Talent Lockdown
Editor’s note: I think this might be our first post concerning a big-time major label artist/album. Get psyched for the lawsuit!
There’s a lot of symbolism surrounding the new Kanye West album and I don’t like it one bit.
I remember a time when every rapper was laying claim to the title of “best rapper ever.” That was all anyone in hip-hop really aspired to. Dre, Eminem, Snoop, Wu Tang. Hell, even Master P thought he was the top of the heat. Every notable rapper of the last fifteen years has had the market cornered on braggadacio.
Kanye may have made similar claims on his previous albums, even though its pretty much a concensus that while his work has shown numerous glimpses of genius in both production and lyrics, his flow is far from top-tier.
But guess what? It doesn’t matter anymore. Not even at all. Actual rapping in mainstream rap has taken a back seat to one of the all time lamest fucking gimmicks ever to hit music: blatant, constant use of auto-tune. Auto-tune is a piece of equipment that uses a phase vocoder to correct the fuck-ups of marginally talented people in vocal and instrumental performance. That means that if someone sings flat note, the software digitally corrects it so it sounds like the right note. Recently rappers have re-appropriated it as a way to make themselves sound like robots. TI, T-Pain,
So in a nutshell, instead of aspiring to be the greatest rappers ever, hip hop artists today are fighting to show off how absolutely terrible they are at singing. While I’m all for moving the genre away from flossing and violence and bad grammar and worse spelling and racial epithets and gangsterism, I’d also like to see those that have talent aspire to do better.
There’s no disputing that Kanye has plenty of talent, but after listening through this album a few times all I see is one enormous mistake. The material here is for the most part astonishingly good; aside from a couple of lame ducks, the songs are sparsely constructed and unified in theme and tenor. It’s a stark, dour reflection of everything that’s gone wrong in Kanye’s life and there’s no shortage of pain and emotion in his delivery. It overcomes his extreme arrogance, at least lyrically. You’d just never know it because every second of this album has fucking robot voice on it. Also, the Philosopher Kings already did the whole “heart monitor as beat” thing and it worked much better for them.
The rapping is minimized and West sings nearly all of every song. I have no problem with that, but I feel like I would’ve loved this album if he had taken an extra six months to get some vocal lessons, polish up those pipes, and do a proper job of singing these songs. Make it genuine. The robot voice just steals any sense of realness from the songs.
I don’t care if you make the most heartfelt and genuine songs of your life; I would rather hear them sung badly and passionately (like his first song on a recent Saturday Night Live performance) than stripped of any human quality at all. Hell, get someone else to sing them for you.
I sincerely doubt I’ll ever be listening to this album again.
Kanye West - Love Lockdown [4:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download Kanye West - Heartless: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download‘Ye would like you to buy it on iTunes if you have your robot ears on.
