Kanye's Naked Listening Party

Posted Wednesday, October 15, 2008 @ 12:39 in Beat Reporter by Brandon Perkins

In basketball, they call it a "heat check." Kobe Bryant has just hit eight shots in a row, so he pulls up from 35 feet just because he's open, just because he can, just to see how hot he really is. Most of the time, these shots tend to clang off the side of the rim. And sometimes, Kobe is just Kobe and the shot is guaranteed to go in. Somewhere in the middle, Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak is that. West's first three albums have put him atop the pop music stratosphere. He can release a song for free on his blog, and still top the iTunes singles chart. That song can be downtempo emo electronica and still set the soundtrack for dance parties.

Officially, Kanye is the first rapper with a Benz and a Blue Period.

"Love Lockdown" is the second-most "pop" song from Kanye's fourth record. If you're in one of the camps that's either utterly confused by it or annoyed as fuck at the autotune, then 808s & Heartbreak will be your least favorite album of 2008. But a wise man once said that no one should ever be able to walk past great art...that the observer should be compelled to rip it off the wall. Whether that compulsion is motivated by hate or love is wholly irrelevant.

While the theme for last year's NYC Graduation listening party was that of film, last night's setting was appropriately enough an art instillation. Graduation's unveiling was at a movie theatre and 808s' was in a parking garage. Forty naked women stood in front of a giant pulsing light box and a few hundred people--Michael Rappaport, Jay-Z and Will.i.am included--stood in front of them, watching, listening. Vanessa Beecroft was the visual artist interpretting Kanye's aural adventures and the women--segregated, white girls in the back, black girls in the front--were beautiful and natural. These weren't typical LA strippers. The metaphor is obvious, as Kanye truly truly believes that 808s' songs bare his soul.

Perhaps no artist in the history of pop music has taken such a large leap from his or her wildly successful formula while they were unquestionably at the top of the charts. There is almost no rapping on 808s & Heartbreak. Only a particularly villainous guest spot from Young Jeezy could qualify as actual rhyming. And it's an album highlight. And yes, Kanye uses autotune throughout the entire album. But as "Love Lockdown" (and more successfully, "Put On") demonstrates, Yeezy uses the instrument-du jour to increase his voice's strained emotionality and pained vulnerabililty. He doesn't use it because T-Pain sells records.

After 808s finished playing and before the naked girls left the viewing area, Kanye stepped to the microphone for a short speech. Naturally, he criticized the critics for criticizing his new direction, even as we were hearing it for the first time. Obviously, he told everyone to "not shut up, but please be quiet" a half dozen times. But his most blatant statement came in reference to his art and how this album couldn't have been made without the tulmultuous year he had endured. He ended a longtime relationship and, most significantly, he lost his mother to the same Hollywood beautification system that he had spent a career lauding. It's been a dark period and a dark album is apt.

Kanye became the biggest music star in the world because people believe in him. He wears his flaws on his sleeve and addresses them in his music. These open wounds make the triumphs even larger...and the two extremes easily correlate to the lives of his listeners. We all win and lose, every single day. Whether those same fans will buy into Kanye's heat check is unknown, but the idea is so focused (and occasionally flirting with monotony), that they'll be forced to tear it off the wall...either to stomp on and throw in the trash or steal it for their own wall.



(above, a piece of Kanye's speech...below, the ladies)

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