So this Kanye’s good enough to merit a follow-up post. I’m more convinced of its brilliance than ever. However, I kinda wanna go track-by-track with this. At first, I was going to put the tracks in order of preference, worst to best. Then I was just going to go in order to try to highlight what’s good about the sequencing and all that. By the time you read the rest, I imagine you’ll know which I chose to do.
Dark Fantasy. Couple things of note: in spite of all the weirdo stuff at the beginning — and I say that absent judgment or connotation — it’s the signal of something important: that this would, in fact, be a rap album. 808s and Hearbreak, love it or hate it, doesn’t fit that bill. Of course, there was a chance it was a fakeout like “Lost Ones” was on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, but we all know by now Kanye didn’t do us like that.
Gorgeous. What’s interesting to me about this track, and the one preceding? They’re both really sexy, like sexy enough that they could have been turned into something else just with a change of phrasing. Not so much that you’d put em on in your bedroom, but they could be made to work for a sex scene by a creative director. On “Dark Fantasy,” it’s that throbbing bass line. On “Gorgeous,” it’s the guitar. Oh, and I’m generally a fan of anything involving Raekwon. Now, you know this song is good when you can halfway follow what Chef is saying. That’s not a regular day at the office.
Power. Genius. Unequivocal genius. Aside for one of my pet peeves — poorly interpreted samples, this one being the “huh?” cut from King Crimson’s “21st Century Schizoid Man,” which was fix on the remix — it’s perfect in every way. Yeah, it’s Kanye at his egomanical best, but rarely do you see someone take a concept like this one and flip it without throwing it in your face. 2004 Kanye probably would have thrown a skit on to drive home what he meant by “power.” 2010 Kanye just killed it without trying to look all deep. Thank goodness.
All of the Lights. I mean, it’s cool. That’s all I got.
Monster. I really, really want to hate Officer Ricky. I mean really, but his rap game is the absolute bizness. As for that Nikki Minaj: I’d like it a lot more were I not almost positive those lyrics were written by a man. I don’t want to see another male interpretation of what a female emcee could be. I want to hear from a woman, not someone spitting what one might think is my fantasy. I’m telling you: that ain’t it. That said, I’m not in her demographic.
So Appalled. Go ahead. Tell me something bad about it. I’m right here waiting. I will say, however, you gotta put a warning label on this to tell me generally when RZA is gonna start hollering at me. That scared the hell out of me first time I heard it.
Devil in a Blue Dress. The only track where Kanye’s not listed as a producer, which meant Bink! had to put his foot in it. Great Smokey sample, great story, great Rawse verse to close it off, the guitar’s laid perfectly over the sample. So evocative and poetic without being tight or pretentious. It would be the best song on 99% of the albums out there. However, it’s on the same disc as…
Runaway. So I tried to avoid going for the purportedly deep, really long song as my favorite on here, but I can’t say I’ve ever listened to a nine-minute song as many times in a short period as I have this one. Let’s start with the perfect hook, sung with a touch of that “I’m drunk off my ass” that leads to someone reaching these conclusions. Then there’s the fact that Kanye’s singing isn’t bad, even if he does sound a touch like Grand Puba on “I Like It,” and the bridge he sings after his verse is pitch-perfect emotion. Now comes Pusha, every bit the pimp he always is, selling the same idea with a lot more pinky ring. What makes this interesting to me: Kanye comes off sounding like a couple of girls I’ve used to date…but I’m sure they’d say the same about me. But the juxtaposition of Kanye, too cowardly to walk himself and insisting she go first against Pusha’s gorilla is fascinating. Kanye’s pleading for her to dip. Pusha dares her. Huge difference…except it’s probably not.
Then there’s the last four minutes and the daring decision to recreate the melody with a synth line. It’s just close enough for you to follow what’s going on, different enough to add something new, and sells the catchiness of the lyrics so well that, by the time I’ve figured out what the synth is doing and start singing the words out loud, so does Kanye. Whoa.
What I’m saying is: this might be one of the 10 or 20 best songs I’ve ever heard, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating.
Oh, and I love anybody that finds a way to make a snare hit in this digital era, and the effect on the hook just makes my day.
Hell of a Life. So now we’re in Kanye’s I-watch-too-much-pr0n world. Here’s the thing: I think he made his most insightful statement on this one. “She said her price go down she ever f*ck a black guy/or do anal/or do a gang bang/what’s kinda funny/it’s all considered the same thing.” Give that one some thought, folks, cuz it’s real as steel.
Blame Game. The song that guarantees this isn’t a 10.0 album like Pitchfork said. Sorry, but Chris Rock talking about sex makes me really, really uncomfortable. I’d rather listen to your parents talk about these things than him. And he does it for like two minutes. It slows things all the way down, isn’t really that funny — same damn joke over and over — and kills momentum at a crucial time. Kanye decided to slow it down. It’s gotta pick back up to bring the record home. But man, we didn’t need to take a damn timeout, and the last thing I’d want in that time is a talk from Coach Chris Rock.
Lost in the World/Who Will Survive in America. My first inclination was to say Kanye should have gone with either this or “All of the Lights” and found a way to work in “The Joy,” but there just wasn’t a place for that. Plus, aside from tempo, no similarity here to “All of the Lights.” They’re almost entirely different tracks, and this is the perfect and necessary capper. After track after track of hedonism, the good and bad that come with it, it’s Kanye’s admission that he’s still, for a zillion reasons, lost. It’s the explanation of the gray that surrounds all the sex and drugs and…sex. If you didn’t catch the humanity before, here it is in your face, even if it gets lost in a kinda weird macro assessment from Gil Scott-Heron. I mean, he’s right, but it’s kinda odd to speak of such decadence track after track, only to sample Gil doing what almost amounts to scolding the world for exactly what Kanye’s reveling in.
And now? I’m gonna listen to it again.
