Kanye, Re-visited

Trying to investigate my issues with Kanye’s new album, I decided to try a little curatorial experiment, and pare the album down to an abbreviated version. I was surprised to find that in the end, I have come around to a version that makes only two cuts.

A Less than Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

I’m not quite sure what happened to hip-hop. I just picked up the new Kanye Westalbum, and was initially impressed. The album opens strong with “Glorious,” featuring Kanye in his intelligent mode, laying clever and insightful rhymes over a great beat. “Monster” is fantastic, with Nicki Minaj’s verse balancing out Jay-Z’s ‘the world is out to get me’ weak-spot.

But then, about half-way through the album, it feels like Kanye gets tired and turns into a twelve-year old, trading silly braggadocio stories with his friends. Tracks like “So Appalled” are just, well, ridiculous. This is the big event in 2010 hip-hop?

Just before listening to the album, I went back to Ice Cube’s 1992 The Predator. Interestingly, there are echoes of tracks like “When Will They Shoot?” in “Glorious,” with their reflections on race in America. But Ice Cube’s album played out these questions across the entire album, expressing the anger surrounding Rodney King’s beating and the spirit of the LA riots with clips from NPR interviews. Kanye just doesn’t seem interested in much other than the women throwing themselves at his feet and limos.

Much of the strength of hip-hop, even gangsta rap, was its political and social commentary. Over the years though, the concerns of rap got more and more locked into money, fame, and dealing with the hangers-on chasing after the same. I’m interested where hip-hop leaves the explicitly political and just talks about life — but Kanye can hardly manage to talk about life on an interesting level for more than four tracks an album. The level of discourse here is stuck at the level of something like Louis XIV for half the album. If hip-hop can’t equal the intelligence of an average rock song, there’s a problem.

Am I being too harsh based on a couple of weak tracks? Maybe, but half of this album is sufficiently promising that its lows are all the more infuriating. “Blame Game” has a great beat, and begins as an interesting story of a dysfunctional relationship — but by the end it degenerates into an offensively bad Chris Rock sketch. I wanted something better.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is the best produced hip-hop album I’ve heard in a while, but too often it makes me wish that Kanye would just shut up until he actually has something to say. Probably not going to happen, is it.