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Monday, January 07, 2008
BIG BROTHER
Kanye West
Graduation
Roc-A-Fella : 2007
[Buy It]
In November of 2006, I posted about one of my favorite rap micro-genres: the conflicted mentor homage. In that post I focused on The Game's "Doctor's Advocate." In 2007, Kanye West checked in with his own take on the form, "Big Brother." Game's effort was almost unbearably poignant - he sounded like it physically pained him to externalize his insecurities vis-a-vis his mentor Dr. Dre, yet was compelled to do so lest the internal pressure rend him apart. Listening to "Doctor's Advocate" was accompanied by a creeping feeling of anxiety - a voyeuristic sense of watching someone's ego come helplessly unraveled in plain view. But Kanye is a different kind of creature - there's no sense of difficult revelation in "Big Brother," because this kind of emotional showmanship is simply what Kanye does. Nevertheless, Graduation is by far the least torturned of Kanye's three albums - it's his on-top-of-the-world record: he's comfy, rich, unquestionably successful, contentedly sipping expensive champagne and shopping in Italy. And so while "Big Brother" lacks the sense of desperation that undergirds "Doctor's Advocate," it is rife with poignancy. It's as if West has to invent battles he's in danger of losing so he'll be left with something - anything - to win.
One wonders if it's a coincidence that Kanye's troubled mentor song, like Game's, is couched in a prettily elegiac J.R. Rotem beat - regardless, this guy knows his way around musical pathos; his surging synths and weary rock chords here are a perfect match for Kanye's blend of behind-the-music nostalgia and wheedling interpersonal parsing. Most of us feel like figurants in our own lives, and part of Kanye's allure is that he's his own Odysseus - a hero who can see the epic proportions of his own life story. As such, it's appropriate that "Big Brother" is framed as an epic biopic by its chorus:
My big brother was Big's brother
Used to be Dame and Big's brother
Who was hip hop's brother?
Who was No I.D's friend?
No I.D my mentor
Now let the story begin
There's a lot of story packed into these lines: The "big brother" is Jay-Z, who refused to sign Kanye as an artist to Roc-A-Fella for some time, not knowing what to do with this anomalous, extravagently prolix suburban rapper, keeping him as a behind-the-scenes beatsmith. Jay-Z came up with the legendary Notorious B.I.G., arguably the greatest rapper of all time, and "Dame" is Damon Dash, with whom Jay-Z founded the rap titan Roc-A-Fella. Jay and Dame were friends with No I.D., a Chicago-based producer who taught Kanye his trade. But the important thing here isn't the details, it's the lineage - by couching his story in this temporal sequence, Kanye ekes his way into the dynasty he craves, drawing a not-quite-logical line between himself and the late Christopher Wallace. But elbowing your way into a dynasty is not necessarily a shortcut to confidence in your position in it, and Kanye spends the rest of the song alternating lauding Jay-Z's accomplishments (and tacity, slyly, his own) while torturously combing through their personal interactions for slights both real and imagined - like the aftermath of a blind date, where your first instict is to figure out, by this same kind of obscure signal-reading, whether or not the person liked you, before you even begin to consider whether or not you liked them.
Like all good bildungsromans, this one starts small - it's the "Hard Knock Life Tour," Kanye's still one of the million kids at the mall yelling out "Jigga!" He's done some bulletproof beats for Jay but still can't get him to take him seriously as a rapper, doesn't even know how to step to him:
Now he won't even step to his idol to say hi
Standing there like a mime
Let the chance pass by
Back of my mind he could change your life
With all these beats I did at least let him hear it
At least you could brag to your friends back at the gig
But he got me out my mama crib
Then he help me get my mama a crib
The verse closes on a triumphant note, but there's the sense that much has been elided in between; Kanye's outsider feelings have been glossed over but not addressed. In short, this is the airbrushed version. Unsatisfied with the artifice, Kanye loops back in the second verse, pushing toward the reconcilation that comes from the airing of hard truths. "I'd play my song in that old back room / He'd bob his head and say damn, oh, that's you?" Notice how adeptly that second line encapsulates Kanye's predicament - it's not as if Jay-Z flat-out dislikes his music, which would at least offer a resolution. He's just indifferent to it; Kanye can't get him to really listen, and it keeps him floating in some indeterminate median, like that maddening relationship period where nothing's automatic, and everything revolves around a pragmatic decision to stay together or break up. I mean, this is a tough spot for Kanye. How would you feel if you'd given your idol beats that were largely responsible for the success of his album (in this case, The Blueprint), but then, when he's doing a show at Madison Sqaure, not only did you "not get the chance to spit it," but Carleen told you you could "buy two tickets?" Ouch. "I guess big brother was thinking a little different," Kanye understates, "kept little brother at bay, at a distance." Kanye comforts himself with his success - "Big brother saw me at the bottom of the totem / Now I'm at the top and everybody on the scrotum" - but comfort is not resolution.
"Have you ever walked in the shadow of a giant?" Kanye asks at the start of the third verse, where all the cards finally fall face up on the table. There is a frustrated challenge - "New jack city gotta keep my brother / But to be number one, I'ma beat my brother!" - and an accusation: "I told Jay I did a song with Coldplay / Next thing I know he got a song with Coldplay." It's as if his frustration at not being able to connect with Jay, a father-figure despite the sibling rivalry talk, has led him to lash out blindly, and things take a turn for the Oedipal. Kanye doesn't settle his dilemma in this song, he simply palpates it, moving it around to try and organize it into some recognizable pattern. And he ends it with a modified chorus that contains a prescription so obviously self-serving, so desperately needy, that one is astonished he can say it with a straight face. But saying the unsayable without self-consciousness has been Kanye's m.o. from the start:
My big brother was Big's brother
So here's a few words from your kid brother
If you admire somebody you should go ahead and tell 'em
People never get the flowers while they can still smell 'em
A ideal in my eyes, God of the game
Heart of the city, Roc-A-Fella chain
Never be the same, never be another
Number 1 young Hov also my big brother
Labels: brian, rap
posted by Brian
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