I don’t like the use of Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” in Kanye West’s song “Stronger”. I don’t generally have a problem with people using samples. But it’s just him rapping on top of an already good song. I wanted to like it when I first heard it. I was like “Cool, he’s using an ‘underground’ song that I like”. But it was hard for me to even listen to the whole song the first time. I was like “Is it finished yet”? I think the song is too intricate to just rap on top of it. It just doesn’t mesh well together in my opinion. I think that there can be an actual art form of using samples and it can show some creativity on how you re-arrange an existing song to fit into your song and personality. But this isn’t the case.
I thought Puff Daddy was bad enough with just rapping on top of songs and barely changing the original track, but I think I’d rather listen to that than “Stronger”. Well, maybe.
Plus, I’m sorry. I liked Kanye at first, but he just annoys me now. We get it, Mr. West. You went to college for a year and dropped out. You are so freaking smart. You are an intelligent rapper who took a risk. Big woop dee doo. All your album titles refer to this. Now that you released “Graduation”, what are you going to do next? “Post-graduate”? “Alma Mater”? “Honorary Degree”? How about “Student Loan Debt”?
He seems like a pompous, uptight jerk. I realize that many artists whose work I like may not necessarily be people I would be friends with. But his cockiness is harder for me to ignore and is overdone in his performances. And this is coming from me, who has musician friends that other people consider to be arrogant. So it’s pretty bad if this dude annoys me. He is sort of starting to remind me of Scott Stapp. I saw Kanye on Oprah a year or two ago and he bothered me then. When Oprah questioned him about his attitude, I laughed.
He did make fun of himself on SNL for his temper tantrums at awards shows. But he didn’t seem earnest about it. I think it was the writers’ idea to do it and he just agreed so that he could get a chance to act.
He has some good songs. But he needs to just chill out and get over himself.