_RePPIN FOR U

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one day…uh.

this dude asked me “whats the answer to this hip hop cancer?
i’m so hungry for real shit it feels like i’m fastin.”

“they told me stop living in the past! get past it! the golden era? it would never come back.”

told him i hear what he sayin, and i’m tryina be a crutch, to hold it up–but i know what i contribute’s not enough. so…

um.

i have nothin to say. i’m as curious as you to see the outcome of the game.

uh.

fact remains, i don’t mind being platinum man. a platinum plaque in a picture frame…

see, the difference with me is that i know what i’m called for. i stay and play my position like an all star.
’til my pen fall, i’ma play hard til the end, dog. til i’m on the red carpet with flashing lights like pinball-

-machines.

it seems, that’s what i’m here for.

_KANYE WEST – 808s & HEARTBREAK

okay.

i’m suffering internally right now. struggling with some very deep-rooted issues that are getting exposed raw and sore almost daily, so this could be described as not the best time to review an album hewn of an amalgam of crescendoing and conflicting emotions from one of the most mercurial superstars on the planet-

but, here i am, in barnes & noble staring across upenn’s campus, realizing i don’t know exactly who i am, and laying those revelations down on a fresh bed of depressing kanye west music.

lol.

so, i get this album.

probably in ways i shouldn’t, or would rather not. but i get it. and, i like it. on a much less emo level, i like his reaches here. some songs strike me as very personal and powerful. something we don’t get very often from our hip hop stars. interesting that he had to sing through autotune to really let it rip.

whatever.

i’m not gonna do a track by track on this ’cause what the album’s trying to do, what he was trying to do- doesn’t need to be parsed all crazy.

kanye defends this album by not defending it, and that’s probably the best defense. he lets it stand as it does and doesn’t give a whole lot of explanation and excuse for using autotune and everything else  that creeps the hiphop heads out and leaves them confused and cold.

i don’t think he was trying to alienate anybody here.

and if his interviews are real representations of how he feels, if he did, so be it. i like that kinda bravery, altho i’m sure it helps that he’s already paid offa alla dat, but hey- awesome anyway.

i also like the lane it opens up in the future. folks may hate this album, but it softens them to hiphop artists approaching the off-kilter in the future, and paradigms have to shift for growth to occur, on both sides of the coin- the artists and the consumers.

i’m going to listen to Say You Will again and create all sorts of terrible & beautiful imagery to match what i’m hearing.

yeesh!