If you want to hear it, you can here.
Is he mocking us? Is he mocking himself? Is he serious?
Who cares, really?
Kanye is not a composer. He samples music from other people. So he all he can compose are lyrics, or raps, which he hasn’t done here anyway.
He’s wasted a lot of our time and a lot of his time, frankly. Tonight I went to hear Nile Rodgers and Chic, with Roger Daltrey of the Who and LLCool J for Nile’s We Are Family Foundation. With Nile’s band, Daltrey sang “Behind Blue Eyes.,” “Baba O’Riley,” and “Who Are You?” It was bliss. LL Cool J performed his hits “Mama Said Knock You Out” and “Rock the Bells.”
Nile Rodgers is in a league of his own. His new edition of Chic is better than ever, and they ran through the group’s many disco hits like “Le Freak” and “Good Times,” played Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” (which Nile helped write) and ended with a glorious “We Are Family” that had people of all kinds dancing and singing on stage. It was elevating.
All week Kanye West has been Tweeting aphoristic crap about love and hate and freedom, making stupid pronouncements to get attention. Then he ended the week with this three minute and twenty two second file of nonsense. All of this gets online traffic and makes fleeting headlines. But it’s garbage. And you realize it when you’re in the presence of artists who make a difference in the world, have a huge library of material that moves and motivates.
Kanye’s week of hundreds of Tweets are mostly about making his clothing line HUGE. Who the f cares? The We Are Family Foundation is empowering youth all over the world, building schools, and doing good. LL Cool J is also running a foundation for kids, and Roger Daltrey is raising money for cancer research. They are actually doing something for the world. They are not wasting our time.
Come back in the morning, I’ll have some video from the show at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Bravo!
