Kanye West: Can't Tell Me Nothin' Mixtape

Gold Digger aside, Kanye West's last album was a big ol' bag of bollocks. A self-aggrandising ego stroke, with little of the insight, wit, or playfulness of his stand-out debut, The College Dropout.

Clearly, West thought so too. He reneged on his promise to release three albums in three years and went back to the drawing board. Now he's ready to emerge from his hip-hop hidey hole, and has "leaked" (released) an official mixtape featuring some of his new tracks.

At first, it seems as though he's retreated slightly from the egomania that caused him to proclaim "I'm carrying the whole of hip-hop" in 2005. "I feel the pressure, under more scrutiny. And what do I do? Act more stupidly," he confesses in the first couple of minutes.

But he can't restrain himself for too long. By the half-way point, he has launched into a three minute diatribe about being misquoted in the press. Boo fucking hoo, you big girl.

The songs are rather good, though. West hasn't been refiling through obscure racks of dusty vinyl for his samples - I spotted Daft Punk, Deee-Lite and Peter, Bjorn and John amongst the backing tracks - but he has always been an excellent producer, twisting familiar hooks into audacious new shapes like a clown making a daschund out of a balloon [stop murdering this metaphor right now - ed].

The best tracks, however, are the non-West ones. Lupe Fiasco wrestles Thom Yorke's Eraser into a spooky hip-hop pressure cooker on Us Placers; Kid Sister goes day-glo on her ode to varnish, Pro Nails; and Common once again proves his lyrical genius by dropping in a reference to Finding Nemo on The People.

My guess is that West is behind all three of these tracks (he appears as a guest on two of them), but by contrasting other rappers' flow with his own - rather dreary - delivery, he ends up giving weight to the argument that, College Dropout aside, he should have remained behind the mixing desk.

Download links: (the file keeps getting deleted, so you might have to do a bit of searching on technorati if the links have expired)
Hip Hop Planet
The Rap Up
RJ's GFX and Music
The Leak Source
My Hip Hop

Tracklisting

01. Kanye West - Friday Morning, May 25th, 2007 (Intro)
02. Kanye West - Stronger (Snippet)
03. CRS (Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West & Pharrell) - Us Placers
04. GLC - I Ain't Even On Yet
05. Kanye West - Can't Tell Me Nothing
06. Common feat. Kanye West - Southside (Snippet)
07. Common - The Game
08. Kanye West - Porno (Interlude)
09. 88 Keys feat. Kanye West & Malik Yusef - Stay Up (Snippet)
10. Talib Kweli feat. Kanye West - In The Mood
11. Bentley feat. Pimp C & Lil' Wayne - C.O.L.O.U.R.S.
12. Kid Sister feat. Kanye West - Pro Nails
13. Kanye West - Young Folks
14. Kanye West - Interviews (Interlude)
15. Common - The People
16. Big Sean - Get'cha Some
17. Consequence - Don't Forget Em
18. Sa-Ra - White! (On The Floor)
19. Ne-Yo feat. Kanye West - Because Of You (Remix)
20. T-Pain feat. Kanye West - Buy You A Drank (Remix)
21. Kanye West - Throw Some D's (Interlude)
22. Kanye West - Throw Some D's (Remix)
23. Tony Williams - Dreaming Of Your Love
24. Really Doe feat. Jennifer Hudson - Magnetic Power
25. PM - Hater Family

Tweet

Salma Hayek may explode

As Defamer puts it: Now more than ever, Salma Hayek is a series of massive, congruent orbs.


That bun is ready to come out of the oven.

Tweet

Steve Tyler to quit / remain in Aerosmith

Lippy love-machine Steve Tyler, 92, is going to quit the iconic rock group who became a bit shit, Aerosmith, says the New York Daily Post.

"Her dad is going to announce he's leaving Aerosmith soon because he can't take how the rest of the band is treating him," said the source (who the Daily Post hilariously call a 'spy', as if you need to be trained in covert surveillance and the numerous methods of adminstering deadly poisons in order to overhear a celebrity in New York). "She said they don't appreciate him."

The Daily Post went to the trouble of checking out the quote with Liv Tyler's people. "Liv never said anything about her father leaving Aerosmith," they said.

In a nutshell, then: Man who does thing is not going to stop doing the thing, his daughter did not say to a stranger.

Ain't journalism grand?

The very excellent video for Cryin, featuring Alicia Silverstone

Tweet

Some ideas for Friday afternoon

:: Play 80s coin-op classic Asteroids - but with jazz. You get a really kick-ass bass solo if you score 10,000 (nb: I made that up).
[go to Fingertime]

:: Download some superpop MP3s from Sophie "my husband is in a band too" Ellis-Bextor and New Young Pony Club on Fluxblog.
[go to Fluxblog]

:: Marvel that Beyoncé and Jay-Z are still dating. Wasn't her whole last album about being cheated on and dumping your boyfriend? Am I missing something here?
[go to Perez Hilton]

:: Learn to play drums from the amazing Bernard Purdie (this is my favourite clip ever and of all time in perpetuity).

Tweet

Neil Tennant goes apeshit, attacks Bono

Only verbally, mind you, but he's been whining to Yahoo Music that El Nobbo only "increases his celebrity" by campaigning for good causes.

"I've always been against the idea of rock stars lecturing people as if they know something the rest of us don't - it looks arrogant," he added.

"It's not as if they have a private source of information. To state the obvious as if you are the only person that knows it is intellectually weak."

The thing is, Bono probably does have a private source of information - or, at the very least, better access to the people that tackle issues like poverty, debt and Aids on a daily basis. It probably wouldn't be too hard for you or I to find out the same things, but most of us can't be bothered. So, in the end, isn't he doing a worthwhile job?

In any case, didn't the Pet Shop Boys headline one of the Live 8 events in 2005?

Tennant, normally a pop star whose opinions I respect, then digs himself further into a deep and murky hole by proclaiming: "The Princess Diana concert is fair enough, but I feel more uneasy about the Al Gore thing."

Words fail me.

Tweet

Rihanna is quite good these days

I can barely believe I'm typing this but Rihanna is starting to turn into a proper pop star. If she succeeds, it will be the biggest career turnaround since Mel Gibson went from cuddly hunk to daft racist. Only in the opposite direction.

Unfaithful, you see, was one of my least favourite songs of last year - hell, of all time. That whiny voice; the fact we were supposed to give a shit about her "dilemma" (I'm a cheating tramp but I feel guilty about it - who gives a shit?); the frizzy 'cat in a tumble dryer' hair. Basically, it was a load of old pants.

Mind you, she won brownie points for her look of utter contempt following Michael Jackson's "performance" at the World Music Awards.


(Is it me or is Rihanna a freaking cyborg monster from outer space?)

But her current single, Umbrella, is a bona fide pop classic. All crunching synths and whip-cracking snare drums, it's firmly lodged at the top of the charts - and, given the CD single isn't out for two weeks, I expect it'll be there for a good while longer.

Her next single is pretty funky, too. It is called Shut Up and Drive and features - yes, you guessed it, a car metaphor. Here she is, giving it some welly at Radio One's Big Weekend in (spit) Preston.



Coincidentally, I star spotted Rihanna at BBC Television Centre yesterday. She is very tall and has a terrible shiny handbag from Topshop. So there you go.

Tweet