Thursday, June 20, 2013
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
incredibly innovative pop album
that both transcends and chal-
lenges the worlds of rap, trap and
EDM that inspired it.
Unlike anything Kanye has
attempted thus far, Yeezus stands
as a powerful piece of sound art
- an experimental project sci-
entifically executed to disrupt
the cerebellum and its ability to
A+ keep the mind at equilibrium.
The assault commences with
Ygezus "On Sight," a brusque, Daft-Punk
produced opener and CAUTION:
KUy Ws ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK
sign for the mayhem that follows.
am From the first note of fiendish
synth, this introduction acts as
Yeezus's calibration, forcing its
audience to adjust to its aggres-
sive sounds and direct, "no fucks
given" lyrics, or stop listening
altogether.
With only two guest rap vers-
es, Yeezus finds Kanye's voice
dominating the project in a way
that it failed to do on 2010's fea-
ture-heavy My Beautiful Dark
Twisted Fantasy. Throughout the
album, Kanye parlays a variety
of energetic flows - occasion-
ADAM GLANZMAN/Daily ally approximating the (ignorant)
rawness of rappers like Chief
Keef while still managing to
retain a certain level of lyricism
P and wit.
With "Black Skinhead," his
accurately self-proclaimed
"theme song," Kanye dons the vis-
e age of a frustrated rock star and
attacks the song's industrial beat
- defending his controversial
"skinhead" persona and antics
by boasting about his successes
a down-right-satanic, unreleased and screaming that he's "living in
beat in the opening minute and the moment." On "New Slaves,"
Kanye deliberating on how he Kanye rants about the ills of con-
only wants to make music that sumerism and the status of blacks
"fucks people up." in America that is powerful but
While it seems Jay-Z was able decidedly hypocritical when one
to contain Kanye's ambition on takes Kanye's lavish lifestyle into
WTT, West's latest album, Yeezus, account. In the last minute and a
epitomizes those radical inten- half, however, the song turns 180
tions in an unrestrained, jarring degrees and enlists Frank Ocean
and precocious effort that many to sing about getting baked -
will likely find hard to swallow. contextualizing the track's first
Orchestrating a team of some of half as nothing more than a spir-
music's most talented producers ited high rant.
- Hudson Mohawke, Daft Punk, Despite the album's dark sonic
Travi$ Scott, Arca and Young structure, Kanye approaches
Chop - Kanye has crafted an most tracks with a sense of humor
on par with the comic nature of
College Dropout. A towering and
blasphemous song like "I Am A
God," for instance, would not
work without its tongue-in-cheek
approach to egoism, wherein
Kanye admits to being a deity
that also has to wait on his crois-
sants in a French restaurant. The
electronic ambush and amus-
ing erotic fantasies of "I'm In
It" showcase perversely comedic
lines ("Eating Asian pussy, all I
need is sweet and sour sauce")
and prove that Kanye is more
a disciple of Prince's "Darling
Nikki" than Illmatic or Ready To
Die. Indeed, with Yeezus, Kanye
has abandoned the constructs of
rap music to forge a genre of his
own.
Yeezus is an entirely singular
effort that both borrows from and
deviates from the rapper's entire
catalog of music. On "Hold My
Liquor," Justin Vernon reprises
his role of demonic soul singer
from MBDTF and Kanye expands
on the prototype of his slow-
building EDM "Mercy" verse,
but the inclusion of Chief Keef's
codeine-induced hook and the
song's guitar-led sci-fi conclusion
are new wrinkles to West's canon.
On the masterpiece "Blood On
The Leaves," Kanye takes 808s
and Heartbreak's artful approach
to autotune and combines it with
a Late Registration-style sample
of Nina Simone's "Strange Fruit"
before the revolutionary horns of
Hudson Mohawke kick in to take
the song to the next level.
With the help of legendary
minimalist and executive pro-
ducer Rick Rubin, Kanye crafted
Yeezus into one powerful, con-
cise vision. In order to open the
album's blank physical CD and
get to the music, listeners must
literally cut through a piece of
red tape - a potent symbol of
Kanye's effort to cut through the
industry bureaucracy and get his
work directly to the people. And
what a work this is. Yeezus will
undoubtedly go down as one of
the most experimental albums in
pop music history and a career-
defining album for a man with a
catalog of masterpieces.
Thursday, June 20, 2013
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Medical School
receives grant
Curriculum to be
revamped after
American Medical
Association award
By MAX RADWIN
Daily StaffReporter
The University's Medical
School will be implementing
some of its most comprehensive
curriculum changes in more than
50 years.
The Medical School will be
aided in these improvements by
using a $1.1 million grant it won
last Friday from the American
Medical Association as part
of its "Accelerating Change in
Medical Education" initiative
- which awarded funding to 11
schools actively seeking to create
a "significant positive impact
on physician training and the
medical profession."
More than 130 medical
schools across the country
responded to the AMA's
competition to improve
medical education. Of those,
119 presented transformative
proposals. Thirty-one of them
advanced to the next round
and were asked to submit a full
proposal and grant request.
Ultimately, 11 medical schools,
including the University,
received funding.
The grant was awarded to the
University for its proposal to
transform the Medical School
curriculum into a competency-
based program that will be
implemented over the next five
years. The money will be used
to train faculty and staff and
fund projects that arise from the
curriculum changes.
The University has been
building toward this curriculum
change for the last three
years through a modular
implementation of small pilots
and programs - one of these,
the Taubman Health Sciences
Library renovation project, is
scheduled to begin in January and
be completed by 2015.
See CURRICULUM, Page 7
Minimalism.
- Kanye crafts
music maste
MARLENE LACASSE/Daly
Incoming freshmen follow tradition by walking through the "Sunday Morning in Deep Waters" fountain during Wednes-
day's Orientation tour.
'U-'student lobbies for
drug reform in D.C.
Experimental sixth
album finds West
at his best
By JOHN LYNCH
ManagingArts Editor
In 2011, Watch The Throne
presented the rap world with a
high-powered portrait of opu-
lence that was well executed but
hardly groundbreaking. More
importantly, it stood for the next
two years as the last project that
Kanye West wholeheartedly pur-
sued to completion. According to
Jay-Z, the finished version of the
album was less radical than The
Throne's initial effort, a project
that spawned devilishly dark and
over-the-top songs like "H.A.M."
and "Illest Motherfucker Alive"
before the duo opted to tone
down the epic, operatic hedonism
and instead make more acces-
sible tracks in the vein of "Otis"
and "Niggas In Paris." Much of
the original material was record-
ed in Australia and captured in
a fascinating 10-minute docu-
mentary, which features (among
many notable sights and sounds)
Effort seeks to
change federal
approach to
enforcement
By WILL GREENBERG
Daily StaffReporter
As the topic of marijuana
legalization burns up national
forums, the Students for Sensible
Drug Policy are lobbying in
Washington for new drug laws.
SSDP members from around
the country - including
one representative from the
University's chapter - met
yesterday to hear speakers and
later visited the Hill to talk with
various congressmen in support
of current bills that would alter
federal drug enforcement.
The bill being lobbied for
is HR 499, a proposal that
would prevent federal drug
enforcement from interfering
in states where marijuana
is legal either medically or
recreationally.
Law student Reid Murdoch,
who was the sole representative
from the University's chapter
of SSDP, said state and federal
drug enforcement are currently
"at war."
"Essentially what's going on
is that states around the country
are doing popular referendums
and popular opinion is vastly
in favor of marijuana policy
reform," Murdoch said. "Despite
that, the DEA, under the Obama
administration's orders, has
relentlessly pursued medical
marijuana providers and people
who are acting in accordance
with their own state laws."
While there are several bills in
the House of Representatives that
look to decriminalize marijuana,
Murdoch said HR 499 is a good
place to start, as the bill isn't
focused on legalization so much
as it is on enforcement efficiency.
"It's an easier pill to swallow,
it's a less controversial bill that
I think people from all sides of
the political spectrum can get
behind," he said.
Murdoch visited the offices
of several representatives,
including that of Rep. John
Dingell (D-Mich.). He said he
was hopeful that changes would
happen swiftly.
"It's a non-partisan issue,"
Murdoch said. "People in the
past have been terrified to
talk about it, there's a cultural
stigma about it, but I would say
absolutely it's a non-partisan
issue."
Murdoch added that the SSDP
supports decriminalization of
marijuana as a civil rights issue,
an economic issue, an individual
liberty issue and a national
security issue.
"Our position is that while
marijuana stays illegal, it's
dangerous," he said. "We just
need to get it off the streets and
we need to regulate it."
LSA senior Sebastian Blake
Swae-Shampine, legislative
action director for the
University's chapter of SSDP,
said current drug enforcement
was a poor use of resources that
See REFORM, Page 7
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