Why My Family Hates Rap...and Why They’re Wrong: A Case for Kanye’s Genius

Rap is often a contested genre within my household. My dad, a proud disciple of any version of rock you can think of, despises rap. My sister, swaying to her indie dream pop records, sees rap as generic, overrated, and overplayed at parties.

Me? I’m in awe of it. Like most genres, rap is extremely multifaceted, it wears many hats, dons several faces, and evokes every emotion you can think of. That is not what distinguishes it from other genres. What does is its poetic nature.

Rap is essentially spoken poetry, it is spoken against the backdrop of rhythm and rhyme. Rap is focused on the words, it doesn’t shape itself to the music. Even when rap first began in 1970s New York, at parties where MC’s attempted to engage with the crowd, joking and talking while DJ’s were playing their sets, the spoken words were the focus, and the rhythm and rhyme were the backdrop. Even the early days of “boom-bap” rap used one very generic beat but had several different freestyles over it.

Today, a lot of rap uses samples as its backdrop. The spoken word still takes the forefront but the backdrop has taken dimension, it's no longer a 2D structure but perhaps a 4D one. A huge pioneer for this is Kanye.

KANYE

If you are somewhat new to rap, Kanye is the artist that will help you understand modern rap. Kanye has inspired huge contemporary artists like Travis Scott, Kid Cudi, The Weekend, and Future. I would say the Kanye era is what transitioned rap into hip hop.

Kanye was a visionary. This is an objective statement. He understood the creative process, and to understand the intricacies of art is to understand how to make good music. Every early Kanye song was riddled with details that made sense, worked together, and tried to convey everything he wanted the listener to think and feel. Not only that, Kanye understood the significance of a personal brand.

Kanye was the first rap artist to introduce “chipmunk sounds”, using old school soul samples sped up as his instrumental backdrop. This was used frequently in his early 2 albums, College Dropout and Graduation. Along with these chipmunk sounds was a bear, the mascot of both albums, this became Kanye’s personal brand through his early career. He rapped about hardships in Chicago, his mental state, schooling, anything personal you could think of, he rapped about whole-heartedly. He eventually had the chance to open for U2 on tour. He saw mass stadiums singing songs and the impact U2’s music had on that many people. That's when he launched a new era, an era set on defining his music as impactful and as stadium selling as he could.

I could go on and on about Kanye, and trust me I have, but I think I admire Kanye so much because of his concepts, his attention to detail, his care. Rap as a genre really invokes this for me. It is poetry because there are so many layers to it, so many ways to interpret it, and if you stare at it long enough, read over it frequently, and listen to it on repeat, it takes on a new meaning, it reveals a secret that you were deemed worthy to understand now.

Songs I recommend from Kanye you check out:

Through the Wire:

In this song, Kanye gets into an extremely bad car accident after falling asleep at the wheel and lands him in the hospital. His jaw is wired shut, but he continues to work on this song. While his jaw is healing, he raps, and you can hear some of this in the actual final song itself.

Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AE8y25CcE6s

Runaway:

Everyone knows this song. When the first piano keys play, an uproar ensues. But, I recommend this song so you, the listener, can listen to its impact. This track is 9 minutes long, on a rap album, which was never heard of. The piano segment is almost 5 minutes and everytime you hear a guitar, just know that it was actually Kanye, using voice modulation to imitate a guitar.

Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm5iA4Zupek

Fun fact: The last note of Runaway ends on an E and the next song “Hell of a Life” starts on a B flat. This sequence is known as a tritone, which was notoriously banned in certain religions as it was called “the devil” in music because of the way it sounds.

Heaven and Hell:

This is one of my personal favorites and it is hardly talked about. It was a track on Kanye’s album, Donda, titled after his mom. I’ll let you decide what you interpret from this song.

Check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKWcAsT8Sqc