Kanye
Sunday, December 14, 2008
On Saturday Night Live last night, Kanye looked like a guy who’d just bumrushed a karaoke stage. Incredibly excited, irritatingly off-key, plagued by what sounded like technical glitches (whch were no doubt planned), fucking up the lyrics and trying to stay on the beat. It was one of those performances that forcefully reminded us how much we take for granted the musical tropes associated with being a professional. Kanye called to our attention, made unavoidable, the fact that appropriate modes of singing, in certain keys, were at some point in history deemed acceptable to the ear. Just a little bit on either side of a key–as he unapologetiacally and purposefully was–and a singing voice just sounds wrong. Not because of something inherent in the voice, but because we’ve been conditioned to hear it in particular ways. Kanye wants his music to be known as “Pop Art,” but I don’t think he meant Warhol: his use of Auto-Tune—a revolutionarily reflexive use of the technology—is as performative as Kabuki makeup or a thumb in front of the camera lens.
Known as “not having a filter,” to some, “prolific” to others, Kanye has purposefully and successfully aestheticized the imperfections of longwindedness and spontaneous outbursts. He sang and rapped his first single despite his jaw being partially wired shut, and tweaked a Chaka Khan sample that originally said “fire” instead of “wire” to make the hook fit synctactically as effectively as it did emotionally. The last track on that same album spends its last nine minutes as an ad-hoc origin myth, recited like a loquacious bus rider in a Jarmusch film. In one of his biggest singles, he sings “I ain’t sayin’” immediately before he says something, as much doubling the length of the subsequent thought as negating it. During his stream-of-consciousness anti-Bush rant, he could barely contain himself, looking like he was going to break down in tears, while Mike Myers tried, stoically, to remember what it was like to do improv. He’s the guy who stormed the stage of the European VMAs to bitch about losing an award, and rush-recorded an album channeling Tubeway Army and T-Pain because he was pissed at his ex-girlfriend and mourning his lost mother.
Kanye’s voice isn’t “bad,” necessarily, not in the traditional sense anyway. He’s just using the parts of it that he’s not supposed to. The result is a timbre that we don’t often hear, not in music at least: primal scream therapy, or Kanye’s version of Lennon yelling himself hoarse at the end of “Mother.” Only Kanye’s never proven himself able to sing songs like this. That’s not stopped him yet, but that’s his point. He’s using stardom as practice, writing songs in the manner of conversation fragments and flustered, late-night voicemail messages. He’s an untouchable global pop-star, no doubt with a cadre of professional advisors, but is still running the risk of embarassing himself on a regular basis: simultaneously untouchable and resoundingly, publicly fallible. So, yes: “Love Lockdown” is a terrifying song in many regards, but it’s made infinitely more uncomfortable by Kanye’s grotesque performance of prolix, technologized amateurism.
Filed under: Kanye West SNL
kanye’s singing is obviously painful live. you’re right. but i’m loving the record.
all i kept thinking throughout his performance was “turn the autotune to ELEVEN!”
yes, yes, a million times yes. this is why i find him so captivating right now. (although i will say that his performance worked better in the context of friday night’s jingle ball in nyc — at the world’s most famous arena, in hyperlarge — than it did on tv. the small screen and poor mixing (again!) did him few favors, while the blown-out volume of the arena show both negated his imperfections and amplified them to something superhuman.)
related: am i wrong in thinking that it’s way, way ironic for indier-than-thou types to get all high and mighty about kanye’s vocal chops?
related: am i wrong in thinking that it’s way, way ironic for indier-than-thou types to get all high and mighty about kanye’s vocal chops?
Well, he’s no Panda Bear, Maura.
Isn’t it ironic to call out “indie types” on irony?
I’m willing to buy the argument that he’s deliberately trying to fuck with people’s preconceived ideas of what key a voice should be in, but my question then is: why use the auto-tune on record, the purpose of which is to “correct” off-key singing? Doesn’t that defeat the point of the artistic statement?
No, not at all. I think his selective use of Auto-Tune, instead of a blanket use like T-Pain (which is just like Zapp & Roger), or a subtle one-off use like, I dunno Cher, is what makes Kanye's version so compelling. It's sort of the vocal equivalent of including studio chatter or tape-hiss or bum notes or stuff, but b/c it's the voice, and b/c it's in a context where we're otherwise conditioned to expect perfection, it’s weird enough to draw attention to itself, and our perceptions.
I think Kanye is well on his way to Michael Jackson and Howard Hughes-style weirdness (except for maybe the stuff about little boys). He’s just getting weirder and weirder and it is kind of fascinating to watch the car crash as it happens.
Kayne is a strange thing. The comparison to Warhol seems moderately applicable with one caveat. He is more Warhol using Photoshop filters. A sort of Warhol-fan trying to act is a similar style without much awareness to the meaning of the context. Maybe his future work will actually become experimentally aware instead of merely accident-inspired.
Or maybe, just maybe, Kanye is simply over-rated and we’re finally starting to see him out of his depth. Terrifying? I haven’t heard the album, but “Love Lockdown” just seems like a self-indulgent disaster to me. You have to be a great singer indeed to take risks like John Lennon did in songs like “Mother” and not make it come off as ludicrous. I’ll give Kanye this, though: at least he’s heart-on-his-sleeve sincere. He doesn’t act like singing’s a big joke like the more macho hip-hoppers do (think of Jay-Z butchering “Wonderwall” at Glastonbury). Hmm, come to think of it, maybe Kanye should take some songwriting tips from Noel Gallagher for his next project…
IAN,
Jay-Z singing Wonderwall WAS A BIG JOKE. Jay-Z isn’t a singer and doesn’t pretend to be. For some reason you think that’s worse that someone who can’t sing pretending that they can.