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Hero For Christ

College Dropout



Kanye West

I wasn't impressed by Kanye West's early singles, but when "All Falls Down" hit the airwaves, I was intrigued. Counter to the prevalent trends in hip hop, the song combined a viciously on-target attack on materialism in the black community with a mea culpa admission of the rapper's own inability to resist. The anti-material stance would have been enough to make me a fan, but Kanye's open ambivalence racheted up the Tension and suggested a internal battle of Tupac-ian proportions.

It was the next single, however, "Jesus Walks" that made me go out and buy the album. The first openly religious single to hit mainstream urban radio since Kirk Franklin's "Stomp", the song featured hardcore rhymes over a sampled gospel choir.

Personally, I thought it was a brilliant piece of work. Eschewing hyperconsonance (the quality that makes most modern Christian music so unlistenable), Kanye stays gritty enough to protect his street credibility; acknowledges his own flaws and his estrangement from God; and yet still manages to deliver a fiery testimonial that leaves no doubt as to the genuineness of his faith.

With this song, together with the previous single described above, Kanye manges to take a moral stance in verse, yet without the preachiness of Nas's "I Know I Can" or the Black Eye Peas' "Where is the Love?"

As for the album as a whole, I would call it a flawed masterpiece. Craftwise, Kanye is no great shakes as a rapper qua rapper. He has some clever rhymes and a good sense of rhythm, but his flow is nothing special. As a producer, he's a bit better. He relies overmuch on his signature technique of speeding up samples of old soul songs, but he has a musical ear, and does some innovative work (on a few cuts) in terms of song structure and the overlay of spoken word on top of the songs.

The appeal of the album, however, is how clearly Kanye's personality comes through. True, it's not necessarily a personality one would want to hang out with (a bit too adolescent), but it's eminently listenable. At the very least he has a persona with some layers of complexity to it --unlike the cardboard-thin fake thuggery that pervades hip-hop.

The Kanye experience begins with the album art, which features a dejected college mascot (thus making Kanye perhaps the first furry-friendly rapper!). Inside, we learn that not only did Kanye not graduate, he also failed to win the college poetry contest, get any playing time on the basketball team, or even make the cheerleading squad.

Interestingly, the title of the album is irony-free. Clearly his failure at higher education was a deep wound to Kanye's pride, and in a peculiarly adolescent fashion, he attempts to salve it throughout the album, claiming at various points to have left by choice, to have been kicked out for being "too real" and to be the most successful "graduate" of his school... despite having not completed his time there.

Not content with this, a series of odd skits crudely mock the school faculty, the well-meaning adults who pushed him towards school, the eager-beaver "A" students, and eventually the entire concept of higher education. His rants are laughable, but the palpability of his hurt is fascinating.

One can't help but wonder how many students he speaks for, who went into college poorly prepared, and, finding no support there, were unable to thrive, eventually leaving with an unshakable sence of failure and inferiority.

Overall, I would view this album as a sign that Artistry is beginning to creep back into mainstream hip-hop. I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in the state of popular art, with particular nod to "Jesus Walks" for anyone who prefers their religion with a little complexity.
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