The Fragile Art of Collaborations, Part I: Kanye West and Jay Z

(West & Z - should probably stop watching the 'throne' and try watching the 'news'.)

(A Note From the Author: This article was ostensibly meant to be a subtle and balanced piece about the nature of musical collaborations, taking a fair and authoritative look at some of the better known collaborations between musical artists and examining their respective merits and draw backs. As it happens, what I actually ended up writing was a protracted rant about Jay Z and Kanye West and the sorry state of modern hip-hop. Sometimes these things cannot be helped. Enjoy... and I promise I will say something nice about someone next time, maybe.)

Earlier in the year we were presented with the fruits of Kanye West and Jay Z’s combined creative labours, ‘Watch the Throne.’ The title itself is apparently a reference to the way in which Kanye and Jay Z are watching over the hip-hop throne, presumably as the throne’s self appointed guardians. So if you have found yourself awake at night, stricken with worry, fearful that the hip-hop throne was going un-minded - relax, Kanye and Jay Z have got it covered. Quite frankly I had no intention to listen to this album and why I did is still a mystery to me. Presumably the boredom of unemployment coerced me into it or, far less likely, some lofty notions of journalistic enquiry. Perhaps I wanted to try for one last time to hop aboard the good ship ‘popular culture,’ to embrace the contemporary sounds of the kids of the 21^st century and to escape from this lonely cultural exile in which I find myself. After all, if Youtube is to be taken as an accurate representation of prevailing cultural trends then what Kanye West and Jay Z have produced here is nothing short of a masterpiece; as one Youtube enthusiast described it:

"JAY Z & KANYE WEST ARE ADULT - GROWN RAP
BUT WEEZY LIL WAYNE I GOT LOVE FOR THIS NIGGA BUT HIS RAP SOUNDS LIKE TEENAGE RAP- I THINK HE GOTTA TRANSFORM FROM BEING TEENAGE TO GROWN RAP IN ORDER TO MAKE A CLASSIC LIKE WATCH THE THRONE."

Such astute and well put forward views are hard to dismiss out of hand. Another Youtuber said of 'Watch the Throne' that it was "the realist beat I have ever heard." High praise indeed. Sadly I could not really relate to either commentators' views.

 In a nutshell, the album is the artistic embodiment of the idiom, ‘two wrongs do not make a right.’ I am still not entirely sure what two wrongs do make, but judging by this album, it is definitely not a right. Most of the album consists of Kanye West and his friend Jay Z waxing lyrical about being the ‘Illest Mother Fucker Alive’ and what it’s like to be ‘Niggers in Paris.’ It really is a far cry from N.W.A.’s classic ‘Real Niggers Don’t Die’ or Public Enemy’s politically charged ‘Anti-Nigger Machine’. In many ways, when you consider the vitally urgent political rebellion of many early rap artists, such as the aforementioned ‘Public Enemy,’ it’s slightly disappointing that the only obvious rebellion taking place on ‘Watch the Throne’ is against the laws of the English language (as far as I am aware ‘Illest’ is not and never has been a proper adjective.) Sadly Kanye and Jay Z’s disregard for sentence structure and words is not my main point of contention with this record. One of the great strengths of well executed rap has been the demonstration of a degree of social awareness that is often lacking in other music genres. Beneath the often rolled out clichés of rap being ‘street level’ and ‘down with the kids,’ rap and hip-hop have often presented a world view that many people can empathise with; the struggle of a down-trodden and often ignored minority in a society which offered them little in the way of hope or prospects - a scenario which possibly has a great degree of contemporary relevance, perhaps? 

Apparently not if you’re either Kanye West or Jay Z. What they present here is an image of a world-view so divorced from most people’s reality that it’s hard to muster any empathy or compassion for either of them, let alone like them. When Kanye West perceptively asks ‘what’s fifty grand to a mother fucker like me?’, in the lyrics to ‘Nigger in Paris’, it’s hard to arouse any feeling towards him at all other than a burning urge to punch him in the gut. By track four, ‘Otis’, I’m finding it hard not to turn my pent up aggression on myself and start mutilating my own face; but when you’re confronted with lyrics like these it’s probably an understandable involuntary response:

"They aint see me cause I pulled up in my other Benz
Last week I was in my other other Benz
Throw your diamonds up cause we in this bitch another 'gain." (Otis, Messrs. West & Z)

 Other than reading like a bad car advert, this lyric underlines the central theme of the album, which can be summarised thusly: “we have money, lots of money, huge amounts of money. As a matter of fact, we have vast sums of accumulated wealth, in a time when everyone else is suffering due to the inherent unfairness of free market capitalism – we’re not! Why? Because we have lots of money!” As a result, the experience of listening to the album as a whole is a bit like having Kanye West wipe his ass with your face for forty-six minutes and two seconds. Or if you'd like a more pleasant simile, its like losing a rather protracted game of monopoly. The music video to the aforementioned song features Kanye West and Jay Z destroying what looks like a very expensive car, presumably just because they can (they both have lots of money, in case you had not gathered that from all the other songs on the album,) before proceeding to drive the car around in a hap-hazard fashion with more girls in the back seat than are legally permitted. Also, upon closer inspection, no one appears to be wearing a seat belt, but I digress... 

At best you could probably dismiss this combined artistic effort as a bad album; nothing more than two friends sharing a urinal that also happens to be your ear. But the sad fact is that, in many ways, this album is a reflection of the sad state of current popular rap/hip-hop; having lost all awareness of the society of which it is a part, it has become little more than a form of materialistic masturbation (with a liberal splashing of misogyny for good measure.) Quite frankly I expected this from Kanye West, but Jay Z really should have known better (or should he? I’m not entirely sure.)  

If Kanye West and Jay Z really are the kings, sitting on their rap/hip-hop throne, then we can only pray for a repeat of events in Russia in 1917. I feel slightly bad that I can’t help but chuckle at the image of Kanye West and Jay Z being lined up against a wall in a remote basement somewhere outside St. Petersburg, but, like Tsar Nicholas II, they probably deserve it. On that point I am fairly sure Chuck D and Flava Flav would agree...

'Swagger Jagger' - The Post-Modernist turn in Popular Music

(Cher Lloyd - The Post-modern face of Popular Music)

The first entry into this musical hall of shame is one of the more gross offenders of recent years, Cher Lloyd’s first single, the whimsically titled ‘Swagger Jagger.’ Apparently Cher Lloyd has subsequently released another single, however, I have no intention to hear it nor to acknowledge that it exists - certainly not until I have recovered from the sporadic yet violent spasms that I must now endure as a result of the cultural trauma I suffered upon listening to ‘Swagger Jagger’. Cher Lloyd’s fans, the self titled ‘little brats,’ or to be more accurate, ‘the mentally deficient and intellectually impotent,’ have fiercely criticised Cher Lloyd’s detractors; their general argument can be summarised thusly: “she’s only 17, she’s a girl, she’s really good, bluuuuurgh....” One of these arguments can be dismissed immediately, she is not really good. Also the fact that Cher Lloyd is only 17 seems to somehow be significant to her fans as apparently anyone under the age of 18 should be immune from scrutiny or criticism.

Well, no. In the creation of this song Cher Lloyd used her own judgement and self-determination to will its existence into the world. As much as the image of Simon Cowell holding a gun to Cher Lloyd’s head whilst yelling “Sing it Bitch!” greatly pleases me, I don’t imagine that this was actually the case. Rather, Cher Lloyd made a decision, as a supposed adult, to sing this song and then release it via a record label with the intent that lots of people should hear it. That is wrong and Cher Lloyd is a bad person for doing it. However this isn’t to say the song has no redeeming features; lyrically Cher Lloyd is a genius. In particular, her ability to construct words into lyrics in such a way as to rob them of any discernable meaning is spell-binding. For example; “Swagger Jagger, Swagger Jagger, you should get some of your own.” Try and come up with a statement that is so utterly vacuous in terms of meaning and content - its surprisingly hard. In all seriousness though, it utter shite. I am firmly convinced that the use of a random word generator or blindly stabbing at pages in the dictionary would have worked to far greater lyrical effect. Musically the song consists of a chorus melody ‘lifted’ (another way of saying plagiarised which doesn’t leave me open to being sued for libel) from the traditional folk song ‘O My Darling Celmentine’ added to a verse which is ‘lifted’ from the Swedish House Mafia track ‘One (Your Name.)’

The chronic lack of creative originality here isn’t really the main problem though. ‘Swagger Jagger’ is more than a bad pop song, it is the apex of a popular musical culture that in trying to speak to everyone speaks to no one at all. The lyrical allusions to rampant materialism and ‘getting on the floor’ may seem harmless enough but really they are reflections of the society in which we live; cold and empty. Perhaps that’s why this song makes me so sad in a way in which Bonnie Tyler’s tear-jerker ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ never could. When an interviewer asked J.G. Ballard about the motivation for writing his critically acclaimed debut novel ‘Crash,’ he replied; “I wanted to rub the human face in its own vomit, and force it to look in the mirror.” Perhaps, with ‘Swagger Jagger,’ that is what Cher Lloyd is inviting us to do here. To look into the mirror of humanity and be disgusted and sickened by what we have become; a society which sent ‘Swagger Jagger’ to the number one spot in the singles charts - a society that is culturally asphyxiating itself with a supermarket carrier bag. Really Cher Lloyd is a genius; as I listen to Swagger Jagger whilst typing these very words, I feel like Cher Lloyd is actually in the room with me, rubbing my face in my own vomit.