Does Kanye West Deserve the Grammy?

By Tom Breihan Thu., Dec. 22 2005 at 12:49 PM

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Your next Album of the Year?

Here's something that should surprise absolutely no one: Kanye West feels that he deserves to win the Album of the Year Grammy. Kanye has never been shy about demanding his props, lobbying The Source to change its four-and-a-half mic rating for The College Dropout to five mics, getting mad at the American Music Awards for giving Favorite New Artist to Gretchen Wilson instead of him. But this Grammy campaign is something new; Kanye announced his intentions to win before the damn nominations were even announced. In an interview with MTV.com a few days before the nominations dropped, Kanye said "If I don't win Album of the Year, I'm really going to have a problem with that," before revealing the mind-boggling tidbit that he's still $600,000 in the hole after recording an album that's already sold two million. When the nominations did come out, and he was nominated, he added a hilarious caveat: "I haven't actually listened to Paul McCartney's album, but I will check it out because I'm not gonna go and say that I should win and I haven't listened to Paul McCartney's album." (No word yet on what he thinks of Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.)

So Kanye is implicitly saying that Late Registration is better than the Gwen Stefani and U2 and Mariah Carey joints that also got nominated. He's not wrong. I've written too much about Late Registration already (including the Pitchfork year-end list blurb where I called it both a "sonic cathedral" and a "cathedral of sonic details" because I can't write), and I don't really feel like once again saying why this album is great. It's an amazing album. That's it. That's the end of it. What I'm wondering is why Kanye even cares. The Grammys haven't mattered for years, if they ever did. The awards are chosen by actual music-industry pros, so they tend to reflect the way the music industry would like itself to be seen rather than any measure of popularity or influence or quality or anything. They lean heavily toward the neutered-middlebrow and the whitebread-multicultural, nominating fucking India.Arie for Album of the Year and giving the award to Steely Dan over The Marshall Mathers LP. Kanye certainly knows all this stuff, so why does he care what these fools think of him?

Here's a thought, and I'm just going to put it out there: maybe Kanye doesn't give a damn about a Grammy. Maybe he's just talking. Kanye has cultivated a public persona based more than anything else around his huge, pathological egotism; it's as much a part of him as Jay-Z's drug-dealing past or Eminem's fucked-up relationship with his wife or, I don't know, Bono's strong desire to help Africa. A year ago, I was good and sick of the guy, and he's treading on dangerously lame grounds again this year ("Come on Barbara Walters, you know I won't falter"). But his triumphs, Late Registration in particular, seem all the more glorious after all his enormous self-righteous pronoucements. He's not going to disappoint his public. So the only remotely interesting thing about this year's Grammy ceremony will be how Kanye comports himself, whether he wins or not. He's got a big act to follow after last year's angel-wings shit. But he'll top it. It's what he does. Just watch.

Voice review: Robert Christgau on Kanye West's Late Registration

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Kanye West's style comes from a real place. My undergraduate schooling was at a historically black university in Atlanta Georgia. You can say we are the upwardly mobile children of civil rights America. In the early and mid 90's we dressed exactly the same way Kanye West does today. I guess that would be considered corny depending on your mindset. African Americans are not totally monolithic, in academic and African spiritual circles we did not wear whie triple XL T-shirts and baggy pants hanging around out ankles.
West and Common have been exposed to the same elements. West may be more 'hood, but less street than Common. It's just that Common's persona demanded an attachment to the "street" and West embodies an upwardly mobile, son of the Civil Rights era African-American persona. Funny that that persona, which would have been dismissed as "corny" at rap's "golden age" (or even two years ago) is selling mad records AND mad rugby shirts.
Bush apologists on the Voice blog, eh? I guess now that the administration's hubris finally has the president on the ropes, some of his partisans feel they need to get a handle on how the other (humane) half of humanity thinks. True, Kanye's comment wasn't the shining hour many of his fans make it out to be, but they no doubt realize the statement's veracity despite its deliverer's incoherence. That Bush still has apologists trolling among cyberlefties is proof that there's a lot of denial about the racial context Katrina brought to the surface.
I have to say ThatI would rather comment on Kanye's Comment about our President. First and formost has he really stopped to Look and the President's Cabinet? I mean get a clue I think that what he said, really made him look like a fool. I do like his music, but he is not educated enough to make public announcements to the world about his opinion being that today's youth looks up to our members of the music industry. He should be ashammed that he ever said the whole thing. Personally I don't care if he won the album of the year or not. Our President, in my opinion did the best he could with the informaiton that he was given, once he found that the job was not being done properly her did what should have done he replaced the preson resonsible with someone who would get the job done.
Common's a different kind contrived than Kanye; because Common's machinations have to do with perceptions of upward mobility that are still pretty rooted in the hood, whereas Kanye's got that moving-on-up indignance that comes from proximity to college-educated indie white folk. That may also be why Jon Brion's middlebrow grandeur make so much sense in West's sonic universe.
Common's a different kind contrived than Kanye; because Common's machinations have to do with perceptions of upward mobility that are still pretty rooted in the hood, whereas Kanye's got that moving-on-up indignance that comes from proximity to college-educated indie white folk. That may also be why Jon Brion's middlebrow grandeur make so much sense in West's sonic universe.
Kanye's a different kinda contrived than Common; because Common's machinations have to do with perceptions of upward mobility that are still pretty rooted in the ghetto, whereas Kanye's got that moving-on-up indignance that comes with proximity to college-educated indie white folks. It's also why the middlebrow ideas of Jon Brion make so much sense in West's universe.
Kanye is middlebrow, yeah, and that'll be why he wins if he does. But he doesn't seem contrived-middlebrow to me, the way Common does, for instance.
as we all know, this & many other awards are about politics steely dan was being rewarded for their tremendous, under-appreciated body of work - which is both deserving & quite extensive their musicianship is w/out peer, imho -piece
I ain't saying much for West to boast he's better than the new age culture vulture and the 5 octave nutcase. However, if he wins this battle of the middlebrow it will be because Late Registration is mad middlebrow. His saving grace is that no one gives him props for his rapping.