THE LONG-AWAITED, much-hyped, almost-certainly-decadent Kanye West/Jay-Z collaboration Watch the Throne will finally drop (legally) on August 8. It’s an event that, for this Kanye fan, provokes conflicting emotions.
On the one hand, if latest pre-release single “Otis” is any indication, it seems statistically impossible that Watch the Throne will be anything less than awesome. On the other hand, I’m not sure I’m ready for another round of mainstream press coverage devoted to Kanye West, the bulk of which can be summarized and dismissed as: “Okay, fine, Kanye makes good music. But he’s such an asshole!”
The implication of such a statement is that were Kanye able to transcend his innate asshole-ism—if he found God (again), or started a charity, or saved the whales or some shit—his music would, accordingly, reach a higher plane. This all makes for good copy, but it betrays a complete misunderstanding of how great pop music works (remember Bob Dylan’s Christian period?) and, more importantly, a complete ignorance as to what makes Kanye so uniquely great.
Kanye doesn’t make good music in spite of the fact he’s an asshole; Kanye makes good music because he’s an asshole, a self-aware asshole, an asshole who has to grapple with the real, personal consequences of being an asshole every single day. By channeling that internal conflict into some of the biggest, brashest, best American art being produced today, he plays into a long and honorable tradition of American exceptionalism. I’m being serious.
American exceptionalism is a loaded term, one I was reluctant to invoke, so let me lay some ground rules: I am not referring to ignorant, neo-conservative, “America, fuck yeah!” cultural imperialism, nor am I talking about any wimpy, philosophical, politically problematic conception of American liberty as “special.” I just mean that when life gave Kanye lemons, he didn’t stop at making lemonade: like so many other exceptional Americans, he honed his recipe, ingeniously and aggressively marketed it to the public, and eventually bought out the whole fucking orchard. A little bombastic, sure, but have you read the Declaration lately?
Kanye has built his entire career on a narrative of constantly overcoming the odds, an image that has occasionally failed him as too grandiose or paranoid—but less often than you’d think. His first single, “Through the Wire,” recounted the near-fatal car accident that would ultimately inspire many of his earliest recordings, and it was an unqualified success. Its surrounding album, The College Dropout (2004), was only slightly less remarkable, and the sophomore effort, Late Registration (2005), was even better, a near-flawless synthesis of historical black music and cheeky, reflexive postmodernism. “I’m trying to write my wrongs,” Kanye rapped. “But it’s funny, them same wrongs helped me write this song.”
But you already know all that. The chapter in the Kanye saga that most interests me—and the period least adequately explained by those didactic, good music/bad behavior media profiles—comes half a decade later, after a string of bad personal luck and two albums that were accomplished but disappointing in their own ways. 2007’s Graduation was effortless but shallow; 2008’s 808s & Heartbreak was poignant but messy and unfocused.
And then he interrupted Taylor Swift at the VMAs. “Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time!” You know the rest.
This is not a media controversy I want to delve too deeply into, both because I find Taylor Swift so singularly unappealing as a pop star (cut in front of her at Starbucks and she’ll write a hate song about you, or at least your gender) and because Kanye was kind of right. But more importantly, he was the only celebrity in the room who seemed to understand that MTV is not real life, that “Taylor Swift” and “Kanye West” (and “Beyoncé”) are not, strictly speaking, “real people.” He brought a loud-mouthed, ludicrous, overtly aggressive sense of showmanship to an awards ceremony that didn’t mean anything and was pilloried for it. Kanye’s behavior wasn’t especially noble or commendable, but it was interesting, and that’s all I’ve ever really wanted out of MTV.
Public figures in crisis have two broad options: a defiant, “I do what I want” entrenchment, or a retreat. Kanye chose the latter, and became, I submit, a new American role model. For when he returned to the spotlight in earnest a year later, it became clear he had not spent the time binging or wallowing. He had channeled it all—the VMAs, yeah, but also the baser things: pride, lust, envy, insecurity, guilt, the whole nine yards—into the most self-aggrandizing, supremely affecting music of his career.
The album that resulted, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, is imperfect but somehow irreproachable, a work that feels so monumentally, forcefully right it all but precludes criticism. He dispatches with the topical stuff early (“Everybody knows I’m a motherfucking monster”) and then dives deep. On Fantasy’s press tour, Kanye was all bravado and bluster, but you don’t write a song like “Runaway” without having a long, hard talk with your own demons: “I’m so gifted at finding what I don’t like the most.”
What makes Kanye West such a frustrating and exhilarating icon is his refusal to compress his public persona into moral extremes, how he manages to successfully walk an ever-finer line between embracing and rejecting his inner asshole. In this regard, he may be the most honest pop star we’ve ever had. Bob Dylan and David Bowie had to filter their own morally ambiguous selves through immaculately constructed characterization and metaphor; Kanye is on Twitter.
Through it all, what’s been most refreshing about Kanye’s candor is its cause: he actually wants to be the best, and he’s willing to harness all of his resources (asshole-ism included) and work himself to the bone to get there. That’s rare, and laudable. It’s also exceptional, and not in a gross, Ayn Rand-ian way. Kanye was not born great, and he’ll never be as innately talented as some of his contemporaries. But he’ll die trying, and has already surpassed just about all of them as a result. As far back as his first album, he’s been clear about this: “I ain’t play the hand I was dealt, I changed my cards.” Take notes, America.
Tim Kennedy is a Chicago native and likely the whitest hip hop fan in America.
Read his first piece for Handlebar here, or check out his blog at http://misterkennedy.wordpress.com/
