Comments on: You Worry About The Wrong Things

By: Jeff

Jeff — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:29:44 +0000

In my humble opinion if Kanye had put this out as the songwriter and producer collaborating with a great singer , people would love it (including me). I give him credit for branching out and wish more artists would try it…..but someone close to him should tell him that his vocals are too weak (even with autotune) to be great live.

By: Liz Dexia

Liz Dexia — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:53:16 +0000

You were right the first time. Can’t this blowhard go away? Can’t talented people get on the radio?

By: jimmycity

jimmycity — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 06:10:54 +0000

I think this is a fun track, full of energy and spunk! I think what what is most compelling here is that Kanye really seems INTO it. Sorry, his passion for what he is doing totally sells it for me. That, and the synth sound that sounds like something from 1985 (Go West, maybe?).The autotune just modernizes and freshens the very retro feeling I get from this track.

“You worry ’bout the wrong things, the wrong things” - indeed his detractor are!

Matthew, have you given Paul McCartney as The Fireman and his “Electric Arguments” a listen?

By: Matthew Perpetua

Matthew Perpetua — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 02:59:35 +0000

But this is his pop album! And there are hooks all over the place! They just aren’t rap hooks, really. How are you not hearing the hooks in “Paranoid,” for instance?

By: pangea

pangea — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 02:13:43 +0000

i hate this new Kanye West album. it’s tragically bad departure from an abnormally consistently tuneful hip hop artist. Where r the hooks? this is his least pop album as I far as I can tell.

By: kimberly

kimberly — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 23:41:32 +0000

Where can i send music for your review?

By: Norman

Norman — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:05:58 +0000

by the way, “One More Time” is autotune, “Around the World” and “Human After All” are vocoders. The vocoder sound has a crunchy saw wave quality, while autotune is just a human voice with the pitch being adjusted in unnatural ways.

By: Norman

Norman — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 16:03:28 +0000

What you discovered here is not how good this record is, but how anybody can learn to like any record, so long as they’re in the right frame of mind. This is why music is subjective, and why “taste” is such tenuous ground to stand on.

By: dale

dale — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 04:03:48 +0000

No, of course it would be terrible to have a formless ambient thing, just as if would be for him to make a noise album. But again - I think there are imaginable things to do with a pop album before we have to resort to either of those anti-forms. Does everything on a pop album have to be sequenced, for example? I’d love to hear a keyboard as prominent as the one in Paranoid played in live. What about something that wasn’t as heavily compressed, the same elements but taking up less space? What about trying to do something with old-school panning of the instruments - Deerhoof did that on The Runners Four and it was like a revelation. Why not try something like that in a modern r+b album (is that what Kanye’s is?). I’m not saying these things would even be good ideas but there must be hundreds of things that would sound interesting that aren’t being tried. This Kanye album is really not that far out. The big news, as you say: he’s singing. But a musician tossing out everything he used to do and trying new things doesn’t make it a new and different experience for the rest of us. We still have to measure his singing against other albums with singing. And I guess I don’t see why we should applaud him for meeting his fans half-way (that’s how the equation works, right?). He’s not really under any obligation to them.

By: Matthew Perpetua

Matthew Perpetua — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 03:02:21 +0000

Well, fair enough if you want a record not to be a pop record. But it is awfully weird to think that in some way we’re not on opposite sides, at least in the sense that this is very much a pop-centric site.

808s is definitely a departure from the previous three. The feeling is totally different, that’s obvious enough, but it’s also a question of technique — virtually all of the stylistic elements associated with West are tossed out (think of the sped-up vocal samples for a big example), and he’s barely rapping. That’s a pretty radical move for a rapper, wouldn’t you say? The rapping that is on the record isn’t even particularly normal rapping, the most level ground you get ends up with a lot of effects, etc.

So he went from making this warm, cozy sort of “backpack” rap album (The College Dropout) to doing a glitzier version of the same (Late Registration) to an even glitzier version of that (Graduation). There’s certainly some hint of what was to come on Graduation, but it’s still a pretty conventional hip hop record. He’s not stripping out everything that made him who he was — it’s still a pop form, it has beats and bass and all the things you mention. It’s still a record that is interested in having hooks, and engaging with mainstream listeners, even if it might be challenging for some people. I mean, that’s reasonable! He is who he is, and it’s not a good idea to totally abandon your strengths. Just imagine if he totally discarded everything about his previous work and made a formless, ambient type thing — that would be a far more derivative piece of art, actually.

I definitely think the fact that he’s pitching a sorta strange album to an audience that is clearly willing to meet him halfway says a lot of good things about him as an artist, and maybe also the audience’s desire to move pop culture into the next decade.