I couldn't believe this cover when I saw it. The next time I see one of my favorite subjects on the cover of Fortune it'll probably be legal or just won't appear on the cover again. A review of the bud article will go up as soon as I get my hands on this issue.
It's about time someone said something about the Kanye vs. Taylor Swift. It's not even about Kanye actually against Taylor Swift, like he has some kind of personal vendetta against her. It's not that I approve, but I can understand why it seems like Kanye throws a hissy fit on every award show.
1.)He has been robbed of awards.
When he released College Dropout, Kanye had been saving beats for that album for years. That was his magnum opus, and when other artists saw what kind of material he was putting on his own record it wasn't hard to convince them to put up verses or sing hooks. I still remember the first time I heard that album in 2004, in Kuwait, and I wasn't as heavily into hip hop as I am now. I had lost it on hip hop, since at the time, the big rap album was Get Rich or Die Tryin' (and I called 50 as the next Ja-Rule singing his own hooks, and ironically he got big partially because of his Ja-Rule diss tracks). I had lost it on Jay-Z by that time (even though he had released the Blueprint around the same time), and I didn't find any mainstream rappers that compelling at the time. College Dropout is a relevant hip hop album because it was one of the first big rap albums in a long time that dealt with everyman topics. How often does a rapper come along who becomes popular because of his production skills and and not gangsterism? Not everyone can relate to "we run around with guns bigger than Lil Bow Wow" (50 cent) but a lot of people can relate to:
"She's so self-conscious/don't even know what she's doing in college/the major that she's major in don't make no money/can't drop out, parents will look at her funny"
Lyrical gems like that are in every single song on the College Dropout. They may not be complex like Nas' flow, or full of Jay-Z's swagger, but they're poignant and clever. That year, College Dropout won best rap album, but he lost album of the year. Outkast's Speakerboxx/Love Below had won best album the previous year. I still believe that there were some white record execs sitting in the Grammy vote-counting booth saying "there's no way we can let a rap album win two years in a row, let alone a new artist's rap album." There's plenty of people who still look down at hip hop as a musical style, so it's not unlikely that this is what happened, because the record industry saw fit to make up for it by giving Kanye's next effort, Late Registration, best album the next year. Hip hop heads, myself included, saw it as inferior to College Dropout. It's ironic how everyday people dismiss Kanye as just being "another rapper" in the stereotype, when his lyrics are more about everyday people. I haven't even started talking about his beats yet. Mos Def is right when he says Jay-Z owes Kanye a thank-you letter, it's hard to deny that Kanye's catchy soulful beats ensured that Jay-Z stayed relevant.
2.)It's the MTV VMA's, they are probably rigged anyway, and even if they aren't, why should artists feel down because of what some teenyboppers think?
I've always kinda felt like the VMA's, even the Grammy's maybe, are rigged to influence album sales. I just find it hard to believe that the winners of these awards also happen to be the best marketed, and they always have the most ads, best shelf space in stores, etc. There is never any kind of huge variety in the artists who win these awards, they're almost always picked from major labels, why is this? The music industry seems to have set up its own factories where they churn out pop stars and pop rappers and give them awards every year, only to have them be forgotten when they start using their awards to ask for bigger contracts. Arguably, Taylor Swift is a product of this music factory. At least Kanye actually became famous through his own skill in making beats, he was banking on his production skills as early as 1998-1999. He also started (or reintroduced) the whole trend of the "producer's album", that Timbaland, Swizz Beats, and the Alchemist started following. It just makes sense, why wouldn't a producer save the best beats for his own album? It's refreshing to see a rapper who makes it not because he's gangsta, or has the most swagger or money, but through the actual art of hip hop.
3.)Beyonce ended up winning best video, so technically Kanye was completely right.
Watched both videos, and of course Beyonce's is 100x sexier, Taylor Swift's video is cute, but I actually thought both weren't anything out of ordinary MTV fare, and that's what saddens me. We're conflicted over issues that are almost equally mediocre in a setting that is likely rigged anyway.
Note: Kanye was also completely right about George Bush not caring about black people.
America is taking this as another chance to put Kanye on the whipping post. People have lost all respect for this guy, but I respect him for saying what he really thinks. Admittedly, he should have remembered where the hell he was, and that's what gives this situation a weirdly funny feel. People think I'm misguided by looking up to Kanye West, but what is so wrong with looking up to a guy who dropped out of college to do what he really loves (making beats and rapping), became extremely good at it (and not by following rap stereotypes), became rich from it, and is also not afraid to say what he really thinks? I would rather have my kid look up to everyman Kanye West than most any plain vanilla gangsta/crunk/pop rapper out there. He's not perfect, but that makes him more of an everyman, which is his image to me anyway. Of course, people argue that he's far from an everyman now with his clothes and cars, but where do people think he came from? It's not like he was 13, lounging by the pool in his momma's mansion and decided "I want to make beats for the rest of my life!" He dropped out of college and was selling beats out of his momma's basement in her single story house.
Kanye was pushed aside as an artist because record labels couldn't market him as a gangsta rapper. This whole Taylor Swift deal lets me down because I love hip hop music as an art form (poetry set to beats), but I lament how it's always stereotypically linked to crime and violence. Now, a non-gangsta hip hop artist emerges who might actually change the public's point of view, but screws up his own discretion, giving the public another reason to hate hip hop. Leave it to Mos Def to actually come to Kanye's defense, and I wonder if Jay-Z, the "Big Brother" that Kanye looks up to, has said anything about this. Maybe he kept his mouth shut because Blueprint 3 is on the shelves and he didn't want to get dragged onto this publicity train. If any artist spoke up in Kanye's defense, I think it's actually kinda cool that it's Mos Def, because he arguably has no serious beef with anybody (except the big record labels, maybe). He's well-liked in the hip hop community as well as the mainstream from his appearances on Chappelle and in movies, and definitely known to say what he really thinks as a conscious rapper (hear "the Rape Over" on his album the New Danger). Kelly Clarkson (who is another suspected manufactured pop drone) has blogged about this and is in Taylor Swift's corner, but Mos Def is in Kanye's, so this is an interesting matchup.
I'm sure people would think I'm biased against country music, but if people associate hip hop with crime, I tend to associate country music with the south, and the south I associate with racism. When a black man interrupts a white woman he gets publicly lashed in the media for days and weeks on end, and when a white man interrupts a black President, what does he get?
I've been looking forward to the release of Michael Moore's new flick, Capitalism: A Love Story, and of course there's the typical vitriol and bullshit that people spout because they can't seem to admit a fat ugly guy can be right about something. The same people don't seem to have any problems with Limbaugh. I think it's about time that someone shouts a call to arms against the rich, and I'm interested to see who's going to be the Marie Antoinette when we revolt against the many rich fucks who line the offices on Wall St. I've always believed that it's at least 90% likely that we're going to experience some kind of apocalyptic event in the next 10-20 years, such as:
1.) Devastating weather patterns
2.) Epidemic
3.) Collapse of economic infrastructure
4.) Usage of nuclear, biological, or chemical weaponry
5.) Skynet
6.) Zombies
One of the big reasons I want to get Lasik as soon as possible is because I anticipate some kind of collapse of our medical infrastructure in our lifetime, and when we're all scrambling around in the wreckage I don't want to be looking for my glasses or a bottle of contact solution.
Back to Michael Moore's movie, I'm just feeling this flick because it's finally a call to arms. Also, in the spirit of insurgency, I'm going to be downloading this thing and distributing it any way I can.
Aside from the corporate rich, who would avoid this movie as it may unwittingly inject some kind of moral fiber into their being, how could you look at the condition of U.S.'s citizens and not see anything wrong? How is it that companies can be "too big to fail"? I've always believed we should have let those companies burn and fined those who made the decisions to squander money on overly risky investments. Letting companies fail, isn't that capitalism?
Fuck Wall Street. I wish they could've been Ethered, Nas-style.
It's sad how America has degenerated into just one group calling the other group idiots, with no room for actual debate. Corporate interests fuel the angry rhetoric by spreading misinformation in order to keep any regulations that threaten their business from actually making it through Congress. Makes me wonder how it would be to live in another country and watch the US tear itself apart from the inside.
I think I've been internalizing intense negative feelings for too long. At work, I'm in an environment where few if any share any of my viewpoints or interests. In retrospect, I've been a member of very few groups where I did NOT develop some kind of rebellious attitude, for better or for worse. It's just been a trait that I've found follows me around. I voted against Bush, spoke out against the war in front of my Army unit, and happened to unite my fraternity one semester with a rap and split it the next semester with an ill-timed campaign to be an officer. I'm always one of the few people among the people I know who listen to hip hop (you'll be seeing hip hop album reviews in this blog) and one of the few guys I know who's into music more than sports. I've always been told I'm very creative, but I think being creative comes with a neurotic need to be different from any group, which seems to lead to feelings of alienation. I think I need to stop looking for a group to be a part of, and throw my ideas out there and see what kind of group forms around me.
I'm just messing around with this, this is not meant to be a super-serious blog or even an amazing one. It's just meant to be my blog.
An insurgency is defined as:
in⋅sur⋅gen⋅cy [in-sur-juhn-see]
1.
the state or condition of being insurgent.
2.
insurrection against an existing government, usually one's own, by a group not recognized as having the status of a belligerent.
3.
rebellion within a group, as by members against leaders
n-see