Lou Reed _ Kanye West - The Talkhouse

7/27/2019 Lou Reed _ Kanye West - The Talkhouse

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09/07/13 Lou Reed > Kanye West - The Talkhouse

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the Velvet Underground

Rock & Roll Hall of Famer and a

founding member ofthe Velvet

Underground, Lou Reed is a

musician, songwriter, author and

photographer based in New York

City. He is a co-host ofNew

York Shuffle on Sirius XM, as

well as the author ofPass Thru

Fire: the Collected Lyrics and

The Raven, and several books of

his photography, inc luding: Lou

Reed's New York, Romanticism,

Emotion in Action and Rimes

Rhymes. He is a recipient of the

Chevalier Commander of Arts

and Letters from the French

government.

Kanye West is a child of social networking and hip-hop. And he knows about all kinds of music and

popular culture. The guy has a real wide palette to play with. That's all over Yeezus. There are moments

of supreme beauty and greatness on this record, and then some of it is the same old shit. But the guy

really, really, really is talented. He's really trying to raise the bar. No one's near doing what he's doing, it

not even on the same planet.

People say this album is minimal. And yeah, it's minimal. But theparts are maximal. Take "Blood on th

Leaves." There's a lot going on there: horns, piano, bass, drums, electronic effects, all rhythmically

matched towards the end of the track, there's now twice as much sonic material. But Kanye stays

unmoved while this mountain of sound grows around him. Such an enormous amount of work went int

making this album. Each track is like making a movie.

Actually, the whole album is like a movie, or a novel each track segues into the next. This is not

individual tracks sitting on their own island, all alone.

Very often, he'll have this very monotonous section going and then, suddenly "BAP! BAP! BAP! BAP!" he disrupts the whole thing and we're on to something new that's absolutely incredible. That's

architecture, that's structure this guy is seriously smart. He keeps unbalancing you. He'll pile on all

this sound and then suddenly pull it away, all the way to complete silence, and then there's a scream or a

beautiful melody, right there in your face. That's what I call a sucker punch.

He seems to have insinuated in a recentNew York Times interview thatMy Beautiful Dark, Twisted

Fantasy was to make up for stupid shit he'd done. And now, with this album, it's "Now that you like me,

I'm going to make you unlike me." It's a dare. It's braggadoccio. Axl Rose has done that too, lots of

people have. "I Am a God" I mean, with a song title like that, he's just begging people to attack him.

Lou Reed Kanye West

0 0

Yeezus

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upstart but he's got it all, so he frowns on it. Some people might say that makes him complicated, but it's

not really that complicated. He kind of wants to retain his street cred even though he got so popular. An

I think he thinks people are going to think he's become one ofthem so he's going to very great lengths

to claim that he's not. On "New Slaves," he's accusing everyone of being materialistic but you know, whe

guys do something like that, it's always like, "But we're the exception. It's all those other people, but we

know better."

"New Slaves" has that line "Y'all throwin' contracts at me/ You know that niggas can't read." Wow, wow,

wow. That is an amazing thing to put in a lyric. That's a serious accusation in the middle of this rant atother people: an accusation ofhimself. As if he's some piece of shit from the street who doesn't know

nothing. Yeah, right your mom was a college English professor.

He starts off cool on that track but he winds up yelling at the top of his voice. I think he maybe had a

couple of great lines already written for this song but then when he recorded the vocal, but then he just le

loose with it and trusted his instincts. Because I can't imagine actually writing down most of these lines.

But that's just me.

But musically, he nails it beyond belief on"New Slaves." It's mainly just voice and one or two synths, very

sparse, and then it suddenly breaks out into this incredible melodic God knows what. Frank Ocean

sings this soaring part, then it segues into a moody sample of some Hungarian rock band from the '70s. Iliterally gives me goosebumps. It's like the visuals at the end of the new Superman movie just

overwhelmingly incredible. I played it over and over.

Some people ask why he's screaming on "I Am a God." It's not like a James Brown scream it's a real

scream of terror. It makes my hair stand on end. He knows they could turn on him in two seconds. By

"they" I mean the public, the fickle audience. He could kill Taylor Swift and it would all be over.

The juxtaposition of vocal tones on "Blood on the Leaves" is incredible that pitched-up sample of Nina

Simone singing "Strange Fruit" doing a call-and-response with Kanye's very relaxed Autotuned voice.

That is fascinating, aurally, nothing short of spectacular. And holy shit, it's so gorgeous rhythmically,

where sometimes the vocal parts are matched and sometimes they clash. He's so sad in this song. He'ssurrounded by everyone except the one he wants he had this love ripped away from him, before he even

knew it. "I know there ain't nothing wrong with me something strange is happening." Well, surprise,

surprise welcome to the real world, Kanye.

It's fascinating it's very poignant, but there's nothing warm about it, sonically it's really electronic,

and after a while, his voice and the synth are virtually the same. But I don't think that's a statement abou

anything it's just something he heard, and then he made it so you could hear it too.

At so many points in this album, the music breaks into this melody, and it's glorious I mean, glorious.

He has to know that why else would you do that? He's not just banging his head against the wall, but

he acts as though he is. He doesn't want to seem precious, he wants to keep his cred.

And sometimes it's like a synth orchestra. I've never heard anything like it I've heard people try to do i

but no way, it just comes out tacky. Kanye is there. It's like his video for "Runaway," with the ballet

dancers it was like, look out, this guy is making connections. You could bring one into the other

ballet into hip-hop they're not actually contradictory, and he knew that, he could see it immediately.

He obviously can hear that all styles are the same, somewhere deep in their heart, there's a connection.

It's all the same shit, it's all music that's what makes him great. If you like sound, listen to what he's

giving you. Majestic and inspiring.


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Lou Reed _ Kanye West - The Talkhouse

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