But as a performer and lyricist he (Kanye West)’s got nothing. The celebrity thing is annoying, but it’s his music that brings out the ass-suckery.
He has, in my opinion, no flow as a rapper and no skill as a writer. Nothing really important to say. No clever word play (which is arguably one of the foundations of rap). Nothing.
–sarielthrawn, April 17, 2009
Are we even surprised that he (Kanye) may have never seen any ‘Robocop’ movies? He probally [sic] thinks anything by Tyler Perry is genius!
–CyanideSmoker, April 17, 2009
After my last article for this site, in which I discussed the disjuncture between the Robocop films and the Kanye West song of the same name, a few of our readers left the comments that you see above, calling into question the very premise that Mr. West is worth Overthinking. Chief among the complaints were that Kanye’s skills as a rapper are sub-par and that his lyrics are as vacuous as the most banal of his peers. I had been planning on jumping in on the discussion, but by the time I had gathered my thoughts (and refreshed my memory of several of Kanye’s songs), several days had passed (which amounts to years in internet time), so I just let it drop.
Then, last week, the internets were abuzz with the leak of the new Clipse single, “Kinda like a Big Deal,” which features a guest verse by Kanye. Hearing him rap (rather than autocroon) made me think again about the debate about Yeezy’s merits as a lyricist and rapper. In particular, my attention was captured by this quatrain near the beginning of his verse:
Spittin fire on the PJ in my PJ’s
Fire Marshall said I took it to the Max like TJ
Yeah people I said Marshalls, replay
I guess I’m like the Black Marshall meets Jay
At first glance, it would seem that the haters are right—this guy isn’t saying anything! After all, ‘Ye uses the word “marshall” three times in four lines and apparently just keeps saying the letter “J” over and over to make his lyrics rhyme. However, as Fenzel’s discussion of Dragonball has recently shown, repetition can be a powerful device for creating meaning within works of art. After the jump, I’ll parse the layers of meaning in these lyrics and will show how viewing this brief quote in the context of Kanye’s total output as a rapper challenges the notion that he has “nothing really important to say.”
In the four bars quoted above, Kanye succinctly ties together the three central themes that appear time and time again in his entire body of work: the nexus of race and class in America, the conflict within hip hop culture between conspicuous consumption and social consciousness, and the relationship between the individual and “society”. Let’s “drive slow” through each of these themes, shall we?
Spittin’ fire on the PJ in my PJ’s
In this line, each usage of the abbreviation “PJ” means something different- in the first instance it probably refers to the projects, in the second, he’s definitely talking about Pajamas. Thus with this line, Kanye is recognizing that even in his current position of comfort and luxury, he is still as popular in the hood as he is among hipsters and suburban teens. At the same time, he’s not claiming to be from the projects; unlike some other mainstream rappers, Kanye has never pretended to be something that he isn’t. Throughout his career, he has consistently framed himself as a “Lower-Middle Class Hustler,” in contrast to the more typical image of the rapper as drug dealer/gangster. Take these lines from “Champion”:
I don’t know I just want it better for my kids
And I ain’t sayin’ we was from the projects
But everytime I wanted layaway or deposit
My dad’d say when you see clothes, close your eyelids
Similarly, on “All Falls Down”, one of the standout tracks on The College Dropout, Kanye highlights insecurity due to growing up in low income homes as one of the root causes of the conspicuous consumption that is prevalent in hip hop culture:
And I can’t even go to the grocery store
Without some ones that’s clean and a shirt with a team
It seems we living the American dream
But the people highest up got the lowest self esteem
The prettiest people do the ugliest things
For the road to riches and diamond rings
We shine because they hate us, floss cause they degrade us
We trying to buy back our 40 acres
And for that paper, look how low we a’stoop
Even if you in a Benz, you still a n***a in a coupe
This idea of consumerism as being being both the reward for escaping urban poverty and a factor that helps to perpetuate that poverty is the link between the first line of the aforementioned excerpt from “Kinda Like a Big Deal,” and the following two lines:
Fire Marshall said I took it to the Max like TJ
Yea people I said Marshalls, replay
In these two lines, the key allusions are to TJ Maxx and Marshalls, discount retailers known for selling brand name clothes at significant reductions below the retail price. This fits closely with the themes developed in songs like “All Falls Down” and “Champion.” As someone who grew up never getting to buy the things he wanted, owning the most prestigious brands became a key element of “making it”, to the extent that before he became successful, West frequently traded off necessities for consumer goods, a decision he sums up in “The Glory”:
I spent that gas money on clothes with logos
At the same time, Kanye isn’t necessarily proud of the fact that he’s so brand conscious; on “All Falls Down” he comes clean to “having a couple of past due bills,” and in “Can’t Tell Me Nothing,” he admits (rather than boasts):
I had a dream I could buy my way to heaven
When I awoke, I spent that on a necklace.
I told God I’d be back in a second,
Man it’s so hard not to act reckless.
This tension between how he sees himself and the things he actually does is also the subject of the last part of the excerpt from the Clipse song:
I guess I’m like the Black Marshall meets Jay
In this line, Marshall refers not to a dude who inspects the fireproofing of buildings or a clothing store, but one Marshall Mathers, better known to the world as Eminem, while Jay refers the CEO of the ROC—Jay-Z. The comparison with Eminem is especially interesting here. The two most fascinating aspects of the first three Eminem LPs were the ongoing dialogue between distinct aspects of his personality (particularly “Marshall Mathers” versus “Slim Shady”) and the multiple ways in which he used these personas to engage with pop culture. By identifying himself as a successor to Eminem, Kanye is identifying that this tension between introspection and thoughtless, hedonistic mainstream success is as central to his success as his linkage to the golden age of Roc-a-Fella records. Kanye addresses this dualism in a variety of ways throughout all four of his albums, but one of the best treatments of the idea is in the song “Breathe in, Breathe Out,” off of The College Dropout:
Always said if I rapped I’d say somethin’ significant
But now I’m rappin’ ’bout money, hoes, and rims again
In the same song, he apologizes to well known socially conscious rappers Mos Def and Talib Kweli for being so materialistic, and mentions both Benzes and backpacks (icons of mainstream and underground hip hop, respectively) in the same line. On the albums that followed Dropout, this tension played an increasingly important role in his lyrics, motivating the tough questions a the heart of “Diamonds from Sierra Leone,” and culminating in the deep self-loathing and regret that permeates 808s and Heartbreaks.
If this analysis of the themes developed in Kanye’s lyrics doesn’t convince you that he is a better rapper than many other Top 40 regulars, it is worth remembering just how low the bar is:
Soulja Boy Up In This Ho
Watch me lean and watch me rock
Superman that Ho!
And then watch me crank that Robocop.
Whereas pointing out that Soulja Boy has probably never seen Robocop would be so obvious that it wouldn’t be worth a whole post, West’s history of thoughtful, funny, personal engagement with the popular culture indicates his reference to the action series is indeed worth taking seriously. Even though the specific allusion may have missed the mark, the end result was still several standard deviations above the average hit hip hop song.