Send "Kanye West " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Sputnikmusic |
 Anonymity makes everybody into a distinguished critic; the great challenge of listening to music in the Internet age is being able to separate the music from the artist who made it and the opinions of everybody who purport to know what they're talking about. The second one is fairly easy to ignore, if not escape entirely; the first, not so much. Especially with someone as vocal about himself as Kanye West. The thing is, I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that a large majority of artists over the past forty or fifty years have been like him - spouting off, making this claim and that claim, putting people down, building their own reputation up. We just never heard ninety percent of it because it wasn't done over Twitter. Somehow, we're able to recognize the inherent ridiculousness of this 24-hour exposure into the lives of famous people without wanting to give it up. Joaquin Phoenix made fun of it by lurching around with a beard and sunglasses for awhile, saying he was going to make a rap album before revealing - surprise! - that he was just fucking with us. We, of course, ate that up just as much as we did when we thought he was being serious.Kanye, on the other hand, always seems very serious, and while I'm not going to defend some of his more outlandish stunts (some of which truly are beyond defense), there seems to be a certain double standard at work when the people who fly into a rage over the latest Kanye blog post are the same ones who express disbelief as to why 1965 America was mad at John Lennon for saying the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. "But Lennon was right!" these people say. To them, such a comment only adds to the legend of the man. For someone like Kanye, whose descent into pariah status started when he appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone wearing a crown of thorns (see a pattern?), there is no right or wrong in his statements; there are only his statements and the backlash. Part of it is because he's a rapper, part of it is because he truly can be a dick, and yes, part of it is because he's black. But his music has always seemed wholly separate from the media magnate personality of Kanye, and some might be surprised to hear me say that. Call Kanye what you want, but at least he's honest, and never is he more honest than when he is talking about his music. Whether or not you think he makes music good enough to back up his personality (and I believe he does), one needs only to look at 808s & Heartbreak to see evidence that Kanye puts his heart and soul into his music. People spent so much time debating about the autotune that they forgot to notice how understated, how personal, how revealing that album was. It only seemed like the antithesis to Kanye's personality because nobody would concede that the album was his personality. Prideful men are always complicated; those who think Kanye is just an asshole with a Macbook haven't really listened to his music. Then again, you can't really blame them; Kanye is so visible and outspoken that I wouldn't be surprised if someone who's never heard even one of his songs feels like they've heard his entire discography. That's the bane of being a mainstream artist today: the way you are perceived is almost more important than your music. It would be a shame, except Kanye doesn't really give a shit and never has. He seems physically incapable of being anything less than genuine, and it's made for a fantastic musical career. I've seen some people refer to Lil Wayne as the hardest working man in hip-hop; the only reason that doesn't apply to Kanye West is because he makes everything seem so damn effortless. His music has always been very intricate, very layered, but more than that, it perfectly represented Kanye West as a person. He was his music; you never got the idea that he was posing or posturing or trying to live up to some preconceived ideal. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is no different. I hesitate to say that it's his most ambitious album simply because that implies that he might not have lived up to what he tried to do. That certainly isn't true - this album is absolutely huge in every way. There isn't much of a precedent for this album in Kanye's discography. It's totally different from everything he's done while still being perfectly, irrevocably Kanye. Really, this might be the first album in which he's truly lived up to his potential in every way - as a rapper, as a lyricist, as a songwriter, as a producer. Everything simply works, and as a result, Fantasy is a joy to listen to. "All Of The Lights," "Lost In The World," "Power" - there is a zest for life in these songs that is really quite beautiful, and it is great to see that Kanye is still able to have plenty of fun without losing any of his creativity....full text |
| Rollingstone |
| When Kanye West sings about "jerk-offs that’ll never take work off," you’d best believe he means himself. Being crazy is this guy’s job, and judging from the sound of his music, business is booming. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is his most maniacally inspired music yet, coasting on heroic levels of dementia, pimping on top of Mount Olympus. Yeezy goes for the grandeur of stadium rock, the all-devouring sonics of hip-hop, the erotic gloss of disco, and he goes for all of it, all the time. Nobody halfway sane could have made this album. Kanye West Gives Surprise Performance on Delta Flight Last time, Kanye went minimal for the electro melancholia of 808s & Heartbreak. But on Fantasy, he gets ridiculously maximal, blowing past all the rules of hip-hop and pop, even though, for the past half-decade, he’s been the one inventing the rules. There are hip-hop epics, R&B ballads, alien electronics, prog-rock samples, surprise guests from Bon Iver to Fergie to Chris Rock, even a freaking Elton John piano solo. It’s his best album, but it’s more than that — it’s also a rock-star manifesto for a downsizing world. At a time when we all get hectored about lowering our expectations, surrendering our attention spans, settling for less, West wants us to demand more. Photos: Jay-Z and Eminem's NYC Blowout With Kanye West, Chris Martin, Drake, and Nicki Minaj Nobody else is making music this daring and weird, from the spooky space funk of "Gorgeous" to the King Crimson-biting "Power" to the paranoid staccato strings of "Monster." Nearly six minutes into "Runaway," long after the song has already sealed itself in your brain, the sound cuts out and you think it’s over. Then there’s a plinking piano, the feedback of an electric guitar plugging in, some "Strawberry Fields"-style cellos and Yeezy himself singing a poignant Robert Fripp-style solo through his vocoder. There’s no way it should work, but it keeps rolling for three more minutes without breaking the spell. Kanye Says He Understands George Bush's 'Disgust' Coming off a string of much-publicized emotional meltdowns, Yeezy is taking a deeper look inside the dark corners of his twisted psyche. He has sex and romance on his mind, but he comes clean about his male angst like never before. In confessions like "Runaway" and "Blame Game," he honestly struggles to figure out why he has to be such a douchebag. Yet the songs are also his funniest ever, with Kanye showing off lethal wit on the mic: In "Dark Fantasy," he rhymes "mercy, mercy me, that Murcielago" with "diablo," "bravado" and "My chick in that new Phoebe Philo/So much head, I woke up in Sleepy Hollow."...full text |
| Mashable |
| Album leaks are not exactly uncommon nowadays, but the Internet is humming this afternoon with talk of Kanye West’s upcoming disc, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which oozed online today, weeks before its November 22 drop date. According to All Hip Hop, the album is now available on the web (we’re not going to tell you where, just Google it) — but in an edited, clean version. So even if fans are able to snag the tunes today, they’re most likely going to have to wait for the full effect (or another leak). Kanye is no stranger to leaks. According to MTV, he suspended his G.O.O.D. Fridays series (in which he will give away a free, new song every Friday on his blog) for a week after the Bon Iver-sampling “Lost in the World” from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy leaked. “Due to blogs leaking unfinished songs from my actual album I’ve decided to pass of Good Fridays this week,” West said in a tweet. “It’s messed up that one hacker can mess everything up for everyone… I love to take a year to finish my songs and deliver them to you guys in there most completed form… It would have seemed like since I give free music every week even the lowest form of human being would respect that enough not to leak unfinished songs from my real album…” Although it seems like a leak would kill a record (You have the music for free, why buy it? Or the music is poor quality and people get turned off) the effects are more nuanced than that. I spoke to Adam Farrell, head of marketing for Beggars Group, after The National’s album, High Violet, leaked, and he told me, “A leak hurts a bad record, really. I’ve not really seen it hurt a really good record.” After The National’s disc hit the web, for instance, the band got creative, premiering a high-quality, advance stream of the disc on The New York Times’s website. Add to that a Vevo livestream, and the band nabbed the number three spot on the Billboard Top 200 chart after one week of sales. We’re not saying the leak helped sales in the case of The National, but it didn’t kill the band members’ careers either....full text |
| Popmatters |
| The popular image of Hank Williams is not cheery. His music is for the darkest nights of the soul. He sings about being completely alone in the world, of having your heart completely shattered. That he died at a young age, 29, just fuels this image of Williams as a tragic figure. On the other hand, there’s the photo of Williams on the first page of the booklet that accompanies the 16-disc (15 CDs and one DVD) box set The Complete Mother’s Best Recordings, which collects all of the Mother’s Best radio shows that Williams and band played in 1951, airing on WSM radio for 15 minutes at a time. The photo shows Williams with a huge grin, guitar in hand, a big bag of Mother’s Best flour resting on his left arm and shoulder. In the liner notes Hank Williams, Jr., describes a party atmosphere at the sessions, and Williams as someone who knew how to have a good time. “You hear these stories about Hank Williams as a poor, forlorn figure,” he writes, “But I’m here to tell you that’s a bunch of crap.” The image of Williams as a downer doesn’t match the party atmosphere of these recordings either, the way he’s continually razzing his band members and trading jokes with host Cousin Louie Buck. The notion of Williams’ music as some holy grail of “authenticity” (and by relation some dividing line between commercial country music and something more “real”) does not match these recordings either, the way he alternates playing his songs and selling Mother’s Best flour, in all its forms: twice-washed cornmeal (once with water, once with air), self-rising flour, and feed for animals. You can make the world’s best hush puppies with it, or use it to ward off sickness. Housewives rely on it, kids love it. “I’m not an expert cook, but I’m an expert eater”, Williams says, and he fully endorses it. Disc 15 captures an audition for an Aunt Jemima syrup show that would have followed the Mother’s Best gig, along with a public service announcement about venereal disease. “The millers of Mother’s Best flour bring you that ‘Lovesick Blues’ boy, Hank Williams”, is how each show begins. There is a formula to these shows. They start with Williams singing a love song or heartbreak song, one written by him or another classic country songwriter, continue (at least for a while) with a song sung by Williams’ wife Audrey, and/or a song where the players in his band can show off their skills, and closes with a hymn. The liner notes are particular harsh on Audrey Williams’ singing, and for the most part they’re right, though there are moments where she can still be somewhat affecting, when singing something sad like “(Last Night) I Heard You Crying in Your Sleep” or a duet with Hank....full text |
| Slantmagazine |
| For the sheer volume of "new" posthumously released material, few artists can rival Hank Williams, whose best-known sides seem to be repackaged every couple of years to cash in on some just-unearthed demo recordings. But the latest addition to Hank Sr.'s catalogue, The Complete Mother's Best Recordings… Plus!, is something particularly special. Daunting for its enormous scope and awe-inspiring for the care and detail shown in its extraordinary packaging, this collection is invaluable as both a historical document and as an expansion of Williams's already storied legacy. Because so much of his artistry is inseparable from how he established archetypes not just for country music, but for popular music in general, it's often easy to view Williams as more of a myth than an actual flesh-and-blood performer. One of the primary selling points for The Complete Mother's Best Recordings, then, is that it provides an exceedingly rare glimpse at Williams at his most candid. Sponsored by Mother's Best flour products, this series of daily, quarter-hour radio shows teem and bristle with the kind of spontaneity that is rarely captured in studio recordings. To that end, the snarky ad-libs that Williams manages to pack into each 15-minute installment showcase his quick wit and his distinctive, high-pitched cackle of a laugh. No one in the studio was safe from Williams's one-liners, as he routinely pokes fun at his bandmates' haircuts, the constant requirement of plugging Mother's Best products, and even his own mistakes in his musicianship. Williams is perhaps most often remembered as a tragic, hard-living figure, but The Complete Mother's Best Recordings repositions him as a self-deprecating smartass with incredible business acumen. Long before artists were derided for "selling out," Williams proved that it was possible to shill for products without selling one's soul. He could poke a little bit of fun at the process of making long-form commercials for flour (for proof of how seriously Williams took the bake-sale aspect of this gig, look no further than the promo photo on the first page of the collection's book to see Williams's shit-eating grin), and doing so meant a guaranteed block of airtime in an era when few things had more influence than radio....full text |
| Blogcritics |
| Hank Williams was only 29 years old when he was declared dead on arrival at a hospital in Oak Hill, West Virginia. The previous night he had been loaded barely conscious into the back seat of a Cadillac. His body wracked with agony from back surgery that had never been allowed to heal properly, emotionally and physically exhausted from the break up of his first marriage and a killer touring schedule, he had passed out in the back seat of the car, never to wake up again. He had a history of battles with the bottle and by 1952 promoters were leery of booking him, as there was no guarantee that even if he showed up he'd be sober enough to go on stage. However, for two years, from 1949 to 1951, he had dominated the Billboard charts with a series of #1 hits and was one of the most popular performers in America. In 1951 alone he performed 130 shows across Canada and the United States. While that may not seem like a lot to some people, you have to remember this was in the days before bands had tour buses or you could hop a plane to take you across the country in a few hours. Hank and his band, The Drifting Cowboys, did all their travel by car, which was exhausting enough on its own. However, most weeks, no matter where they were, they also had to make sure they were back in Nashville for Saturdays in order to perform at the Grand Ole Opry. Aside from touring and recording, in 1951, Williams was also featured on a 15-minute radio spot every morning that was broadcast across the Midwest and the South. From 7:15 am to 7:30 am, kitchens in thousands of homes would have the pleasure of Williams' company brought to them by the good people of Mother's Best Flour....full text |
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