trisected

Tag: kanye west

  • How Medium introduced me to Kanye West

    (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.

    My Twisted Dark Fantasy — Vinyl. It came with different images you could chose, and I changed mine to this, in reference to his Jesus is King album later.

    “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…”

    Yeezus in Casette form, unopened. I’ll probably never get to listen to this version of the album ever. Maybe my kids will when I die.

    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.

  • Kanye’s Donda

    Let’s not talk about the audio, or how it sounds. Because even though I love Kanye, musically this album wasn’t anything ground breaking.

    But the album stands for a few things. It definitely stands as a voice for those who need help, from their ethnic backgrounds and upbringing. It also stands for his remembrance for his mother, his loved ones, and who God is to him as well. These things are clearly just stated out right, with little imagination.

    But that’s another thought process of what we would consider a lyrically strong album. I think Kanye knows what a lyrically deep song might looks like, he’s obviously done enough. But for some reason, repetition, and simplicity, is his current main message medium. Maybe it’s laziness, maybe it’s a refrain idea. There’s a lot of ideas of why and how he would choose these ways of speaking.

    I’d like to reference Bieber’s Peaches – and how simple his approach was for most of the song. More than that, a number of artists are approaching that simple, short catchy chorus. It forms a earworm that just crawls through your internal melody for days. In that same way, until now, I still hear Kanye saying, “Junya Watanabe on my Wri!“ It’s not a super verse, but the way he did it, it’s really stuck on.

    At the same time, this album goes for another Christian hit. He’s expressing his Christian faith all over again, and pulling his friends in to be part of it too. It’s really something to get so many artists in to say that they’re willing to speak up outright about their sin and their struggles in their lives. I think it takes effort, especially because of what this means for someone in America to associate with mainstream Christianity. I don’t think the cultural identity of it matches the intended theology, but it lies as a close tie to tradition and conservative politics.

    ]These associations for liberal artists that are known to not follow conservative notions are a step in another direction. A direction where we wouldn’t really be comfortable with as a whole. I find that its a struggle, myself included, to agree with the idea of a Christendom again. I think society has moved beyond that, and it polarizes more than unites. But at the same time, there is the idea that it could happen. I am slightly encouraged by that, and at the same time very wary of what that implicates as a whole too.

    But at the end of the day, I think I could definitely chant along with the refrain “I’ll be honest, we all liars“. We all struggle with our faith, and our stands in one way or another. If we pretend that we’re all okay, and we’re not okay (see what I did there), it just becomes a hypocritical expression of what a Christian looks like.

    I hope that Kanye finds someone to walk with him. Someone who’s willing to take the words that Jesus said and lives them out. Not someone hiding behind theology or tradition, but someone who just wants to live rightly before God, no matter the persecution. Even if it means that the Church itself doesn’t agree with it. I really hope God will send someone to him, to help Kanye live a life closer to God. If Johnny Cash could do it, so could Kanye.

  • Isaiah 6 and Kanye West

    I have recently been learning about hermeneutics. I learnt about understanding the original message and how it translates to us today, in our modern understanding. During my classes, I was given a chance to explore a passage of my own choice, and I chose Isaiah 6 to look at.

    There is a parallel drawn between Isaiah and King Uzziah. One being a normal person, and another being a King. One claiming to be unworthy, and another claiming to be holy. One was touched by a burning coal, and became cleansed, and another touched by God and became a leper. The parallel lines draw show God’s hand in those who claim their own pride, and those who acknowledge their unworthiness before God.

    Kanye West has been a rapper on my mind for the years past. In the early years of Medium, many music writers wrote about Ye’s greatest album, greatest tracks, and what makes his music so great. By the release of The Life of Pablo, I was a fan. I knew the lyrics, and the beats, and I knew the self proclaiming message he stood behind. My question was, would he ever meet God, and what would he say then.

    Now, in 2019, Kanye West, along with Justin Bieber, and Shia Lebouf, proclaims about his faith in a loud and passionate way. The difference is that Bieber and Lebouf don’t carry the same cultural creative clout that Kanye does. In his political uncorrectness, he proudly voted for Trump in 2016. He was unfollowed by many friends, all this happening months after Kim’s kidnapping in Paris, and Kanye’s own mental breakdown after that. In this time, Kanye’s search for meaning seemed to have started.

    In his Letterman interview, on Netflix, Kanye positions himself as a Christian, or someone aware of who God was. By the release of Jesus is King, Kanye, in multiple interviews states how God is using him. He can’t plan far anymore, because “it’s up to God”. He claims he is like Nebuchadnezzar, being taken down from the height of his own greatness.

    For my link between Isaiah, and Kanye, you need to assume yourself as a creative. In my personal view of my own work, everything I have done, I feel is bad, and I feel that I would never touch it again. I might like some of it, but most of it, I dislike, and I wonder how I even came to that. Kanye, on the other hand, could perform his entire album (808’s and Heartbreak) live, and according to album sequencing, years after the album was made. His trust in his own work was sky high, and he knew it was good.

    But the “Ye” (I hate being bipolar, it’s awesome)” sits there, as an acknowledgement of his own mental instability. He’s not sure anymore, I feel. He starts Sunday Service some time after that, as a place of healing, through the lights, and through the music. A pastor is placed in, and God speaks to Kanye in this time.

    My view is this: for a self righteous artist like Kanye to admit his uncertainty in his music, is his own proclamation of his unworthiness. He does not think he deserves it. I would agree that Nebuchadnezzar would be more fitting an illustration, and Kanye himself stands behind that illustration.

    Parallel aside, what is it about Kanye that makes him familiar, likeable, or just someone to pay attention to? To me, it is his honesty in his expression. The artist who speaks to himself, and tells himself what he thinks. The voice in his own head is the one that he speaks aloud, and as people who hide what we feel, we see his actions as bold, daring, and very interesting. We are intrigued because he lives an extensive celebrity life, doing whatever he wishes, and we are wishing to do the same. Could we one day? Perhaps sooner than later, and perhaps we already are living life the way we want to. Safely, away from the public eye. God forbid we become like Kanye, having to deal with the media, and the focus.

    But that really drives the question, if the world’s cameras are on us, and tracking our Christian stories, would we be faring better or worse than Kanye? In this very specific story, God has indeed called him to fame, and called him to repentance and salvation. If he shies away from the cameras and media, would he be like the Christian who leaves his job in a bank, or as a doctor, and immediately goes to serve in the missionary service? What kind of expectations have we misinformed ourselves about the celebrities who have become Christians, in their celebrity state?

    When a Christian celebrity falls, we talk about it. We wonder why God leads people this way and that. But when a celebrity becomes a Christian, we question it. We wonder if this person even know who God is, and we doubt.

    Perhaps the Christian community could reflect on the refrain from Kanye’s song, Hands On:

    “What have you been hearin’ from the Christians?
    They’ll be the first one to judge me
    Make it feel like nobody love me”

    I’m praying for Kanye, and praying for Christians to be loving in their responses, and for the Church to be ready for God to speak to a lot more people. Let us not be the older brother in the prodigal son parable. Let’s rejoice when our brother returns.