Why do people pay to see this a-hole?

[+ quoththeraven]

About a year and a half ago Michael Walters, who is a well know Dame Edna impersonator, posted this on his Facebook page. It was so good that I couldn't resist commenting, sharing and saving it. It captures the feeling I have always had about Kanye. Here it is, ENJOY!

 

"A friend of mine asked "will someone please explain Kanye West to me?"

 

I couldn't pass up the opportunity to try.

 

It's quite simple: He is a talentless, narcissistic schmuck who married into a family of narcissistic schmucks, who, in turn, had baby schmucks to whom the adult schmucks gave bad names. The family into which he married is renowned for being shameless fame whores. He was a perfect fit to join in their little side show.

 

His musical talent is that of a wharf rat jumping onto the keys of an untuned piano in a whorehouse at last call.

 

He has managed to attain some degree of schmuckdom in pop culture by offending every person who crosses his path with inane rap music and indescribable ego. That ego has given him a platform. He uses it to promote absolutely nothing of value. Sadly, his fans find value in the nothing he's promoting, so, he continues to be given this public platform to spew inanity.

 

To explain the record number of Grammys he has attained for his "music", you have to look no further than the sound byte obsessed, pop culture bottom feeding public - who embrace stupid, talentless people and place them on pedestals where they are worshipped, celebrated and revered for absolutely nothing. Kanye West is not a celebrity. He is a walking indictment of the values of the depleted culture of this nation. Sad, isn't it?"

 

I couldn't disagree more about his talent. That said, I'd rather have ten more Lance Navarros in the world than another Kanye.

 

(His mother's death and how that happened was when he really started to unravel, imo.)

[+ quoththeraven]

This seems as good a place to put this as anywhere, although it's more about hiphop and rap than Kanye West:

 

It never occurred to me, but in hiphop and rap, composition doesn't start with lyrics, melody or chord progression, but with beats - that is, the rhythmic underpinning of the song, primarily percussion, but also the bass line. These are developed using drum machines, samplers and other computer-aided (i.e., synthesized) devices which can be, but usually aren't, replicated in performance using live instrumentation. Melodies, lyrics and additional instrumentation is layered in on top of that and fine-tuned.

 

The year after West's infamous outburst against Taylor Swift at the Grammys, West demonstrated the results of this compositional style by bringing his sampler with him and using it to "produce" a finished product onstage as described in a master's thesis that I came across when I was trying to figure out why a Kpop producer was getting credit for a beat reused in a song by a member of a group he does. I can't find the link to that right now, but here's a description of composing using beats:

 

http://m.wikihow.com/Make-a-Hip-Hop/Rap-Beat

 

Even if the subject and aesthetics of Western rap and hiphop don't appeal to you, it is compositionally difficult and complex, requiring experimentation and a great deal of patience. Other forms of hiphop that are more melodic and less challenging to ideals of cultural hegemony may be more to your taste, like Salt 'n Pepa's Whatta Man (covered by Kpop group IOI) and the Fugees' version of Killing Me Softly (covered by Gong Minzy). Or you can check out Beenzino, Dynamic Duo, Verbal Jint, and Epik High, among others.

 

Here's Epik High live in concert performing a remix/remake of Kpop song "Eyes Nose Lips." It's all in English, which is harder to rap in expressively than Korean, which may not technically be a tonal language but is often spoken as if it is.

Also I love the way DJ Tukutz trolls Tablo in the beginning.