I'm not sure really -- I think whatever "heart" his music had around the time of "College Dropout" has (maybe) diminished, but I guess I'm thinking in big pictures here, in a Pop Trumps sort of way. I guess I mean there's something very calculated about the construction of his image, in a literal way -- like he's been planning just about everything (overthinking it, maybe?).
So I think that by Graduation, he's not even going for hearts and guts, but I think there's something cerebral, or "about ____" instead of "____" about his own "hearts and guts" even when they're trying to be those -- started listening to "Through the Wire" for the first time in a while a few weeks ago and still really love it, probably my favorite Kanye song, but (esp. watching the video) it seems almost like he'd had his meta stuff (big picture) overwhelming the impact of his content even then -- "This Is the Song I Wrote About My Jaw Being Wired Shut After a Car Accident." And it's still the one I have the strongest visceral reaction to myself.
Maybe another way of using what I'm calling "cerebral" is "clever," which I don't dislike in principle (Skye Sweetnam is almost all "clever"), but can often (but not necessarily) put me at a distance. (Busdriver is a rapper who's pretty much all "clever," 100% brain, but I like him more than Kanye because he doesn't want anyone to think he aspires to anything else.) (And I guess Kanye, by aspiring to heart and guts, might seem to have them for some people, or most people; I just think when he does heartfelt or gutfelt he sounds kind of...not dishonest, but inadequate, maybe.)
Don't see how he's any less of a thinker now -- I think he's got more pure-brain in Graduation, more figuring out an angle. Maybe that's just what my brain says when I see someone consciously reaching out to hipsters, I dunno. (And anyway, it's not actually any smarter than some of the stuff on his first alb -- I don't know the second album nearly as well though tbh.)
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So I think that by Graduation, he's not even going for hearts and guts, but I think there's something cerebral, or "about ____" instead of "____" about his own "hearts and guts" even when they're trying to be those -- started listening to "Through the Wire" for the first time in a while a few weeks ago and still really love it, probably my favorite Kanye song, but (esp. watching the video) it seems almost like he'd had his meta stuff (big picture) overwhelming the impact of his content even then -- "This Is the Song I Wrote About My Jaw Being Wired Shut After a Car Accident." And it's still the one I have the strongest visceral reaction to myself.
Maybe another way of using what I'm calling "cerebral" is "clever," which I don't dislike in principle (Skye Sweetnam is almost all "clever"), but can often (but not necessarily) put me at a distance. (Busdriver is a rapper who's pretty much all "clever," 100% brain, but I like him more than Kanye because he doesn't want anyone to think he aspires to anything else.) (And I guess Kanye, by aspiring to heart and guts, might seem to have them for some people, or most people; I just think when he does heartfelt or gutfelt he sounds kind of...not dishonest, but inadequate, maybe.)
Don't see how he's any less of a thinker now -- I think he's got more pure-brain in Graduation, more figuring out an angle. Maybe that's just what my brain says when I see someone consciously reaching out to hipsters, I dunno. (And anyway, it's not actually any smarter than some of the stuff on his first alb -- I don't know the second album nearly as well though tbh.)