November has come and gone,
and Yandhi left with it. Despite
enthusiastic
words
from
Kim
Kardashian, it was no surprise that
Kanye West’s supposed ninth studio
album did not appear on streaming
services this Black Friday, a fact his
legions had earlier been forced to
come to terms with after Mr. West
took to Twitter to go back on his
wife’s promise.
All signs point to Yandhi being a
spiritual sequel of sorts to Kanye’s
2013 output, Yeezus (the similar
title and cover art are the biggest
clues), but taking into account how
much Kanye’s career trajectory has
changed in the half decade since
the release of Yeezus, this act of
continuation all seems a farce.
If there’s one thing Kanye has
done well, it’s constantly evolving
and pushing boundaries as an
artist while still keeping everything
precisely Kanye. Prior to this year’s
ye, each of his albums ushered in a
distinct era for the man: in his music,
his fashion, his character. The best
part of this was that Kanye always
seemed to know when to pivot, when
rockstar Kanye or soulful Kanye had
overstayed their welcome, and to
break down, rebuild and rebrand.
I would argue that no Kanye album
ever needs a sequel. (Yes, I know The
College Dropout, Late Registration
and Graduation form a trilogy of
sorts, but while thematically and
slightly musically similar, they all
have their own defining sound and
Kanye himself was a much different
person in 2004 than he was in 2007).
And therein lies the core frustration
with Yandhi. Any attempt to recreate
the minimalist panache of Yeezus
will result in failure. Yeezus is the
culmination of every Kanye West
we’ve ever known and every album
he has ever offered, combined and
distilled to the barest form. It is
Kanye at his most complete.
Setting
the
contemporary
politics of Kanye aside for the
slightest moment, what little he
has revealed about Yandhi spells
unfulfillment. Starting with the two
aforementioned chains which bind
it to Yeezus, the name and the cover,
one can infer the only reason for the
similarity was to drive hype, in the
same way that the first release date
we got (“9 29 18”) turned out to be a
ploy to get the Kanye faithful to tune
into a “Saturday Night Live” season
premiere the same day, trading high
attention and ratings for a surreal
performance of “I Love It” with
Lil Pump. But, in order to dive into
Yandhi, one first has to understand
Yeezus and what it represents, and
what happened to Kanye in the
meantime.
Yeezus’s cover, or lack thereof,
is the perfect primer to the musical
equivalent of a dental drill which lies
within. As noted in a phenomenal
Daily article regarding the album’s
relationship with architecture and
an interview Kanye did with The
New York Times, Yeezus was in part
recorded in an acoustically terrible
Paris apartment, forcing the songs
“to be super simple, because if you
turned up some complicated sound
and a track with too much bass, it’s
not going to work in that space.” The
cover is perhaps the simplest it can
be, and speaking about the sparse
promotion of the album Kanye
echoes the same sentiment: “Shit, we
ain’t even got no cover. We just made
some real music.”
Regardless of the critical art
theory lens through which the
cover can be viewed, it’s clear that
sound is Yeezus’s main, and perhaps
only, focus. Which is almost ironic
considering it came during the
peak of Kanye’s arrogance: The
days of VMA-interrupting Kanye,
whom Barack Obama even freely
called a jackass, had somehow been
eclipsed, replaced with a man who
appeared to have seen it all, teetering
between insanity and earnestness
as he drilled hours of apocalyptic
gospel and sublime self-affirmation
to unready radio hosts. So, when you
hear this variant of Kanye is releasing
an album comparing himself to a
savior revered by billions of people
right from the title, you can’t help but
roll your eyes, all while buckling up
for the absolute.
And Yeezus immediately thrusts
you into a car crash, as “On Sight” is
every part abrasive and boundary-
pushing while still retaining a certain
charm, everything a Kanye song
should be. The industrial soundscape
of this introduction is interrupted
halfway by something that defined
early Kanye (what is “soul,” Alex?)
when the synthesizers give way to
a choir chanting “He’ll give us what
we need / it may not be what we
want.” This austere contrast of “On
Sight” is a microcosm of Yeezus in
its entirety: the intersection between
harsh noise and soothing melodies,
Kanye honing his craft of dredging
up the most obscure yet pertinent
samples and music as the starkest
representation of the self.
There is no defining sound of
Yeezus other than abstract sound
itself. The sirens and distortion
of “Send It Up” make it a more
approachable “On Sight;” “Black
Skinhead” would fit right in with
Graduation and My Beautiful Dark
Twisted Fantasy’s stadium rap
anthems, save the zealous manifesto
against the establishment and its
racism; and “Guilt Trip” and its Kid
Cudi croons feel an extension of
the love and loss present on 808s &
Heartbreak. Each song starts with
a single sound, be it the soft press
of a piano key or a grisly drone, and
then takes that sound and smashes
it open, layering the space inside
with Kanye’s vocals and stripped-
down drum patterns. And while
Yeezus definitely pulls from the prior
discography, it is as much a synthesis
as it is a reconstruction.
The primary instrument of the
album is the voice, whether that of
Kanye, a collaborating artist or a
sample. The artist’s full vocal range
is on display, from his booming,
grumbling bars on “I Am A God”
to the auto-tuned trill found late
in “Blood On The Leaves.” It is
underpinned by a wealth of other
singers and rappers: Chief Keef,
Frank Ocean and Bon Iver, to name a
few. The prolific samples themselves
take on a life of their own, as Kanye
and
his
legendary
production
team revive everything from Nina
Simone’s rendition of “Strange
Fruit” to a Hungarian rock power
ballad. The kicker? The only official
featured artist is God himself. Kanye
is at the absolute forefront, asserting
himself as the divinely untouchable
and smashing open the musical ore
to reveal 10 disparate crystals and
their translucent mystery.
Yeezus is at the same time
everything
and
nothing,
an
amalgamation and a destruction.
I’ve talked about the progression of
Kanye in a way that could make him
seem like some “Split”-esque host for
multiple personalities, whereas in
reality all of these different Kanyes
are just manifestations of some facet
of his personality blown up to larger-
than-life proportions. Work with me
here, but consider Kanye West as
a cow: Each cut of meat represents
the Kanye associated with a specific
album. They all vary in flavor and
tenderness, but at their core they
are all the same, all some sort of
beef. Yeezus is the meat grinder into
which everything was shoved in an
attempt to make the perfect blend,
employing each cut’s idiosyncratic
taste and cutting out the fat.
But what do you do with the sonic
sausage that pops out of the grinder?
In The Life of Pablo’s case, you
throw it in the trash. Yeezus broke
Kanye’s music down and fashioned
together something more complete
with the resultant shards, but Pablo
shattered everything completely. It’s
hard to expand on perfect, so Kanye
did what any perfectionist would
do. He started anew on the quest to
reach perfection, again. And with
this blank slate, Kanye continued
to find ways to innovate, literally
going beyond the boundaries of an
album. While it’s completely valid to
dismiss The Life of Pablo as messy
and unfinished (“Ima fix wolves”),
the constant updates and abstract,
jagged nature of it make sense when
you view it as, in Kanye’s words, “a
living breathing changing creative
expression.”
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Saturday, May 2, 2020 — 5A
Hope and regret: on
Kushner’s ‘Mars Room’
Read more at
MichiganDaily.com
BOOK REVIEW
VERITY STURM
2019 Daily Books Editor
FILM NOTEBOOK
ARTS
over the
YEARS
Bis etum il ius eliquam usaerum eium
velicti comnit dunt, tota que consequo is
essunture dolor molesti beriore, il ea ne
plab ipsae excero te volorep tation re
videndunt omnihil ipienda veliqui nobites
et laboriame lantiossunt hil ius arumqui
dentibus, qui aliat pa qui simolessit, nes
escilit harum que volorit eicia con plis
everum fugitatur si quiae esto blaturem labo.
Itatas mos venis arumnihilla ntentotatem
aut etum hil il mod quam es est as endaesc
ipiendis escium lation cupta doluptam ab
2013
FEBRUARY: “Moonlight” (not “La La Land”) wins
Best Picture at the 89th Academy Awards in a
highly publicized enevelope mix-up
APRIL: Kendrick Lamar releases DAMN. which goes
on to become the first non-jazz or classical
album to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music.
NOVEMBER: Greta Gerwig directed film “Lady
Bird” is met with critical acclaim.
JANUARY: Jeanine Cumins’ “American Dirt” provokes
backlash from Latinx writers who see her as co-
oping the stories of Central American immigrants.
MARCH: Fiona Apple released her fifth record,
Fetch The Bolt Cutters, which was met with
wide critical acclaim, including a rare perfect 10
on Pitchfork.
MARCH-APRIL: The COVID-19 pandemic forces
live performance online, including a high-profile
concert held for Stephen Sondheim’s 90th birthday
that was plagued with technical problems.
JANUARY: The #MeToo movement comes to a
head during awards season, dominating red carpet
conversation and demanding repercussions for
perpetrators of sexual assault.
FEBRUARY: “Black Panther” is the first Marvel movie
with a predominantly Black cast.
NOVEMBER: Former First Lady Michelle Obama pens
her memoir “Becoming” which sells more copies in
the United States than any other book in 2018 and
is on its way to becoming the best-selling memoir of
all time.
FEBRUARY-MARCH: Country music moves in bold
new directions: Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour
wins the Grammy for Album of the Year, and Billy
Ray Cyrus’s genre-bending collaboration with Lil
Nas X stuns Billboard, the song’s position on its
Hot Country Songs chart contested.
APRIL: BTS becomes the first-ever Korean group to
perform on “Saturday Night Live.”
APRIL 14: “Game of Thrones” debuts its highly-
anticipated eighth and final season.
ARTS
over the
YEARS
2019
2020
2017
Surely the second coming
of ‘Yeezus’ is at hand
“Lady Bird” is now the highest
rated movie on Rotten Tomatoes.
Ever. It’s also quite possibly the
most wonderful movie. Ever. But
universal acclaim hasn’t saved
Greta Gerwig’s masterpiece from a
serving of hot (and very bad) takes.
Recently, an article popped up on
my Twitter: “’Lady Bird’ and Cycles
of Abuse,” in which the writer poses
an argument that “Lady Bird” is not
a careful portrait of the complexities
of a mother-daughter relationship,
but in fact a story about maternal
abuse.
This is, of course, wrong. And I
won’t dedicate much more space
to the ways in which someone
named “Jim” missed the nuances
and complexities of the mother-
daughter relationship in “Lady
Bird” (except to say that he missed
them all). But his misstep did get me
thinking about everything “Lady
Bird” gets right.
Gerwig gets all the details of
semi-suburban adolescence correct:
the defiant rejection of Catholic
school communion, the popular
girl’s Range Rover, the sensitive
(and closeted) heartthrob’s puka
shell necklace. Justin Timberlake
plays at a party where the parents
are upstairs, but “they don’t care if
we drink.”
All those little, carefully chosen
details create a world that is both
factually and emotionally real. The
emotional reality comes from the
delicacy and honesty with which
Gerwig handles her character’s
relationships.
There is no “good” and “bad” in
“Lady Bird.” We don’t want Lady
Bird to win against (or despite of)
her mother or Danny or even Kyle
or Jenna. Because none of those
characters, though they make life
harder for our heroine, are bad.
And even Lady Bird can fluctuate
between cruelty and compassion,
often within the same scene.
Lady
Bird
and
Marion’s
relationship is built on this duality.
In one scene, Lady Bird can grab a
notepad and demand her mother
tell her how much it costs to raise
her so she can one day pay her back
and “never have to see her again,”
and in another see Marion pick up
that same pad and struggle to write
a letter to her daughter as she gets
ready to leave for college.
And we can understand that
those actions are both attempts
at the impossible but inevitable
process of separation. Lady Bird
will leave Marion, and sometime in
the distant but approaching future,
Marion will leave Lady Bird. And
neither one of them can be ready for
either departure.
Before Lady Bird leaves, Marion
scrambles to prepare her for the
unknowable beast that is the world
outside her home. And through
that rushed preparation, “You’re
dragging your feet” becomes a
different way of saying “I love you.”
That moment — which comes up
twice during the course of the film
— as the two shop for dresses, is one
of the most obviously recognizable
for any mother or daughter. I went
to prom in 2015 as opposed to 2002,
so after my mom and I fought in
a department store I went home
and bought my dress online. That
act — choosing a dress without
my mom — is in the same family
as Lady Bird choosing to go to
Danny’s Thanksgiving or hiding her
college process from her mother.
It’s a conscious act of exclusion that
serves as preparation for a time in
the near future when that type of
inclusion won’t always be an option.
Lady Bird and her mother spend
the movie creating space between
each other. They push each other
away, but they rarely — save Lady
Bird’s dramatic exit in the first scene
— try to escape each other. They
fight, but stay in the same room
after.
That’s why Marion’s silence isn’t
abusive and her criticism isn’t cruel.
It must be a complicated brand of
love to prepare your child to leave
you. Marion wants Lady Bird to be
the best version of herself she can be
so she tells her to stand up straight
and hang up her uniform and apply
to in-state colleges.
What it takes for Marion’s wish
to be fulfilled is for Lady Bird to fly
the nest.
I talk about my mother now in a
way my 18 or even 20-year-old self
could never imagine. With a kind of
love and reverence and frequency
that I didn’t realize was in such
opposition to the way I used to talk
about her until I saw the movie.
I talk about her the way Lady Bird
starts to at the end of the film. She
spends the film rejecting everything
her mother has given her—her
name, her hair color—and then
finally, miles away from her mother,
she starts taking them back.
And that concession of guilt, that
apology, is an impossible one to
articulate. So, when she calls Marion
at the end of the film all she can say
is: “Did you get emotional the first
time you drove in Sacramento?”
And we get it. That in itself is a
kind of apology for a kind of cruelty
that doesn’t always warrant one. It’s
a reconnection that tries to do yet
another impossible thing: make up
for lost time.
Now, older and wiser, I look back
on the anger my high school self spit
at my mother and I regret it. I regret
all the hours of silence and fights
in the car and times I slammed my
door. But I know I couldn’t change
it.
The stage after teen angst doesn’t
have a good name. Existential dread,
maybe? My twenties? Whatever this
thing is called, I’m in it. And, at the
end of the movie, “Lady Bird” is
entering it. Picking up the pieces of
the things our mothers gave us that
we threw away and trying to say
sorry, without being able — of course
— to actually say it.
CASSANDRA DAWN
2018 Daily Arts Writer
MADELEINE GAULDIN
2017 Senior Arts Editor
I have a crush on Rachel
Kushner — everything about her.
I was initially turned on by her
debut novel “The Flamethrowers,”
a smart and stylish sojourn from
the dirty art hoes of 1970s Soho to
the political underground of Italy,
complete with glamorous touches
of DMT churches, performance
art and street violence. Swoon.
“The Flamethrowers” is so
vivid, so bitingly electric and
feminist-without-the-word
that
I got curious about the woman
behind the pen and slipped into
a
forty
minute
biographical
research bender. Rachel Kushner
is a San Francisco native, the
certain spawn of beatnik scientists
that lands a gig at a feminist
bookstore at the ripe age of five,
does the Berkeley thing and bools
around the SF nightclub scene on
her Moto Guzzi before casually
saucing over to Columbia for her
MFA. In author imagery, she often
appears in front of cars, behind
Wayfarers and/or clad in leather.
She’s got three critically acclaimed
blockbuster novels, a Guggenheim,
an honorary PhD from Kalamazoo
and now a spot on the Man Booker
shortlist with her latest book, “The
Mars Room.” I repeat: swoon.
“The Mars Room” reads much
like “The Flamethrowers” in its
grunge-glamor. Our femme fatale,
Romy Hall, grew up hard and
fast in San Francisco, getting into
catfights and PCP on the weekends
before working at The Mars Room,
a low-fi but high-cred strip club in
the gritty Tenderloin district. It’s
not a stereotypically secure gig, but
Romy enjoys the power she wields
at the club and a steady source of
income to support herself and her
son. She’s smart, pragmatic and
tough (“Every stripper I know
is clever. Some are practically
geniuses.”), but she doesn’t have
the ability to prevent or outrun a
customer-turned-stalker, and she
really doesn’t have the cultural
capital or capital-capital to defend
herself at court when an encounter
with the creep turns violent. But
this is all delivered to us through
sporadic flashbacks. The novel
opens in the thick of consequence:
Romy shackled chattel-style to a
prison bus, careening nebulously
into two consecutive life sentences
in the Central Valley.
“The Mars Room” unfolds like
this, unsticking and resticking
in time between its present
(2003 at the Stanville Women’s
Correctional Facility) and Romy’s
shrouded past on the streets
of SF. Structurally, this can be
unpopular territory: Novels that
nix the frameworks of time and
place run the risk of bleeding out
into disorganized and disorienting
masses
of
detail.
Kushner,
however, is a seasoned rebel.
She manipulates the timeline
so deftly that these scenes slide
into each other with a dreamlike
logic. Romy’s GED prep session at
Stanville summons an anecdote
of teaching her son to count, a
memory that morphs into musing
on how counting functions “like
prison, from a name to a number.”
This brings us back to Stanville
where the women on death row
are sewing sandbags for “five cents
an hour, minus fifty-five percent
restitution.”
The narrative is a ride on Romy’s
train of thought, a psychological
portrait made vivid by its very
meandering. Between the hustle
for shampoo and tampons, hazy
recollections of bad lap dances
and
dehumanizing
treatment
from prison guards and public
defenders alike, Kushner captures
the indefinite restlessness of a
mind pinned between past and
future, time and place, hope and
regret.
That being said, “The Mars
Room” sprawls. Those who value
plot will be frustrated with the
way this one constantly wavers
between
absent
and
forced.
Those who enjoy form and detail
will revel in Kushner’s obsession
with it, a highly visual approach
to storytelling singular enough
to land her on the Man Booker
shortlist.
MUSIC NOTEBOOK
Love and ambivalence in
Gerwig’s ‘Lady Bird’
2018