like about this song:
•The twinkly bells and sped-up "Whoos" from "Distant Lover" by Marvin Gaye.
•Lyrics: "Working on this graveshift, and I ain't made shit, I wish I could, buy me a Spaceship and fly"
Why:
...also Kanye's tale of character quitting a job, sinking to the street, hustling, anger and fear creeping into his voice.

4. Jesus Walks. (6/10)
What I like about this song:
•The Stokely Carmichael intoned "Niggers!" textured sonic punched in the mix
•"You can rap about anything except Jesus, that means Guns Sex and Videotapes, but if i talk about god my record won't get played"
Why:
Kanye's God-thing, like the Slow Jamz aesthetic seems to some from that same place wherein Al Green made a confluence of sexual desire and the holy. It's about the only spot at which I can tolerate Christianity in music. Maybe this God is Asase Ya, the Ashanti deity for the Earth *and* Fertilty. Though of course the God of the Black Gospel is less frozen and austere than that of the High Anglican Church I grew up with. But respek to Kanye for rapping about "the big fella". That's bold.

5. Never Let Me Down. (8/10)
What I like about this song:
•The sped up "Never Let Me Down" hook from "Maybe Its The Power Of Love" by Michael Bolton.
Why:
We saw Kanye West recently on TOTP and he was saying words along the lines of Britain is my most important market, the folk who will appreciate my artistry. It was, on the face of it, typical bullshit, exactly what you'd expect from a smooth-talking industry player. But damn, all these sped-up vocal lines. They're pure Ardkore, pure 2-step Glossa-Garage. Sure there's the Smurf thing in Hip-Hop but that's long dead. The drug-addled acceleration of voices is a UK ting. They're right through the LP.

6. Get Em High. (9/10)
What I like about this song:
•Drums.
Why:
...also it's a choon.

7. The New Work-Out Plan (6/10)
What I like about this song:
•Violins.

8. Through The Wire. (8/10)
What I like about this song:
•The sped up "Through The Wire" hook from "Through The Fire" by Chaka Khan.

9.Slow Jamz. (7/10)
What I like about this song:
•The sped up "Gonna be, well, well" hook from "A House is not a home" by Luther Vandross.

10. Breathe In, Breathe Out. (9/10)
What I like about this song:
•Wicked Stax/Willie Mitchell loop.
•"But now I'm rapping about Money, Hoes and Rims again."
•Ludacris on the chorus.
•"I always had a phD, a pretty huge dick."
•The dub echo on hiccoughing Kanye at the end.
Why:
...also it's a choon.

11. School Spirit. (9/10)
What I like about this song:
•The sped up "Can you feel it, People do!" hook from "Spirit in the Dark" by Aretha Franklin.
•Particularly the "People do!" bit super quavery gospel innit!**
•Kanye West: "I feel a couple woofs coming on cuz"
•Hoods: "Woof! Woof!"

12. Two Words (7/10)
What I like about this song:
•The sped up "And it's bloody on these streets." from "Peace and Love (Amani Na Mapenzi)- Movement III (Time)" by Mandrill.

13. Family Business (10/10)
What I like about this song:
•Everything.
•Exquisite Gospel vocals (I'm not a fan as a rule) pitched against that melancholy piano riff, crackly radio preacher and just to nail it that 6 year-old in the background.
Why:
Deffo the centrepiece of the record. I found this unbearably moving. I cried after hearing it on Thursday. Pussy!

14. Last Call (10/10)
What I like about this song:
•Lovely wide rolling groove. Like an empty five-lane motorway you can just drive your call all over it.
•Ridiculous super banale monologue (genius!) about Kanye's progress in the industry, Highlights include:
•Musing about the drums on Dre's The Chronic 2000.
•Kanye gets to meet Jay-Z who has just spat rhymes on a riddim of his. Jay-Z says: "Oh you're a real soulful dude." Listening to the track Kanye reflects to himself: "Man, I'm one for like the simple type Jay-Z, I ain't one for the introspective complicated, in my personal opinion." Jay Z asks him what he thinks about it and Kanye says (adopts goofy voice) "Man that shit tight!" That's well funny.
•Moving out of his old flat with his Mum's help. Like a fucking normal human being.
•"They're looking at me like I'm crazy, cos I ain't got a jersey on."
•When he drops a rhyme he was going to use, and then tells the listener not to steal it cos he might use it later at some time.
•The groove drops out when his deal with Capitol falls through.
Why:
Kanye's throwaway attitude to his raps is one of the things that seems to infuriate Tompkins, dismissed here as a "Source interview," but surely this is what marks them as inspired, they're offhand. They don't sound like they've been sweated over. Why the fuck shouldn't he rap about visiting Ikea? You want him to pretend he steals his furniture?

-

But seriously, what other better LPs have there been in the past three years? Dizzy's? Forget it. It's up there with De La Soul's "3 Feet High and Rising" and Tricky's "Maxinquaye." I don't have to wait 5 years till someone "trendy" tells me so.

*The plosive "Ha!" is a Trademark of the estate of Luke Davis 2003. Used with permission.
**The offhand "Innit" is a Trademark of Woebot Inc 2003. All rights reserved.

Posted by Woebot at April 4, 2004 11:57 AM