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808s & Heartbreak: Kanye West’s Headphone Masterpiece
This was not set up to be a good move. Kanye West had made three of the finest hip-hop records of the past half-decade. Despite limited lyrical skills, he used relatability, a way with a punchline, and strong production values to make three classic or near-classic albums.
I think it was Neil Young who coined (or at least inspired) the term “going straight from the middle of the road into the ditch” to be used whenever an artist with commercial success makes a serious left turn away from the sound that brought them accolades-think Young going from folk-rock to experimental electro and rockabilly, or Prince going from Purple Rain to Around the World in a Day.
For his fourth album, Kanye promised to shake things up. Kanye singing? Using Auto-Tune throughout the entire album? Either West was seriously on some other shit or he was hell-bent on completely obliterating his audience.
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Album Review: The Fireman is Paul McCartney – Electric Arguments
Our boss, Mike, always finds things to live blog. I’m going to suck up to him and try to live blog a CD review. I have had the CD for almost two weeks but I have only listened to it while sharpening pencils or ignoring my ringing phone so it’s almost fresh. It’s 10:45pm. Mrs. Rock just went to bed. I’ll write a little background and then review the CD as I listen to it. There will be no second impressions, but that’s OK because I know a lot of Beatles fans will buy this and only listen to it once anyway. I’m not saying they shouldn’t. I just know how they are.
Let’s remind ourselves what The Fireman is. The Fireman is Paul McCartney and a British producer who calls himself Youth. In addition to his production experience, Youth brings knowledge of electronica and dub to the collaboration. Bass is really important in dub music, so it’s going to be pretty interesting to hear what he does with a bass player of Paul’s caliber. Paul is known to be a fan of reggae music (not just ganja), so if you think of dub as an offshoot of reggae, maybe Paul knows something about dub himself. The Fireman released two albums in the 1990s. They made a half-hearted attempt to hide their identities first time around. Now, I wouldn’t be surprised to find Electric Arguments filed under M in my local record store.
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