i think that the concept behind it is Kanye and Kim having the time of their lives with each other, while the whole world is watching them and getting upset.

Ok, I was thinking it had to be some kind of deliberately ridiculous joke. I mean, the amount of close ups of Kim bouncing alone is enough to make me question the seriousness of the vision.

I still feel like the music on Yeezus is not meant to be accompanied by anything other than the early projector video teasers, which only made it more mysterious and lended to its genre-defying vibe. Putting any kind of image over the music seems wrong to me, and I wonder if Kanye is starting to try to compensate for the slow sales of the album.

From a marketing perspective, I know the album has been performing below expectations. It's still going to be multiplatinum in the long run, but as of now it's almost as if Kanye's abandoned his commercial winning streak in favor of a critical one, and though it's resulted in incredible, iconic music, it's also made his whole "biggest rock star on the planet" argument a little more difficult to swallow.

But I'll buy that the video is tongue in cheek. It's like something Lou Reed would have done, and I can respect the hell out of that.

Oh, did I mention that I think Cruel Summer has become my favorite hip hop album of 2012, retroactively booting JJDOOM out of the top spot?

How did I ever not love that album?

Cruel Summer is good. not amazing like MBDTF and Yeezus, but really fun to listen to. Higher and Sin City are my shit.

yeah Cruel Summer is great.

listening to Lord$ Never Worry. "Black Mane" is fire, i'm gonna love A$AP Nast's debut for sure.

ARTPOP is really dope.

http://pitchfork.com/news/53136-kany...ies-with-nike/

this man is an imbecile of the highest order...I thought his entire shtick/method of promotion for this album cycle was a contrived reaction to the economic side of the music business, ie no promotion, no sponsorship deals with international corporations (ADIDAS!!!) reliant on what is essentially slavery; that is, that which against he so purportedly derided, vehemently??

fuck off you idiot, don't chastise that which allows for you hyper-inflated bullshit music to be forced upon the idiotic masses. couple of dumb fucking reasons why this clown is popular: a, because the 'significance' of his music was overblown by a bunch of white critics wanting to seem into hip-hop, and his seemed like the most idiotic, palatable crap they could find; b, hipsters thought that embracing a fucking egomaniac popstar would be cool; c, it's easy to conflate character and shit music, especially when both are so dull as to require the other to augmentt it, creating the illusion of substance when he's just a simpleton with serious mental issues that are no longer in any way endearing; d, PEOPLE ARE RETARDED.

bought MBDTF and Liquid Swords on vinyl. :)

or maybe he just makes great music? is it really that hard?

i don't want this to turn into another debate about Kanye though. we talk about him all the time.

let's talk about the masterpiece that is Liquid Swords. bar for bar, it's the best album to come out of Wu-Tang. GZA is a wizard and every guest feature from Inspectah Deck to RZA to Killah Priest to FUCKING METHOD MAN killed it.

the album is just unbelievably good. in my opinion, it goes neck-and-neck with Illmatic. seriously.

just came back from the Weeknd concert. it was an amazing performance.

lmao

Kristen Bell FTW.

Bound3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRckgn36lzY

i also copped Kiss Land on vinyl after the show. :) it's a good album, House of Balloons is still his best though. he said he's gonna drop new music soon, i can't wait! dude is incredible.

Dude, are you sure? You seemed to go back and forth on some of the year's releases quite a bit. Some of that I understand... the new Drake was a total riddle. Couple of great tracks, couple of so-so tracks, lots of crap, and some experimental shit that I'm still not sure about.

But when it comes to Gaga, I have absolutely no loyalty to uphold, and I am not even going to bother listening unless I get some solidly badass feedback.

So please expound on Gaga's new one if you will. Wax philosophical about it. Give me the kind of long, exhaustive, drawn out review that you know I need. If you need a reference, take a look at my comments about albums in this thread.

Wow: Hatas start ya engines!

Kanye is popular for the same reason that so many other pretentious diva personalities have been popular in this TMZ/reality era... Because he is rich and crazy and people want to live his life, and think they could do it "better." He's no different than most mouthy, semi-insane celebrities who say ridiculous things (Bill Maher comes to mind).

But Kanye's undeniable talent make him very hard to turn into a joke. For every blogger or People magazine writer who makes fun of his personality, there are three high profile music critics who call him a genius. It's not like he's Miley Cyrus. He's the single most critically revered hip hop artist in history. Nobody else compares. I'm not saying he's the best, but man... That ninja is behind SIX of the most widely and unanimously praised albums of the 00's; MBDTF gaining more critical recognition than freaking OK Computer!!

So he may be a crazy fuck, but most celebrities are. Kanye, for better or worse, has released so much great music that he cannot be written off based on his eccentricities.