Touch the Sky
You should have seen the sad faces on all of the girls who didn’t understand or appreciate what they were seeing and hearing during the quieter, more cerebral parts of Kanye West’s Touch the Sky concert tonight. Maybe I’m overlooking the many moments that he rocked Assembly Hall with such favorites as The New Workout Plan, All Falls Down, and Jesus Walks, but to me it was just disappointing to see a lot of people bored out of their minds during his newer, more experimental tracks.
I looked to my right to see white, like, totallyomigoshlike, white sorority girls nodding desperately to Drive Slow or Heard Em Say. I glanced to my left and witnessed LOUD black girls become silent for probably the first times in their noisy lives.
I’m let down because I’m a guy who passionately loves hip hop music but can’t understand why people just want to shake their booties or sip gin and juice all the time. To me personally, it’s refreshing to hear more intelligent rap in this substance-lacking hip hop industry. Other than Outkast and Nas, who in hip hop right now is actually listenable???
But who knows, maybe I’m just a defensive hip hop snob who should actually instead blame Kanye for being too ambitiously ahead of his time and baffling everyone tonight with his avant-gardism.
Or maybe it’s all Common’s fault for dropping out of the tour and forcing Kanye to add some of his filler tracks to the set list.
Or maybe I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about because I’m a meek Asian grad student studying — of all things so NOT hip hop — actuary science, and have no business posing as a hip hop expert/enthusiast, word up.
Regardless of a few ill-received songs, it was still a phenomenal concert — probably one of the best rap concerts I’ve ever been to — and Kanye will continue to sell his millions of records as long as he keeps pumping out hits like Gold Digger and doesn’t become too radically experimental. Such a catchy song that Gold Digger is, by the way. Get down girl, g’head, get down.
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17 Comments
have you ever looked into Australian or British hip hop? It's usually of a much different tone to anything American, and very laid back and enjoyable.
For Aus. I'd recommend Resyn Dogs or Hilltop Hoods, and for Britain look out for The Streets (which is only one guy, go figure). A lot of people can't handle the fact that they're not deep African American voices, though, so who knows if you'd enjoy them. ^_^;
A friend of mine highly recommended and lent me a copy of The Streets, but he just sounded like Slick Rick (the guy popular for the song Lodi Dodi -- the original, not the inferior version that Snoop Dogg later did) having a bad day.
Kanye is comin to NIU, we were thinkin about going. 3 doors down was last night and was amazing...miss you stud!
You should go to Kanye's concert when he's in town, Becky, it really was a great show. You know how most rap concerts always suck because they always become so disorganized with the rapper and 7 or 8 of his homies on the stage screaming away? Well Kanye has learned a lot of lessons from the shortcomings of hip hop's past and has removed anything that would be distracting -- it's just him you're looking at when he performs. Well, sort of, he's got a DJ, keyboardist, drummer, and most impressively a string section behind him, but they're all enclosed in these cages. It was a very impressive and aesthetically pleasing presentation.
Plus, you can never go wrong when he's doing The New Workout Plan or Slow Jamz or something.
kanye west is a genius!!! :)
I want Kanye's baby!!! or babies!!!
Go white sox! No need to tear them or their fans down, lets just celebrate that Chicago may have another major sports championship that it so rightly deserves.
you need zoom.
Pete, your friend sounds like Slick Rick? Is that a good thing, or a bad thing. I, too, recommend The Streets.
For the concert, sorry to say, but you're getting old. I can enjoy shows where I know the crowd will be intense and LOVES the band/artist, but if it's someone that the kids are listening to these days, just accept that it won't be the best experience, hang out in back with the older crowd, and just enjoy the performance for your good. Screw the people that want to hear 5 versions of Jesus Walks. Sadly, I'm saying this from experience.
I'm not heavily into hip-hop, but The Streets are probably worth a few listens at any rate. They're a bit different in their music though. Their album "A Grand Don't Come For Free" is pretty well much slow, thoughtful rap/orations, which whilst most definitely humorous and appealing, require a certain mood to be enjoyed fully.
Maybe I should check out Kanye though - I've been hearing about him everywhere.
And you study actuary science? Thats for insurance type things, isn't it? Is it any good? I'd considered studying actuary science at one point, but wasn't sure how interesting it'd be.
Slick Rick? For those who don't like it: eat a dick.
phil, what are you, the photo police? :P
the streets are good, but when i'm not in the mood, they just sound like a bunch of of british people talking. i dunno, they dont touch the essence of hip hop for me. the heart of hip hop lays in the hands of kanye! he is THE innovator right now
oh, i just read what baron wrote and realized that we both mentioned "moods" and you're right--it does require the right mood to listen to the streets. hehe
Kanye legitimizes rap music. He's the reason I still have faith that the genre is going in a good direction. I really respect the fact that he was trying to make a "musical" rap album in Late Registration, something that Outkast tried (and failed) to accomplish on their last album. His collaboration with Jon Brion (who used to work with Fiona Apple) and his odd but brilliant choices of featured artists on his album really show his commitment to creating something more polished and layered than most rap artists.
As a rapper he's still got his limitations and as a producer he's still trying to find his identity (by avoiding his schtick of using vocal samples to make high-pitched chipmunk squeals all the time) but I really can't think of any mainstream rap acts out there that share the same vision Kanye does.
That failure of an album won Outkast album of the year..
and Late Registration isn't in the same league as College Dropout. BUT THAT IS MY OPINION YOU CAN LIKE WHAT YOU WANT IT'S MUSIC, OKAY?
TO EACH HIS OWN!
I'd agree that, in terms of mainstream artists anyway, Kanye is definitely way up there. I respect the fact that despite selling an insane amount of copies he's still attempting to do his own thing. Whether or not it really "works" for a majority of people is irrelevant... it's a secondary need for a truly legitimate artist.
I wouldn't mind if he dropped this whole college angle entirely, though.
As far as "good" hip-hop artists, I think there's a good amount of them myself... although some of the best ones are gone now. MF Doom, Cannibal Ox, Thig, Diplo, Smif n Wessun, Shadow Huntaz and Handsome Boy Modeling School all work well for me personally, in addition to more obvious ones like Naz, Outkast (although I think their early material is superior) and Jay-Z.
With any genre you really just have the stuff that floats to the top and everything else under it. Like with anything, music or otherwise, the top isn't always as good as the insides.
The whole point of the College angle though, is that he's completing a set. I think there are meant to be five albums, all about that stage of life.