Gotta testify.
On the final track of his first album, College Dropout, Kanye West said “Now I can let these dream-killers kill my self-esteem or use my arrogance as the steam to power my dreams.” In 2005, this sounded like posturing. In 2015, it sounds like prophecy.
Kanye West comes in for a great deal of criticism, thanks in large part to his ego. He sees himself as something between a musician and messiah, and he’s paid the price for trying to spread his own good news (as does any messiah worth his salt).
A petition against Kanye performing at Glastonbury this year achieved 135,000 signatures – and for what? The heat that Kanye catches for his antics represents a huge double standard in how we perceive musicians. Destruction and rebellion and self-aggrandisement is welcomed with open arms when it comes from white men with guitars – not so much when it’s a black man with a microphone.
But before the next time you unthinkingly dismiss Kanye as the more egotistical half of a marriage that also involves a Kardashian, remember that this is a man who has arguably produced five or six classic albums in the space of just over ten years. We’ve picked the five best tracks from his sophomore album Late Registration. Listen to them all and see if you can honestly disagree it was a work of genius.
5) Touch The Sky
Touch The Sky is a song that does what Kanye West has always tried to do: encourage and inspire people to be as confident as he is in himself. When he says “Before the day I die, I’mma touch the sky”, you’re meant to sing along and believe the same about yourself. It’s impossible not to feel pumped when you hear the horns blow at the start of this song, which fittingly samples Curtis Mayfield’s “Move On Up”.
Best lyrics: “Before anybody wanted K. West beats me and my girl split the buffet at KFC/Dog, I was having nervous breakdowns like “Damn, these n*ggas that much better than me?”
4) Addiction
Addiction is an awful lot less about Kanye’s skills as a lyricist and more about his almost perfect use of sampling. The song achingly tells a story about trying to end a destructive relationship, and the chorus fuses Kanye’s desperate “Man I tried to stop, man, I tried the best I could but…” with Etta James’ “… you make me smile with my heart” from My Funny Valentine, a song that turns mournful in its new context.
Best lyrics: “I see the emotion in your highest that you try not to show, so we get the closest when you high or your drunk or you blown”
3) Gold Digger
Kanye West says he hates Gold Digger now which is just unthinkable to us. Gold Digger is one of the cleverest songs written in the last ten years. Not just that, it’s an unbelievably sharp critique of human behaviour. The second and third verses are a hilarious send-up of how men and women screw each other over through love and money.
“18 years, 18 years and on the 18th birthday he found out it wasn’t hiiiiis” is the most iconic and hilarious way of ending a child-support story anyone will ever come up with.
Best lyrics: “She was supposed to buy your shorty Tyco with your money/She went to the doctor, got lipo with your money/She walkin’ ’round lookin’ like Michael with your money/Should have got that insured: GEICO for your money.” (But really any of it, it’s all unbelievably clever.)
2) Gone
The album’s closing track features Kanye, Cam’ron and Consequence all delivering some of their finest work over a sample of Otis Redding’s “It’s Too Late”. Kanye isn’t often made to take a backseat on his own tracks but Consequence, of A Tribe Called Quest, steals the show here over orchestration that almost sounds a bit like Bittersweet Symphony.
Best lyrics: “Maybe you could be my intern and in turn I’ll show you how I cook up summer in the winter.”
“The say you never know what you got ’til it’s gone… I know I’ve got it, I don’t know what y’all on.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc65hFCls8E
1) Roses
Many critics of Kanye West are quick to associate his music with the braggadocious, bling-obsessed content seen scattered elsewhere throughout the genre. Kanye West’s first two albums, however, were deeply permeated by poignant songs about his family.
Roses is one such track, and it tells the story of Kanye West and his entire extended family visiting his critically ill grandmother in hospital. The song perfectly captures sadness, frustration and eventually relief through Kanye’s artful story-telling. Kanye West has said his favourite four bars on the album come at the start of this song’s second verse:
We outside of the emergency room, room
You could feel my heart beat, beat, beat
If she gon’ pull through, we gon’ find out soon
But right now she sleep, sleep, sleep
Can’t you feel that?
Best lyrics: “Magic Johnson got a cure for AIDS and all the broke motherf*ckers passed away/You telling me if my grandma’s in the NBA, right now she’d be okay?/But since she was just a secretary, worked for the church for 35 years, things supposed to stop right here?”
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
