Kanye West: "Lost in the World"

“Monster” credited Bon Iver too, but who knows what that was referring to. For someone like me, who plugs in to Kanye’s omnipresence but feels lightheaded thinking about him getting high with Justin Vernon, here’s the real Meaningful Cultural Moment. Fuck, it’s the “Woods” sample that started it all, the one that Kanye predicted would be closing concerts. And? It’s a Kanye song.

Maybe in its failure to be anything other than Kanye leaning on Vernon’s melodicism, it sheds some light on whom Kanye is, on that persona which sucks up so much pop-cultural air. Kanye is a listener more than anything, a music fan who likes Phil Collins drums and any common ground he can scrounge between rap and his current impression of cool. It’s just that the Blood Bank EP (2009) is literally the furthest thing from a dance record, unlike Ray Charles or Daft Punk—when Vernon uses Autotune it means as much to T-Pain as his drums’ timid brushstrokes do to ?uestlove.

“Pinocchio Story,” from 808s and Heartbreak (2008), was as hypnotically solipsistic as his shows reliably are, but means nothing compared to “Last Call” from The College Dropout (2004), which more than anything sums up the appeal of Kanye apart from his dancefloor filler: a wide-eyed ambition and wonder, inspiring and relatable and lifestyle-porn-y all at the same time. “Last Call” was thirteen minutes long; today he has a Twitter feed. Predictably, the self-parody of fame has made his needy, self-conscious bragging ever more gnomic and predictable, no thanks to Twitter’s meaningless context and parameters. So, he outsources the melody to a song from an EP that cares nothing for the kind of instant appeal that Yeezy plies his trade in, and continues his 2010 streak of interesting songs that showcase neither accessibility nor insularity, but some kind of non-artistic jujitsu, deftly handling credibility and fame without ever getting to the bottom of the samples he uses, never overturning them as effortlessly as he once did. It’s been awhile, sure, but the icky self-absorption of 808s was at least leavened by some for-real goddamn original melodies, the stickiness and remarkable nature of which remain undeniable.

That said, I admit to being fully engaged by Kanye’s choices of collaborators—hell, even Nicki Minaj gets a gold star from me for “Monster,” despite being as vocally hellish as YouTube’s Fred; risk is always more interesting than boring shit that “works.” You just can’t whomp some “Sussudio” loops over indie rock NyQuil and expect a generation to raise their lighters, whether you’re the most popular rapper alive or not. I can’t complain too hard about anything that won Bon Iver a surreal Hawaiian vacation, but I thought West’s cultural saturation meant more than Lady Gaga’s. Hopefully the rest of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy proves me wrong.