Welcome to Heartbreak

A music fan’s attempt to reconcile the different facets of Kanye West

            Almost a year ago, on November 22, 2010, Kanye West released My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy to near universal acclaim.  The album’s loud, brash numbers full of articulately fashioned put-downs, bombastic identity crises, and expansive glorifications of a recklessly hedonistic lifestyle debuted matter-of-factly at number one on the charts, solidifying Kanye’s presence as a top act in the current popular music horizon. The album has been cited as being innovative as much for its musically idiosyncratic song structures and opulent production methods as for its lyrical content, exploring certain aspects of life few artists have been exposed to and/or expressed quite as effectively.  His reputation precedes him in almost everything he does – coverage is doled out as much, if not more, to his eccentric lifestyle, his scatterbrained ramblings on Twitter, and his absurd, tactless onstage/onscreen outbursts, than to his music. The question I find myself facing in light of all of the mist swirling around him is how to reconcile his off-putting antics with his musical output. Can I really like Kanye West the artist in light of Kanye West the caricature?

            In phrasing the above question, my focus is on the music he creates. Forget about the sycophantic sideshow that accompanies most if not all successful artists in our modern celebrity-crazed world. I don’t care how many rows of teeth Kanye has replaced with studded diamonds, or how unintelligent and thoughtless he looks when trying to explain his motives for doing so. I care little about his infamous Taylor Swift incident or his uncomfortable appearance on Matt Lauer’s show. When I wonder aloud if I can ever come to appreciate Kanye, my ponderings are aimed at the tunes he churns out. Kanye is an artist of that wonderfully direct, personally-charged kind, writing from a place that – at least to this listener – emerges directly from the wounded reservoirs of his emotional core. And that should be enough to pull me in. Right?

            I’ve always been the kind of music fan who fishes around with many different artists, until something jumps out and completely hooks me. I remember the first time I heard Bob Dylan’s ‘I Want You,’ how I just simply refused to believe my ears and had to listen to it again and again; six months later, I was a staunch Dylan devotee, swearing by his brilliant expressive powers and more than familiar with all of the significant work he’s produced. When artists speak to me, and I mean really communicate with me (to those readers who can’t relate, I am so sorry), I respond by immersing myself in their entire back catalogue, attempting to gain a perspective of their general contribution to popular music, and, more importantly for me, the reason their work effects me so. But with Kanye I have some trouble.

            Let me attempt to explain what stands in the way of my embracing Kanye with folded arms that badly want to open. It has less to do with his reported egocentrism and outlandish arrogance – what do I care about his own spiraling conceptions of himself? – and more with the sheer debauchery that I find pervading so much of his music, a debauchery of all imaginable shades. I think this decadence is conveniently highlighted in his video for the single ‘Monster.’ The goriness of this video, with its multitude of mutilated, motionless models, foraging zombies guzzling blood out of a mangled, opened chest of a corpse –  among other such freakishly unsettling images and hissing creatures – is only matched by its implicit sexual component, which rages throughout. The monsters and zombies are mostly scantily-clad women, several of whom are placed in a proximity to Kanye that overtly suggests necrophiliac activities on his part. I don’t think I’m the only one who finds such images – accompanied by equally edgy, debasing lyrical content (which I will not quote here for decency’s sake) a little off-putting. Yet……..at the same time, I find myself just so drawn to his music.

            There is something alluring and even charming about a self-centered artist such as Kanye attempting to create work that reflects the scope of his outlandish, lascivious lifestyle. In order to succeed, his work will surely need to be as gory, vivid, and uncomfortably graphic as his day-to-day routine. The fact that Kanye’s work is so revolting, in its own warped way, appears to make it more real – genuine work that stems from the smoking remains of his mangled mind and heart. And I think that’s why I feel so drawn to him. To me, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy seems to be a collection of broken, hounded, raw emotion cowering behind the shaky façade of a transparently turgid exterior. Kanye’s album is great because it’s just so real. The barrier I face is that his reality is vastly different from my own, infinitely more lurid and perverse. But my awareness of his work as a reflection of his reality allows me to cross that chasm, at least auditorily. Kanye’s work speaks to me because it feels so gritty and real, so full of powerful emotion and sweeping pain, like all good art must be. My project now is to dive into his back catalog and see what else emerges.