Monday, November 2, 2009

Life, Liberty, and what Kanye Hath Wrought



Pursuit of Happiness


Kid Cudi f. MGMT & Ratatat, Man on the Moon: The End of the Day, 2009.


"Tell me what you know about dreamin? Dreamin?"

Ah, the existential questions of hip-hop. There was a day when the biggest question rap could pose was "Has your girlfriend got the butt?" Obviously, lyrics have been political since day one, but actual discussion of feelings? That's a pretty recent trend, one that Kanye has been at the forefront of in terms of making it acceptable (acceptable being a double stand-in for profitable and manly enough). Just like grunge knocked the lid off of the simmering feelings of teenagers in the mid-90s, sweeping away the excess and party/pussy anthems of hair metal (which had already lost their edge when the ballads took over), Kanye (and Eminem) has done the same for hip-hop, making it okay to discuss actual emotional issues.

Which brings us, at last to KiD CuDi, a Kanye protege. His "Pursuit of Happiness" is nothing but feelings.

KiD CuDi stops short of turning the whole thing into a therapist's couch by making it all seem like a condemnation of the listener, an aggressiveness that pays off as he veers from rolling joints to lines like "You don't really care about the trials of tomorrow/ Rather lay awake in a path full of sorrow" (which wouldn't feel out of place in a Metallica song).

It's not poetry; the lyrics aren't amazing. But what is amazing is that he feels comfortable doing it. There's a universality to statements like "I'll be fine once I get it" that keeps it going.

Of course, Ratatat's El-P-influenced beat carries things along more than anything else. It doesn't sound completely like a Ratatat effort until that guitar solo around the three minute mark. MGMT adds their own flavor, singing backup better than a collection of ratty hos would.

3 comments:

  1. This post is helping me inch closer to a mammoth dissertation post on the existence of Kanye. I was thinking about it the week before last (literally, I was thinking about writing a long post about Kanye). And the emotional content was a key piece of my argument. I was/am planning on using perhaps the most frustrating song in his entire catalog: "The Glory." It might be my favorite sample riding under his most obnoxious lyrics.

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  2. Oh, and I like that Happy Meals stand in for, you know, happiness. Some exec helped buy Ray Kroc another round at his local watering hole with that idea.

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  3. Yeah, I was looking for a happiness picture, and that seemed to fit the bill.
    I actually cut down that post by more than half, because I got on this really really long Kanye jag that I ended up just erasing.
    Awesome production by Ratatat on this song. Man. I wish they'd just do a whole album with someone (Vast Aire?). That would be great.

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