My Variety Of Religious Experience

Music is not an intellectual exercise. Nothing — or hardly anything — is. Mathematical propositions are tautologies, a balancing act of equivalent notions by a sanguine equal sign. Language — despite its near-endless elasticity — is also a closed system, incapable of describing (here, again, notice the tautology) incapable of describing experiences outside its purview. Experience itself, phenomena, exist as aesthetic objects only insofar as there are people to notice them.

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My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy Won The Loudness War

I will be perfectly honest with you. I do not believe in ‘listener fatigue’ or ‘ear fatigue’ or whatever it is: the phenomenon where music listeners have to take breaks or get tired from listening to ‘loud’ albums — with one exception. That exception shows me reasonably well that the phenomenon must exist. Like how when I was twenty-two, I didn’t believe in hangovers, it’s probably just a matter of time before I, too, get listener fatigue. But right now, I can, have, and do sit here and listen to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy all day long.

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Kanye: All-Star Weekend MVP

On a weekend where both Justin Bieber and Kobe Bryant earned MVP honors, it should be a little shocking that anyone else would steal the show. It would take someone who’s not afraid to recruit the most popular musicians of the day to make help make his big artistic statement. Someone who’s happy to go toe-to-toe with the Black Mamba

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Kanye West's Beautiful, Dark, Twisted Year

Kanye West’s on-again/off-again search for redemption found its most stable iteration in the record, especially the latter half’s self-aware dive into the depths of West’s psyche. And for the first time since the mid-'90s golden age or Eminem’s halcyon early oughts, one rapper was able to unify rap discourse and focus the nation’s attention on himself. That’s one hell of a life.

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Is Kanye West Overshadowing His Art?

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was made by a combination evil villain-mad scientist on a tropical island. He imported henchmen and women as his whims moved him. They were ensconced in a mansion, replete with well-appointed staff and coterie at his beck and call. There were five-star dishes and different exotic fishes everywhere.

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Is "Runaway" The New "Thriller"?

With Runaway, it seems like Kanye has made another entry on his application for biggest pop star of his generation.

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