Kanye West
Right this moment, and probably for weeks and months to come, Kanye West is the biggest figure in hip-hop, if not pop music, period. His second album, Late Registration, which West has been hyping as the requisite follow-up masterpiece to his lauded debut, The College Dropout, has been slurped up like gravy by almost every critic writing today, old and young. There’s little that the Pitch could say that hasn’t already been mouthed by some of the more reasonable, even-tempered writers — we agree about West’s transcendent production skills, masterful collaborations, slightly above-average rhyming ability, and famously annoying hubris. A gripe: “Diamonds From Sierra Leone,” a heartfelt soliloquy about West’s love for rocks — which he recognizes are products of child labor in Africa but which he can’t keep his rich paws off — appears twice on this album and gratingly rips off “Ms. Jackson” by Outkast (Forevah evah? Forevah-evah? Evah-evah? repeated eight times until ridiculously squeaky); it ranks as the music world’s melodramatic eye-roller of the year.
But since we’re latecomers to Late Registration, we do have the opportunity to comment on West’s recent behavior, namely his open, impassioned dissing of Dubya on a live NBC television fundraiser for Hurricane Katrina relief. Paired with a sedated-looking Mike Myers, West went off-script to berate the slowness of the government’s relief efforts and the criminalization of poor blacks left to indigence and displacement in Katrina’s wake, ending his tirade with the statement “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” The segment was censored on the West Coast broadcast, and NBC issued a cowardly statement essentially upbraiding West for not sticking to the script. Nonetheless, within a day of the outburst, T-shirts featuring the slogan were already for sale online. That’s how powerful the man’s mouth has become.
Unfortunately, he’s a waffler, big time. For all his famous bragging and flashes of confidence, his ultimate lack of moxie is evident on his album, in anguished-weakling songs like “Addiction” (Why everything that supposed to be bad make me feel so good?), and it’s evident in his hesitancy to stand by his bold anti-Bush posturing. Following the NBC telethon, West appeared with a smattering of MTV-friendly mall-punk bands to perform at a flashy NFL season kickoff concert. The Associated Press reported, “Looking glum, West sidestepped questions about the [telethon] remarks, noting that the week’s events have been ‘a lot of pressure for one human being.'”
Puh-leease. Own up to it, man! You’ve put out two stellar records, and you’ve gotten the world’s attention by being quite possibly the first universally admired, rich and powerful black musician to speak the truth about Bushit! Don’t selfishly crawl back into your hot tub with your bling and your personal Jesus and forget the people you stood up for on corporate TV. If you don’t, we won’t throw our nonexistent diamonds in the sky for you ever — evah-evah, evah-evah — again.
