You really can’t go wrong with robots.

February 13, 2008

[This post was spurred by this io9 piece about Kanye West and Daft Punk.]

There’s so much wrong about Kanye West’s performance at the Grammys last week. The awkward missing swears. The misogyny. The fact that Kanye essentially appropriates an incredibly awesome sample (Daft Punk’s “Harder Better Faster Stronger,” off of their amazing album, “Discovery”) wholecloth and loops it to a hit single. The sheer arrogance/attitude Kanye can’t help but exude with his every public utterance.

And yet, it is unquestionably awesome.

First of all, I will always love Kanye for his willingness to take popular hip-hop in a new, eclectic direction. He’s not the first rapper to do it (Mos Def, Wu Tang, De La Soul, and A Tribe Called Quest are just the few that immediately came to mind), but with apologies to those and other interesting rappers, he is the biggest star to do it. I imagine this must be what it was like to watch Michael Jackson’s creative explosion with Thriller—the songs’ subject matter, the music videos, the sheer ambition of his efforts. Really cool. In Kanye’s case, often cooler in theory than in execution, but when he gets it right it’s electrifying.

At any rate, with his diverse background and education and his incredible flair for marketing, Kanye is like a musical Kobe Bryant (before the rape fiasco)—a chameleon with something for everyone to like, and enough charisma to amplify his sizable talent. As I suggested above, my favorite thing about Kanye is that he takes influences that have rarely been applied to hip-hop, and by the time he’s done with them they seem inevitable. His preppy persona, then his Miami Vice pastel kick, then his retro-futuristic Tron thing… anyone who follows this stuff at all knows what I’m talking about. He’s either setting these trends or quite ably anticipating them. Either way, he’s a bellwether for the Next Big Thing. Plus, he allowed/commissioned this, for which I will forever admire him.

Second of all, as the io9 post I linked to notes, Daft Punk is really great in a lot of ways. They make really fun, really interesting pop music, too, and are willing to go to great lengths to create an artistic presence. They haven’t made a public appearance as human beings in years, and their music is in some ways extraordinarily sterile. But there’s a kernel of soul in it, all the same—like the pulsating brain controlling Krang’s mechanized body.

Anyway, everything I love and hate about the Kanye/Daft Punk collaboration is on display in the video, which you can see right here:

Posted in Music, Writing