Featured video. Non Necessary cookies to view the content. Social media. This page contains information from Wikipedia, the user-contributed encyclopedia, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3. It may not have been checked by editors and as such may contain factual errors. Recent mentions of Kanye West 3. Review , 4. Search or choose cover photo. View Apply Cancel. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits.
Learn more Do not sell my personal information. Close Privacy Overview This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website.
These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. This is Mackenzie's second year on the Messenger's Opinion: Social media activism is not enough. Opinion: Clear the way. Point-counterpoint: Dress-coded.
Opinion: The final straw. Opinion: The quarantine Editorial: Normalize masks. Opinion: The silver lining of a weird year. Saying goodbye. Cancel reply. Your email address will not be published. RSS Feed. Search this site Submit Search.
The McHenry Messenger. Kanye West has redefined rap music. The Warrior Weekly. Trending Stories. The effect here is one of relaxed hipness, irresistible when combined with the funk beat and Snoop-tinged spoken word delivery.
The last thing to say about Through the Wire is one of the most important. It works so well thanks to a feature of music that is not often highlighted in hip hop: harmony. It conveys movement through the large intervals between chords, yet stasis through the cyclic nature of the progression. Through the Wire is the beginning of Kanye West as creator of visionary song artefacts. Nothing in commercial rap until that point had managed to combine such vulnerable text, non-violently visceral real-life experience, and unabashedly expressive sampling.
West here has seamlessly introduced new elements to both rapping and hip-hop sound production. From his roots in the music of Chicago, and Soul and Funk broadly, Kanye has always been eager to globalise his musical palette. After the success of his first album, The College Dropout , of which Through the Wire was the lead single, Kanye stretched his legs with Late Registration , which included the cinematically-conceived and human rights-oriented Diamonds of Sierra Leone.
Casting his net widely, he drew on the lush string sounds of English group Portishead as one of the ways to re-imagine what hip-hop could sound like. That grandiosity reflects his desire for cultural size, to out-express both his contemporaries and the confining normative dimensions of hip-hop itself.
A descending bass line is one of the radically simple techniques West uses to achieve this magisterial, epic quality. A technique that also has strong harmonic implications, descending bass lines have been used to convey any number of serious or important themes and emotions throughout musical history.
Henry Purcell, for example, used a descending bass line to reflect the gradual descent into death of Dido Queen of Carthage variety well over years ago, heard here at the 57 second mark:. Apart from Stronger, another striking descending bass line underpins the much-discussed Runaway. The ominous and broad synthetic bass provides the perfect counterpoint to the icy un-nuanced stabbing of the high piano pitches at the 55 second mark :.
Like Stronger and Champion from the same album, Flashing Lights is kitted out with 80s-style synthesizer hooks. Flashing Lights is a special song. Somehow classical in proportion, modern in its sleekness, it conveys an air of unrelenting but soft-edged melancholy. It gets this effect partly from the contrast of the opening string sounds alternating with the rhythmically propulsive synth.
Both string and synth parts are notable for their highest pitches; they are always dissonant with the chords beneath them. Even in their drooping, arching moments of resolution, these pitches remain outsiders — slightly alien to the fundamental chords below them. This permanently unresolved condition could be what keeps me coming back to this song over and over. Out of that personal heartbreak and loss was born another radical departure from the stylistic norms of hip-hop.
POWER is probably the most acclaimed track apart from Runaway, mentioned earlier in a very competitive field, representing a blazing return to hip-hop fundamentals.
0コメント