West is overrated to me, his songs lack proper transitions between the verses and choruses, often have poor lyrical structure the idioms and colloquialisms in his rapping are just plain annoying most of the time. He's like the Metallica of hiphop. Kanye does have some underlying talent, problem is he wastes so much time obsessing over his ego and not enough time practicing singing and rapping.
Again, separate the rapper/public figure from the producer:
Posting a bunch of Kanye-produced tracks from Kweli's Quality album should be pretty telling as well, because those songs are undoubtedly the highlight tracks on an album that includes tracks produced by DJ Quik and J Dilla.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm
Settle down there, Temple Grandin.
The Following User Says Thank You to PsYcNeT For This Useful Post:
J Dilla and Madlib need to be in this conversation.
Oh for sure. As well as Rick Rubin, Large Professor, Q-Tip, DJ Quik, El-P, possibly Scott La Rock (if he wasn't killed so early in his career) etc. The point however is, Kanye deserves to be mentioned in the same breath, particularly his production work from 1996-2005.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm
Settle down there, Temple Grandin.
The Following User Says Thank You to PsYcNeT For This Useful Post:
Posting a bunch of Kanye-produced tracks from Kweli's Quality album should be pretty telling as well, because those songs are undoubtedly the highlight tracks on an album that includes tracks produced by DJ Quik and J Dilla.
You obsessing over pushing this point is only indicative of the fact that you like Kanye. Which is fine dude, why care if we don't like him? I'm sure tons of the music I like you'd think is garbage but who cares really, there's nothing you can do to convince me Kanye is anything but an overrated hack. One of my favorite bands is Megadeth and I've heard people say they are monotone, cliched and terrible stupid noise... good, it's good for people not to like the same thing. You aren't going to convince us Kanye is good.
I'm just not sure how it's difficult for people to separate not only the Rapper from the Producer, but also the Public Figure from the Artist.
It's not like I'm the only one to think so either. I've seen Kanye pop up on numerous top producer lists, many times over many years, especially in times before his hype train blew up in the mid 00's.
You can hate Kanye as a person, he's quite detestable and does little to nothing to endear himself to the public. But guess what? Roger Waters is an all-time massive #######, and you'll have a hard time convincing me there's a better band in history than Pink Floyd. Prince is a pretty egotistical dick but he's still an incredible musical figure. Lars Ulrich is a twat of the highest order and...well he sucks at drumming too, and James and Dave Mustaine and Cliff did 90% of the heavy lifting in Metallica, but you get my point. Seperate the artist from the person.
__________________
"Think I'm gonna be the scapegoat for the whole damn machine? Sheeee......."
Genius' don't need to proclaim themselves as such. Simple as that.
I'll admit Kanye is talented. Maybe one of the better rappers out there and definitely on the creative end of popular music. But he's no genuis, musical or otherwise.
Unless there's such a thing for being a genuis at rubbing people the wrong way.
The Following 3 Users Say Thank You to Daradon For This Useful Post:
You can hate Kanye as a person, he's quite detestable and does little to nothing to endear himself to the public. But guess what? Roger Waters is an all-time massive #######, and you'll have a hard time convincing me there's a better band in history than Pink Floyd. Prince is a pretty egotistical dick but he's still an incredible musical figure. Lars Ulrich is a twat of the highest order and...well he sucks at drumming too, and James and Dave Mustaine and Cliff did 90% of the heavy lifting in Metallica, but you get my point. Seperate the artist from the person.
I don't dislike Kanye because of his personality, I dislike his musical talents and couldn't care less really about his antics. His music just makes me cringe. I know Waters was a dick, I like Pink Floyd as well. Saw one early concert where the crowd is cheering and Waters screams at them to shut up, his ego tore apart the band trying to take credit for everything. And Lars, he's the Ringo Starr of heavy metal; if not for One he may have never done anything good.
If you don't think Kanye is a towering genius, then you don't understand music production. The mans body of work defines an era, he's constantly developed his sound to keep himself on the forefront of hip hop music production for a decade. Music production is an insanely competitive field, where genius is required just to have a prayer of making a career out of it. Kanye has far outclassed what the average genius in his field is capable of.
If you don't think Kanye is a towering genius, then you don't understand music production. The mans body of work defines an era, he's constantly developed his sound to keep himself on the forefront of hip hop music production for a decade. Music production is an insanely competitive field, where genius is required just to have a prayer of making a career out of it. Kanye has far outclassed what the average genius in his field is capable of.
Uggghhhh...
I consider musical genius as those who have created or redefined a genre. Kanye has done neither of these things.
He's talented, he's creative. He's better than average. Maaaaybe even great. But genius is a tall tall bar. He's not a once in a generation talent. We disagree, and that's fine. But don't condescend to me about not knowing about music or music production. I actually know a ton about those and have played and worked in those circles.
It's art, people are going to disagree.
The Following User Says Thank You to Daradon For This Useful Post:
To add. If we're going in the producer category, I wouldn't even have Kanye in the top 3 hip hop producers (current or very recent).
I think the word genuis is being set way to low a bar here. Did Einstein just moderately or impressively add to physics? No, he crushed it. He redefined it and changed a school of thought and the world.
Kanye has made great contributions for sure. But he hasn't crushed the genre or changed how people think about music.
He is not a genuis.
The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to Daradon For This Useful Post:
To add. If we're going in the producer category, I wouldn't even have Kanye in the top 3 hip hop producers (current or very recent).
I think the word genuis is being set way to low a bar here. Did Einstein just moderately or impressively add to physics? No, he crushed it. He redefined it and changed a school of thought and the world.
Kanye has made great contributions for sure. But he hasn't crushed the genre or changed how people think about music.
He is not a genuis.
20 years from now when people talk about Hip Hop from this era, how do you not talk about 'The Blueprint' or 'Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy'? Kanye is pretty much as successful as someone in his position could possibly be, he has an iconic image, sound, staggering record sales, a hugely ambitious body of work and the adoration of critics.
We seem to have a differing opinion on the definition of a genius. To me, my physics professor was a genius, but compared to Einstein, he's utterly insignificant. I think Kanye would be best defined as a Master Craftsmen, unquestionably included within the top leaders of his feild, but he doesn't stand alone.
20 years from now when people talk about Hip Hop from this era, how do you not talk about 'The Blueprint' or 'Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy'?
In 20 years it's debatable anyone will be talking about Hip Hop let alone an overrated artist like West who will likely be forgotten. The landscape will likely be totally different.
^If any genre is gonna be dead in 20 years it'll be rock music. Since 2001 there's been exactly 2 "rock" songs that have gotten to #1, and I have to put rock in quotations because the two songs that qualify are "Hey There Delilah" by the Plain White T's and "We Are Young" by fun, both utterly awful and not even close to rock music (their only claim to being "rock" is using guitars...). Rap meanwhile has probably had more than 50 #1 singles in the same time frame. So no, rap will still be here in 20 years. Most likely so will rock, but rap is much more likely to be relevant in mainstream music than rock.
__________________
"Think I'm gonna be the scapegoat for the whole damn machine? Sheeee......."
