(I wrote this on Medium first, but I thought to share it here since I mentioned that I’ve been writing on Medium. Follow me there please 🙂 )
I’m not trying to point fingers but I really did not like the guy before reading some of these articles.
Medium was a fresh new idea in an age where all the personal media was getting shorter and shorter. 201 was a year of a lot of adjustments for me personally, and I found myself reading a ton on medium. This is pre clap medium, the medium that was pushed as Ev Williams next big project, and I really loved it. That age of Medium where publications were getting bigger and bigger, and it was exciting.
One of the media outlets I read a lot of was Cuepoint. They had interesting articles on a genre of music I was familiar with: hip hop. At that time, I was really into Wu Tang, and The Notorious B.I.G.. and life was pretty great. Then comes along Cuepoint with articles about the Top Ten Kanye tracks, and Why Kanye changed the way I view music. I couldn’t really find the right articles, but something like this really made me stop and read.
It’s A Celebration: Kanye West’s Late Registration, 10 years later
Have you ever listened to an album and immediately realized that it would change your life? The feeling that one gets…matthewalmont.medium.com
Was Kanye that important? Did I really need to know about this Yeezus? Then, the Air Yeezys were out and I didn’t like feel like I could get along with his style that much, so I didn’t really bother. But these articles were telling me about his music artistry. Gold Digger was a big track in Singapore, getting the most radio play out of all the Kanye tracks then, and it felt like just a good pop song. I saw him discredit Taylor Swift, and I found that offensively funny. An action that was so rude that it was actually meme-able, and it definitely has been.
So I decided to be unbiased and to try listen.
My Twisted Dark Fantasy was one consistently proclaimed as Kanye’s magnum opus, and I thought that should be the first one I start with.
“Well gather round children, zip it listen!”
And man I was listening. It was an excellently arranged album. I really enjoyed how every song brought different flavors together and the more I listened the more curious I was to how he would have performed the songs live. And then I watched the series of concert fails that Kanye did, with him screaming at his DJ for dropping the tracks, or the lighting going off, or something just not being up to the standard that he wanted.
What better album to go to next with than the album title linking his own name with Jesus. And so I listened to the deconstructed album of opening of Yeezus. “Yeezy season approaching, F*** whatever y’all been hearing…”
Track by track, I worked through this really alternative sounding album.
And then I found Bon Iver for the second time. I had known Justin Vernon as the guy who sang really folky songs, but not as this deconstructionist. I really enjoyed the stuff. It felt like it sunk into your gut.
But I digress, the topic was how Medium got me more and more into Kanye. If you search now, like how I just did on the tag of Kanye West, there’s about 4.5K articles tagging this guy. I mean that’s a lot of coverage. Comparatively, Taylor Swift is at 3.5K. One is a guy who currently is so far out of public favor, and the other has re-released her pop hits to be sung over and over again by Gen Z’s.
But I assure you, it was not “New Kanye” that got me into it. It was the Old Kanye, the one that wrote Jesus Walks. The one that performed with huge bright lights shining straight down at him. The one that collaborated with Paul McCartney. The one that worked hard to change the way the world works.
I had no idea that hip hop had this other edge to it. Beyond the lyricism, and something that would alter the pop culture as a whole. I could hear Kanye’s influence in K-Pop with BigBang and the other artists that they inspired. Styles, ideas, creativity, all with Kanye’s radical approaches. I never knew it would be, until I started reading about him on Medium.
I guess my hope in writing this article is that one day some of the artists that we introduce here might influence a generation of sorts. He or She or They might end up becoming very alternative, and very against our current grain of society. The articles promoting them might not be taken down, but the truth of it is, at the end of the day, they still produced great music at some point of their lives.
I thank the writers that wrote the articles, because if it wasn’t for them, I would have never found the musical artistry of this crazed man. I hope Kanye turns around some day, much like the tone that Jeen-yuhs took. I hope one day, he’ll come back with music that heals more than his dividing words.
I also think Casey shares his experience the best, but mine’s really a lot specific to Medium, and not dancing with him on stage.