The Billiken's Bluff

C'mon Got, Kanye is NOT alright. He's an arrogant poseur. He has no sense of humor. Yeah, he knows how to construct a catchy song and some of his lyrics can be pretty clever. But on the whole, his music isn't THAT good, certainly not enough to justify the amount of press coverage and acclaim that he receives.

Kanye is a clear example of the lowered expectations that are present in all levels of American culture. Mainstream music - along with books, TV and movies for that matter - are just so mediocre in the year 2006 that when someone like Kanye comes along and is merely decent, he is anointed as a superstar. His closest parallel is The Killers, another group of solid musicians who made a debut album that had about 8-10 pretty good songs. Apparently, that's enough to be considered one of America's best new artists. Recently, they just released their second album, which they are calling the best piece of music to be released in the last twenty years. They claim that it's "bringing music back?" What the fuck? And just like Kanye's second album, half of it is pretty good and the other half is downright unlistenable.

So Kanye hasn't earned the right to upstage his peers and inform the world of its collective inferiority to him. Not just yet. Jay-Z has that power if he wants it; so does Dave Chappelle or Edward Norton. If Dave Chappelle was enough of an asshole to jump up on stage as Adam Sandler won an award that should have been his, we'd have no choice but to watch him with grins on our faces in the silent understanding that Dave got screwed - even if he's not handling it all that well. But with Kanye? He needs to get off the stage and back into the studio to record that masterpiece that we've all been hearing about.