Kanye West vs. Bob Ezrin - Best Kanye Beef Of 2016 IMO

[casecandy]

Yeah Kanye's rapping (the stuff that wasn't ghostwritten) is not the hill to die on.

Okay, fair enough. But his one-liners are excellent. He's funny as hell. I'm not gonna make a list of them but this is true. There are multiple Kanye lines that make me laugh out loud.

[D.o.S.]

Dane Cook makes people laugh too. Doesn't make him a good comedian, just speaks to the lack of comedic education among the audience.

[casecandy]

Dane Cook makes people laugh too. Doesn't make him a good comedian, just speaks to the lack of comedic education among the audience.

This is not that. I am many sorts of dweeb, but I'm not comedically uneducated.

Also this is one for the hypothetical best of D.o.S. thread.

lack of comedic education

[D.o.S.]

"it is good because I enjoy it" holds no water, sorry*. Not if you're looking to have a real conversation.

*that's the point re: Dane Cook. Forgot I had to be explicit and overexplain my analogies.

[rustywire]

Dane gets a bad rap. He's a funnier guy off stage than on, and a loyal friend afaih. My fav thing he did is as an actor; "Floyd" in Waiting... He was exceptional for the role. Every1 here knows that guy.
So my first impression came from being aware of him several years before he catapulted into selling out MSG via an act ripe with low-hanging fruit for the mostly-female crowd's picking. Andrew Dice Clay did the same thing 25 years earlier, for males.
Both burned bright & fizzled out of favor rather quickly, but for a brief window in time they were "the guy" like Kevin Hart has been for the past 4ish years.
Kanye is "the guy" in music and has been since MBDTF. He plays the game like a fiddle.
Even his weak stuff is now hailed as misunderstood genius or avant garde.

In the <2days after uploading Real Friends to SoundCloud...Kanye gained 100k+ follows there, not the most popular platform among casuals, normies even.
It was initially up for a few min then taken down due to 'undesirable distortion' in the mix, reupped a few hrs later. With INSANE buzz built in the gap.
When the album was released, it was on itunes briefly then taken down, and now available via Tidal. Does anyone think this was on impulse?
His twitter activity has exploded since Real Friends. All this buzz about him, right in time for the new record.
He's one of those guys who is both overrated/underrated, simultaneously.

[casecandy]

You know what, fuck it. I'll die on the hill of Kanye's rapping. There's more to rapping than technical prowess. Swagger counts. Humour counts. He's got them both. Sometimes I'm wrong and sometimes I'm not, and this is the latter.

Completely off the top of my head, not even attempting to be exhaustive:

I heard that Ye was racist
If so it's on one basis
I only like green faces

How did I get on A-List?
I wasn't even on a list

And what’s a Black Beatle anyway, a fucking roach?
I guess that’s why they got me sitting in fucking coach

Killin' y'all niggas on that lyrical shit
Mayonnaise colored Benz, I push Miracle Whips

I treat the cash the way the government treats AIDS
I won’t be satisfied til all my niggas get it, get it?

I’m like the fly Malcolm X, buy any jeans necessary

In a French-ass restaurant
Hurry up with my damn croissants

I went to the malls and I balled too hard
“Oh my god, is that a black card?”
I turned around and replied, “Why yes
But I prefer the term African American Express”

The Hermes of verses
Sophisticated ignorance
Write my curses in cursive

As soon as I roll up and park the Benz
We get this bitch shakin' like Parkinsons
Take my number and lock it in
Indian hair, no moccasins

Couldn’t afford a car so she named her daughter Alexis

Like a light-skinned slave, boy
We in the motherfuckin' house

And I just spent four-hundred bucks on this
Just to be like, "Nigga, you ain't up on this!"

Like... do you need more than this?

[D.o.S.]

Yes.

[casecandy]

Have you considered the possibility that it's good rapping, and you're just not into it?

Which is fine because diff'rent strokes?

[D.o.S.]

Something something those that can't do teach and those that can't teach teach high schoolers.

Sorry I'm a little drunk I don't mean it I just have to fulfill my half of the bargain w/r/t banter.

However, obviously no one is confusing Yeezy for Rakim. Is your argument that he's better than the mean of what constitutes most commercially successful rap? And, obvi, this conversation has to exclude ghost writers because we can't be privy to who wrote what. I will agree, for example, that he's got a better balance of rhyme and reference than someone like Donald Glover (who is/was a serious one-trick pop culture-dropping pony when he came out)

[D.o.S.]

But, no, frankly I haven't because good rapping is good rapping and there's enough of an established precedent that you can use that lens effectively.

Have you considered that you like it in spite of it's dubious quality? Same subtle ad hominem spun differently.

[D.o.S.]

Um and obviously barbs are not and should not be taken personally we're aiming for House of Lords rather than a fucking LiveJournal expose.


Also I would say that all of those are basically dependent on delivery (think Jim Morrison and the annoying 'poetry' discussions which I have no desire to have, and I suspect that you're similarly tired of it [at least I would be if I was surrounded by teenagers all day for work])

[casecandy]

I dig Donald Glover.

People say, "You're my favourite rapper, dude!"
Yeah, dude, I better be
Or you can fuckin' kiss my ass
Human centipede

No live shows, cause I can't find sponsors
For the only black kid at a Sufjan concert

Now I'm firefly, like a burning kite
And youse a fake fuck, like a fleshlight

LOL

Good rapping is good rapping

Okay, but there are different ways to be a good rapper.

Sure, I've considered that possibility, that I like because it's bad, the way I like Plan 9 From Outer Space, I guess. To me, being so bad it's good is de facto being good.

[D.o.S.]

See the above edit.

I think that's totally fair, but it's a different conversation. Consider all the wonks that talk about Jimmie Page on both sides of the discussion (hurr durr he's so sloppy/hurr durr Led Zeppelin is the best band ever and I know it because of the depth of my convictions concerning hero mythos and the dying race of real rock stars). We can do that, sure: I have a full charge of beverage and obvi I'll argue about anything, but I kind of feel like this started as a separate conversation which is sort of more interesting: that Kanye is capital-I Important because of his position in pop culture?

Maybe I misread.

[rustywire]

You know what, fuck it. I'll die on the hill of Kanye's rapping. There's more to rapping than technical prowess. Swagger counts. Humour counts. He's got them both. Sometimes I'm wrong and sometimes I'm not, and this is the latter.
...

Killin' y'all niggas on that lyrical shit
Mayonnaise colored Benz, I push Miracle Whips

...
Like... do you need more than this?

This specific example always comes up without fail. It's a clever line in the end, but low-hanging fruit.
I just don't get excited about straightforward, moderately clever wordplay pop culture reference braggadocio.
It's obvious, basic. Played out unless delivered to sound like the best line you ever heard (GZA is a king of that skill)
Here are another mc's bars from that same mid '00s-era, which I would consider on a whole other creative level:
Annotation in parenthesis

"Sound like a scurvy band rocker programmed computer biographed to Herbie Hancock"
(I'm a sick, innovative electronic musician on some futuristic shit)

"Looking at my Seiko it's about to be Waco, and it wont be televised on Ricki Lake's show
...turn jake to Bacos...money over snake hoes"
(drama bout to go down in a big flaming massacre, make mincemeat outta pigs)

"Borderline schitzo, sorta fine tits tho, pour the wine, whore the grind, quarter to nine lets go"
(the chick is hot but cray, what could possibly go wrong?)

"Groovy dude, not to prove to be rude, but this stuff is what you might put on movie food
...um...what is jala-peenyers? Get it like a whoopin when you holla at your seniors"
(MY SHIT IS BUTTER DO I HAVE TO SPELL IT OUT TRY TO KEEP UP YOUNG'N)

"Turn a man into a mannequin for Afflac'n, and being tough-acting Tinactin bluff jackin"
(get kilt for quacking off at the mouth & fronting hard, fraudulent tin soldier)

[rustywire]

this is now a rustywire appreciation thread.

Think I just turned this into an MF DOOM appreciation thread