When Kanye West’s crazily entertaining new mixtape, Can’t Tell Me Nothing, popped up over the weekend, we were psyched to preview some tracks from The Graduation. (According to one of Kanye’s many shout-outs, it drops “quite soon” — by which we think he means September.) What we weren’t expecting was to be namechecked in the middle of the disc. Over an unlikely sample — Peter Bjorn and John’s “Young Folks” — ‘Ye raps: “Did an interview with the Rolling Stone/read the interview, man the whole shit wrong.” The whole shit? That’s cold! Listen after the jump.
But just when we were about to get offended, he lets the whistle-tastic loop roll on into the next track and launches into a strange, impassioned soliloquy about the press. “When I said the line about Rolling Stone, I don’t have a problem [with them],” he says. “I really appreciate that they did put me on the magazine. And I realize that I was halfway out of my mind for the last two years off that drug called fame and shit like that. I was really, like, a little crazy. And I’ve calmed down and come back down to earth — so for the editor of Rolling Stone, I just wanted to say that.” Thanks, Kanye!
His main point is that he should get to “proofread” stories about him before they go to press to avoid having “jokes” taken out of context because he “doesn’t have media training or whatever.” This isn’t a new argument from him, and it’s not clear what got him thinking about it now (the cover story he’s referring to is from January 2006). He goes on to deny that the Jesus pose on the David LaChappelle-shot cover is evidence of an outsized ego, asking the rhetorical question, “if someone is in college and they do a play where they emulate Christ do they have a God complex?”
As fascinating as this glimpse into Kanye’s head might be, the music is what makes the mixtape worth tracking down (it’s all over the internet’s shadier download sites). In addition to recent hits — his “Throw Some Ds” remix (introduced with an interlude about Imus and misogyny in hip-hop), Common’s bangin’ “The People,” the title track — Kanye introduces some killer new tunes. Listen for new hip-hop supergroup CRS (Kanye, Lupe Fiasco and Pharrell) rapping over Thom Yorke’s “The Eraser” on “Us Placers.” And check for the one-and-a-half minute snippet of The Graduation’s “Stronger” — which repurposes Daft Punk’s 2001 classic “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” to next-level-amazing effect.
- Kanye West - “Stronger (Snippet)”
- Kanye West - “Young Folks”
- Kanye West - “Interviews (Interlude)”
- CRS (Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West & Pharrell) - “Us Placers”
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- Portions of Album Content Provided by All Music Guide © 2008 All Media Guide, LLC.
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