So Kanye disappeared to Hawaii for 3 weeks, recorded an album entirely in auto-tune, and he's releasing it next month. This excites me. Alot. Allow me to explain.
This is my theory on Kanye: On his respective albums, he's succeeded at accomplishing his overarching goal. In The College Dropout, he needed to prove himself as an emcee. He needed to be more than the sped-up-soul hit producer, so his rhymes were tightly crafted and clever as all hell. He succeeded. With Late Registration, his aim became to prove himself as an artist. He brought Jon Brion on board, adding bizarre orchestral touches, an increased sense of nuance, and music-nerd sensibilities to alot of his tracks. On Graduation, he shifted his aim towards being a blockbuster. He had proven himself as a writer, an artist, but had yet to really establish himself as a reliable number one seller, the king of the charts, his "big brother" Jay-Z still had him on this one. Again, he succeeded. I think in the process, this was also the worst of his albums. His incessant designer name checking, bling obsession and weak rhyming felt like he was more concerned with a PR push than a strong album. However, I can't really hate on him because he got what he wanted, an immense hit that reached almost a million units sold in just one week.
So now, what's left? Kanye has always been at his best when he pushes innovation in his beats and shows a little bit of vulnerability. When sped-up-soul got too popular, he ran to Daft Punk or to Jon Brion to switch up his production. On the three tracks floating around from his new album, his production sounds fresh, innovative, and compelling. A man known often for excess has completely stripped down: the beats are incessant but sparse, the keyboards sound bizarre but effective. Its glitchy, and all kinds of fucked up sounding. I read somewhere (the fader, i think) that the production is reminiscent of Thom Yorke's album. I dig this comparison. On The Eraser, Yorke strips away the lush Radiohead sound and takes it to the essentials, some keyboards and a glitchy laptop. His voice is crisp and geniune. This is exactly what West seems headed towards in this album. The subject matter seems to be his recent breakup, with nearly all of the tracks focusing on his confusion, heartbreak, anger, and...yknow, the shit that happens when you break up. It is when Kanye can hold his immense ego in his hands and his heart on his sleeve that he is at his most effective, and this seems to be what his new album strives for. In the three tracks I've heard, I suspect he's succeeded.
In an unprecedented move, Kanye isn't giving himself enough credit in at least one respect. His use of autotune fits in perfectly with both his public figure and the album's subject matter. He claims he used it because it's really fun, but I think there's more to it than that. Here's an immensely proud man, a man who constantly tries to assert his dominance, his greatness, his machismo, in his rhymes, his clothes, and his general public demeanor. Yet it's an entire album conveying weakness, insecurity, and sadness. In order to express this vulnerability Kanye had to hide behind his beats, his production, his work. Similarly, he coats his voice in technology, hiding behind the producer's tools as a defense mechanism while simultaneously baring very personal emotions.
He's mastered the mold of a successful commercial rapper. Now, Kanye seems to be embarking on a project to change what it means to be a commercial rapper. Along with Lil Wayne, he is introducing a new work ethic into hip hop that fits perfectly with the mp3-obsessed, ADD music audience of today. In order to keep up with your listeners, why not just constantly release new music? And as long as you're constantly releasing music, why not challenge your listeners? Rappers haven't really tried to top their success by changing their style before. When B.I.G. had a hit, his next move was not to make something different. Producers like Timbaland and Dre have topped their successes with big changes in their approach, but this hasn't really transferred over to emcees. Look at the greats, their effort is aimed at creating something that rivals their previous best work. Kanye is approaching this with the mindset of some of rock's greatest innovators. When The Beatles seemed to have peaked, they said fuck it and threw in sitars and did drugs and changed everything. When Radiohead finished OK Computer, they also threw their hands in the air and brought out the laptops and made Kid A. But this hasn't really been attempted in hip hop before, at least as far as I know. Kanye is changing that. He's offering a new mold in which a commercial rapper also bears a responsibility to be artistically challenging, prolific, and commercially successful all at once. It's a hell of a balancing act, and I'm very excited to see if he can pull it all off.
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