I just figured you'd like to know.

Also, I am from Cabrini Green.

Holy shit, LV. Are you just trolling at this point? Show me one single social movement that was realized because some proponent said something once.

That's the whole point. His whole album is a juxtaposition of the sadness and desperation of his community with the capacity for joy and perseverance. I thought that would be obvious to anyone who's listened to the record, but if you hear it differently, I'm all ears.



Well, a huge portion of his music is based on samples of other artists' previously recorded works, and he's not editing them to the point of non-recognition (like, say, a Matmos record or something). When you hear an Otis Redding sample, it's clearly an Otis Redding sample. A lot of his sounds -- drum sounds, synth sounds, etc -- are stock sounds run through the same effects that every other producer is using right now.

The greatest strength of his productions is, I believe, his ability to layer sounds or conversely, to allow for the power of minimalism. Whether it's an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink production, or a super stripped down song like Love Lockdown, he has a great sense of space.

But some producers/songwriters whom I think he sounds like: the Dust Brothers, J Dilla, Sly Stone, The Ummah, Steve Reich. There are lots more. It's great when an artist can pull from a number of disparate influences and make something sound fresh, and Kanye does that, to be sure. But he's really not reinventing the wheel. He's a terrific curator of other people's work, but I'm not so sure that he's much of an innovator. I hear "fresh," but I never hear "new."


I'm happy you get all that from him, LV. Seriously -- it's great to be inspired by an artist, and I'm not trying to deny you that pleasure. But I believe you're drawing connections from different ideas that Kanye isn't even necessarily trying to make. The dude is on autopilot; he throws everything against the wall to see what sticks. If the public reaction to the Bill Cosby tweet had been more positive, I bet he'd still be going on about that; he'd maybe even release a song called "Bill Cosby Innocent." But the reaction was negative, so he moved on to the next thing that might get people excited. It seems like with every Kanye event --every song, every tweet, anything he does -- you are jumping through mental hoops to frame it in such a way that is fits your own narrative of Kanye Is the Best. And your comments on "Kanye as a millenial artist" help me understamd this -- you seem to like ego, bravado, bigness in art (hence the love for Michael Bay); the grandiosity of spectacle seems to excite you.

I value those aspects sometimes, but not when it's a grandiosity of something ultimately hollow. You can frame the Bill Cosby tweet, the Taylor Swift "bitch" comment, or anything else he does however you want; that's your right as a consumer of art. But you are grasping at straws if you think there's anything more to those comments than empty hype.

Alright, Kendrick.... I'm listening.

"How Much a Dollar Cost" sounds so much like "Pyramid Song".

It does and I really love that he sampled Radiohead.

Okay, so, for the record, I'm listening to TPAB right now and I can feel my mind changing. It's clicking for me finally. I feel like I'm getting what he's doing/saying for the first time.

Oh, is that actually a sample? I just figured they were similar piano parts.

Kanye is Superman and Kendrick is Batman

"I got a chamber of material from the album that I was in love [with] where sample clearances or something as simple as a deadline kept it off the album," Lamar said in an interview with Grammy.com that was continued on 2 Dope Boyz. "But I think probably close to ten songs that I'm in love with that I'll still play and still perform that didn’t make the cut."

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