New Jersey White Boy's Rap of the Week: Kanye West, a Retrospective (Part 3)

SCREAMS FROM THE HATERS GOT A NICE RING TO IT or IF THEY HATE THEN LET ‘EM HATE AND WATCH THE MONEY PILE UP

Graduation is Kanye’s first great achievement, in terms of his rapping career. Yes, Late Registration and The College Dropout were great albums, with some of my favorite tracks on them. Just releasing TCD was an achievement, and being able to mix standard braggadocio and real emotions on Late Registration was a revelation. But Graduation takes what he’s done to a whole new level.

With this album, which was released in 2007, Yeezy had finally mastered the art of rapping. Yes, there is an art, much to the surprise of many. I kind of glazed over it while discussing Kendrick Lamar, but technical ability is something that all rappers have to learn, develop, and perfect before they can join the circle of greats. The easiest example to use is my boy, Donald Glover, aka Childish Gambino. His very early stuff showed his lyrical ability, but his technical ability was so awful he disowned his first mixtape. I don’t even like the albums before Culdesac, because his technique was still so bad. I mean, listen to “Fresh”, or “The Rocker”, and compare it to “Bonfire” from his newest album. There’s a clear difference in his technique that just about anyone can identify.

There are 2 main aspects of technique that I’ve identified, and are worth talking about – flow, and delivery. Delivery is easy to describe, but hard to do. Simply put, it’s the inflections, tones, and pitches that an emcee uses when he or she is rapping. Just as you might sing a song quietly to convey a gentle, calm, and/or sad tone at a particular part, a rapper will change how he delivers his lines to put emphasis on a particular part. For instance, Yeezy will drop the pitch of his voice and get this growl to his voice to add anger and force to his lines. “Can’t Tell Me Nothing”, shows off this mastery of delivery. Most notably, whenever he says “Nothing” in the hook, he does his signature growl, adding this element of aggressiveness and hate to the line. But he’s also a bit condescending and sarcastic in the delivery of the line, as if he’s saying “oh yeah, I totally don’t listen to you. I don’t take your advice at all”. It helps secure and present the theme of the song, in that people think he’s so egotistical and narcissistic that he can’t hear what their critiques, but in reality he does. If he said those lines any different, the entire subtext of the song would be the exact opposite, and probably would make the track worse.

Flow is a bit harder to describe, so excuse me if this kind of hard to understand. Flow is essentially the rhythm with which you say the lyrics to the beat, much like the length and pitch of notes in singing. However, singing is different, since notes are fairly standard for each song. While they can be changed, it’s really only based on the range of the singer; they’re still either high or low notes, just higher or lower based on the voice. Same with how long the singer holds the note; it’s generally defined in the song, but can be played with depending on the singer’s rendition. Flow, on the other hand, is different for each person, and something that can be worked on and improved. Some people just have natural flow that they don’t have to work on very much, while other people spend years trying to get that right flow. Not to say singers don’t work on their craft and can learn to sing, but singing, for the most part, relies more on natural talent and understanding your range than any development, practice, and learning.

It’s impossible to show you his flow now, without you saying “So? This is exactly what rap is supposed to sound like”. And I would say you’re right. You can really only tell Kanye’s improvements if you listen very closely to his early stuff and his newer stuff over and over and over again. However, I’d go and listen to the stuff I posted in Part 1 of this dissertation/essay/super-long article/pointless exercise, and compare it to some of the tracks I talk about here, and see if you can tell the difference between the lyrical rhythm he has on those tracks compared to the rhythm he has on Graduation. You can also check the flow of those early CG tracks, and compare them to the track off of Camp, for a slightly more obvious example.

Given my current studies as a business major, I’ve become an economic expert, and know that competition is good for all the firms in the market. The perfect example is the “beef’ between 50 Cent and Kanye West when they released their albums, Curtis and Graduation respectively, on the same day. There was a rumor that 50 Cent would stop releasing solo music if he lost, however, he claimed that was untrue. Luckily, or unluckily depending on your view of his music, he lost by about 300,000 albums, 1 million to 700,000. Both good albums for the particular type of hip-hop each are in, but it’s one of the most obvious signs that “gangsta rap”, in its early 2000’s form, was dead compared to the new kind of rap Kanye was ushering in.

Now, with the production on Graduation, he took inspiration from The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and U2 to make a more stadium-friendly sound. He mostly took inspiration for his melodies and chord-progressions, but the fact that he looked to rock bands not just for samples, but as influence, is relatively unheard of in modern hip-hop. Or at least prior to 2007. Today, artists like Pitbull and Lil Wayne both try to incorporate these massive, stadium-filling beats into their albums, since they also have started to play to sell-out crowds at huge venues. However, he still kept that great acoustic instrument sound, such as his string orchestra from Late Regristation, and some nice piano parts.

The musical influence is pretty clear in songs like “I Wonder”. Sampling the vocals and piano of “My Song” by Labi Siffre, he builds a massive wall of sound filled with pounding bass drums, snare-like claps, beautiful strings, and synths that bounce between ethereal to in-your-face and distorted. However, as I’ve mentioned before, he lets the sample carry the beat, which is how you’re supposed to do it. And when he takes the piano away, either the orchestra or the synths take its place, playing the same notes and progression. But each has its own sonic texture (the most pretentious term to describe music) – the piano is quiet, intimate, and soft, the synths are scratchy, loud, and imposing, and the violins are big, warm, and beautiful. It’s just a pleasant song with an amazing melody.

He also looked to Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, and Modest Mouse to improve his lyrics. He realized that, while his previous lyrics were impactful, they weren’t connecting with the audiences when done live, nor did many understand the lyrics. Not only did he want to be saying something important or personal, but he also wanted to get crowds going with his words. He was also looking to improve his storytelling ability. Looking back, especially after all this analysis, I prefer the lyrics of his first two albums. They had so much more of an impact on me, and felt so much more real, personal, and important. However, I listened to them in room or on the way to school, not in a 50,000 person stadium, and I can only imagine how much more exciting and cool it must be to hear “Stronger” or “Flashing Lights” live.

As a good example of that more electrifying/story-based lyricism, let’s look at “Homecoming”. It’s the story of Kanye and his hometown of Chicago, and the love he has for it, along with the troubles they’ve had with each other. Calling the city “Windy”, in reference to Chicago being the “Windy City” (I like to think it’s also a nod at The Association song “Windy”, aka one of the whitest songs known to man). Originally recorded as “Home” for his 2003 mixtape Freshman Adjustment, he replaced John Legend’s hook after meeting with a new one written by Chris Martin of Coldplay. He also re-did the beat, switching out a soul sample for a very uplifting and powerful piano and what sounds like a recording of a concert or park. He also re-wrote some of his lyrics, and re-recorded his vocals, given his new abilities at delivery and flow. And it all comes together into a beautiful, but somewhat tragic, love song to the place he grew up.

However, he also took a lot of influence from electronic music. Looking to house, Euro-disco, and indie tunes for inspiration, he completely separated himself from the beats on his first two albums. As I described before in Part 1 and Part 2, College Dropout featured some sped-up soul samples and sparse instrumentation, and Late Registration saw Kanye move to more orchestral arrangements. However, on this album, he went for more synthesizers and house beats, along with some rave and disco sounds and elements. However, unlike many of those genres, he didn’t loop any of his beats. All of the music is organically created, which led to some very interesting, and pleasing, variations during bridges, intros, and even during verses.

“Good Life” is a perfect example of this. Based on the keyboards from “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)” by Michael Jackson, along with sampling a bit of his own “School Spirit”, he crafted a fun, exciting song that makes you truly realize how far Kanye has come. From fighting to get a record released to being able to replace his teeth with diamonds, he’s got the good life. He pitched up and slowed down the P.Y.T. piano almost until they sounded his traditional sped-up soul samples, while the sample from his own song is pumped up and pitch-dropped until it sounds distorted and face-melting. It’s most certainly the best anthem for having money that I’ve ever heard, and I listen to lots and lots of rap. I think most of that can be attributed to the fact that it isn’t a song about making you jealous of his money, but rather saying how happy he’s been since he’s gotten it. As strange as it is to say this about Kanye West, but it’s a somewhat reserved braggadocio about money, cars, clothes, and women.

And let’s not forget about Kanye’s mega-hit “Stronger”. Taking the song “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” by Daft Punk, chopping it up, mixing it around, and adding a little Yeezy flair, West created one of the most memorable beats of not only 2007, but really, in the entirety of rap. Very rarely does the beat become more memorable than the lyrics in a rap song, but Kanye is one of the few who can do that. Hell, I can barely listen to the original without going “why is this so slow? Where’s Kan- Oh, this is Daft Punk” (as my fellow bloggers know, I am expert when it confusing songs/bands). Daft Punk even loved the track, saying “the sound was really fat. It sounds really big”, which, in the electronic scene, is a huge compliment, especially from a group known for creating “fat” and “big” sounds. And let’s not forget the hype it got for Hype Williams, who directed the video and became a household name in the music video directing.

Of course, Kanye West did take a big risk with the song “Barry Bonds”. He decided that he didn’t want any guest rappers to rap on his album. There’s very few emcees that have Kanye West’s popularity, or even less, that would release an album without any help from other rappers. While I’m sure that there are big albums out there without any guest spots, the really only other one I can think of is Nas’s Illmatic. However, he eventually would  include 2 rappers – Mos Def, who was only used for a hook on “Drunk and Hot Girls”, and Lil Wayne. Lil Wayne, in 2007, was one of the biggest rappers in the game. To include him on your album, especially when you don’t have the best rapping skills, could be disastrous; it could only further expose your flaws, and embarrass you. However, on “Barry Bonds”, Kanye destroyed Lil Wayne, who delivered an entirely forgettable verse that seemed afraid of Kanye’s verse. And after Lil Wayne wet himself on Kanye’s album, his rap stock went down, and has been sliding down ever since. And Kanye’s has only gone up, as has his ego.

This album was a new high for Kanye. It was much tighter and more cohesive than his previous two albums, and yet so much bigger. It was finally the spark that got other people excited for rap, people that wouldn’t think to listen to it. And while the term “pop-rap” is not only funny, but degrading, Kanye West was able to create a lot of pop-rap that not only had deep meaning, but also hood enough to keep more traditional rap fans happy. Which, if you think about it, is amazing, so amazing (that’s a reference from the future, because I use my time machine well). This album is even credited with the recent revival of disco and electronic-based music, which means that Pitchfork and hipsters everywhere should be thanking and praising Kanye.

Next time, we’ll explore one of the most traumatic, horrible times in Kanye’s life, some of which he brought on himself.