Kanye & Takashi Murakami Cover Art

New York magazine in a recent issue critqued the Takashi Murakami cover art for Kanye's soon-to-be released CD. The writer viewed the art as "confused and busy," and attributed its theme to nothing more or less than "West's recent stylistic infatuation with contemporary Japanese art and anime."

I'm not positive, but I don't think Kanye's love of Murakami is all that recent. Kanye's always been pretty up on the whole streetwear scene and Murakami as well as other Japanese artists have always been a big part of that trend.

For me, the cover art reflect his dichotomous personality as it relates to hiphop. While on the one hand, he's the ultimate insider from a hit-making pespective, he frequently takes an other-orbit, outsider position when it comes to his owns views on rap, as well how he chooses to present himself. Kanye is of the hood, which as the art illustrates, is in and of itself on another planet from mainstream America, but still in another orbit.

And perhaps I'm taking this analysis a step to far, but while the bear's body language is open and hopeful, his expression is blank if not a bit sad. In other words, while being a man without a country brings its own joys, as Kermit knows all too well, it aint always easy being green. New York magazine complains that the cover art would have been much better suited for his very first CD, but no, Kanye then was still very much feet on the Earth, focused on grinding out his hustle.

This worldview is perfectly illustrated in a recent issue of Complex magazine, in which Kanye rates the outfits of four celebrities based on how each of four cultural groups--"Devil Wears Prada, Hipster, Hood, & Middle America" would respond to it. In this particular issue, rather than breaking down the outfits of other celebs as he usuall does, he critiques four of his own outfits. (In some future issue, he needs to do a critique of four women.)


^^Click to enlarge

There are plenty of hilarious comments, like the one he makes on the Hood rating for his 2006 Grammy outfit that he sums up with a phone message he received after the event: "Damn, 'Ye, you let the city down." In the Hipster view on 2007 Hot 97 Summer Jam outfit, he says, "The matchiness is made up for by the ridiculous amount of jewelry and those glasses. Hipsters like it when black people wear a lot of jewelry." Funny yeah (and a little painful cuz I think that view on gold sums me up a little too well!), but the bigger theme is Kanye's Mac-truck-wide perspective combined with a fearlessness when it comes to acknowleding and even laughing at the multiple personalities all outsiders have to create to survive.

In rapping about "the gift and the curse" Jay-Z alludes to the alienation that results from being a black man born with an overload of talent and ambition, but Kanye puts the issue on blast and then even pokes fun at it. As a Scorpio rising with a deep appreciation for the deeply twisted I wouldn't want everyone to be like Kanye, but damn he is a refreshing change of pace.

And on that note, here are some gratuitous shots of Kanye at some recent event. Ya gotta love the kicks.

Killer Mike: Think Bigger

An interview with rap artist Killer Mike was featured in this month's issue of MassAppeal and even though I know less than zip about the guy as an artist, I was really impressed by his thoughtful responses to questions the interviewer put to him.


^^Not sure if the little fella with Mike is his son or not but the image was taken by Shane Nash

In particular, I liked his response to a question on Kanye West:

Question: You mentioned earlier that rap lacks leadership. Were Kanye West's Katrina comment more powerful than his campaign to stop rappers from calling each other gay (no homo)?

Mike: I think Kanye's comments on Katrina was a sexy thing to say. George Bush don't like black people? George Bush don't like poor people! Well, he likes his poor Mexican gardener, his poor Cuban restaurant worker, his poor nigger slaves in the penal system working for pennies on the dollar. But Kanye is not going to say "poor" because Kanye wears couture Ralph Lauren suits. The minute Dr. King walk up and say, "This isn't about race, this about po-" Pop! Pop! Pop! He was laying there dead before "poverty" even got out of his mouth, because what your'e doing there is fucking up a system of institutionalized servitude. When you start talking about issues of poverty, you go beyond race.Kanye polarized a whole community of poor whites that got killed in Alabama, the Gulf Coast and Mississippi."

I'll be the first to admit that I was thrilled when Kanye took down the president with his comments, but the fact is, we have an underclass in this country and it's not necessarily just black. In fact, Kanye's statement feeds into the societal assumption that all black people are poor. As Mike points out, Kanye is doing pretty well for himself as are many other black people.

That's not to say either that we can reduce everything to income levels. Race absolutely does factor in. Which brings me back to a post I did the other day on New York magazine's weekly column called the "Approval Matrix."

After I posted it, Adam Sternbergh, the editor of the column, was nice enough to write me to discuss some of the points I made about what appears to be a color bias in the Matrix. You'll have to read the original post to understand what I'm talking about, but my biggest beef was that people of color were almost always positioned in the column as Lowbrow.

His main point about the Matrix was as follows:

"The main point, though, is that there's nothing pejorative, in our minds, about lowbrow vs. highbrow. There's an old, outdated definition of "lowbrow" that suggests it's a put-down. We don't feel that way at all. Instead, the difference to our minds is that highbrow suggests pretension and ambition, while lowbrow suggests a more direct relationship to pleasure: things that don't present themselves as good for you, just good. Like rock,or rap, or comic books, or sitcoms: the kinds of things that often get described as "guilty pleasures," though we don't feel at all guilty aboutfinding them pleasurable."

He added that Diddy always goes in Lowbrow because no one would consider what he does "capital A art."

I could appreciate his perspective, but when I responded to him, I pointed out that because of his own background, there were probably class and race issues at play that he was blind to. For example, when you read the Matrix, it's clear that he embraces the conceit that when it comes to matters of taste, it's the middle class and educated who set the standard. Now granted, in order for the column to exist, there has to be some standard and given New York's audience, this one makes sense.

However, one of the pitfalls of this standard is that it reflects some racist/classist outlooks that are part and parcel of the middle class and educated. So while he may see Jay-Z as nothing more or less than a rap artist, others, rightfully so, see an accomplished CEO who not only heads up a major corporation, but also has more than a few musical genius moments to his credit.

I think it'd be interesting to see how the Approval Matrix would appear in a magazine, like, say, "Don Diva," magazine, the "original street bible." Would Lil' Kim, a self-made woman who is more or less rap royalty be considered Highbrow? Would a multi-millionaire like "Failure," aka George Bush, who inherited all his wealth, and pretty much drove any institution he was in charge of--including the United States--into the ground, be considered Lowbrow? It'd be interesting to find out, wouldn't it?

New York Mag Approval Matrix

The writers for New York magazine's "The Approval Matrix" do their best to position their column as a wink-and-a-nudge take on the what people and events they consider to be "lowbrow" versus "highbrow" and "despicable" versus "brilliant." Clever captions and Spy magazine-esque graphics are clearly designed to ward off any attempts at serious critques of the content, and then there's the column's tagline, which admits outright, "Our deliberately oversimplified guide to who falls where on our taste hierarchies."

If you're not familiar with it, here's an image of this week's column:


^^You can click on the image to enlarge it, but the copy in the box on the left side of the Matrix reads "Despicable" and the one opposite reads "Brilliant." Up top, the box says "Highbrow" and down on the bottom it reads "Lowbrow." In this image, you can see that Jay is positioned in the lowbrow/despicable quadrant.

I read the column, but in terms of its quality in comparison to other sections in the magazine, I find it to be a lowmark. But at least it does get me thinking about how self-assured the authors are when it comes to matters of taste. I mean jeez, talk about a sense of entitlement!

The other thing I've noticed about the column is that it's strangely segregated. That is, if the item is about a black or Latino person, s/he is almost always positioned as lowbrow. I say strange because New York magazine is far from a disaster when it comes to issues to race so you'd think someone their would have noticed this little tick by now.

In the name of striking down accusation of paranoia, I read back through the mid-August archives to test what was initially just a gut feeling and documented my findings. If nothing stood out as particularly segregated, i.e. no people of color were menioned in the Matrix at all (notable in and of itself given the city the mag is based in), I didn't link to it.

Oct. 23:

Jay-Z gets placed in the dispicable/lowbrow quadrant for his release of "Show Me What you Got." Diddy is beneath him for announcing that Burger King has crowned him the king of music and fashion. On the other hand, Corcoran real estate agents who are caught steering buyers away from black neighborhoods gets placed in the despicable/highbrow category. Well okay then, CEOs and music moguls Jay-Z and Sean Combs are lowbrow, but a real estate company that is owned by racist white people is high brow? Well that's interesting!

Oct. 9

Toni Morrison is both highbrow and brilliant. Well, she did win the damn Pulitzer prize!

Oct. 2

The Mets clinching their division gets stuck in the lowbrow/brilliant quadrant. Naturally the two players used to illustrate this event are brown-hued.

Sept. 25

Grillz on the models at the Baby Phat show are lowbrown/despicable, and yet Maxim magazine regular Carmen Electra sporting a bizarre-ass head of hair at the Imitation of Christ show get a higher ranking of highbrow/despicable. On the bottom-right, Sean Combs is lowbrow/brilliant for surrendering the name "Diddy" to someone who had it first in England. He ranks below a designer who put Birkenstocks on the runway, which is seen as highbrow/brilliant.

Sept. 18

This one completely confirms/refutes my theory. On the one hand, we have Jennifer Lopez condemened to the bottom of the lowbrow/despicable quadrant because of the all-silver outfit (how dare she!!!) she wore to the VMAs (coming in way below a sculpture of Suri Cruise's first shit in the highbrow/despicable quadrant) versus a high-right placement of the death of Willi Ninja, a cross-dressing black man. Make of it what you will.

Sept. 5

I have no idea why he was placed in the lowbrow/despicable section because all the copy says is "Diddy," but there he sits. He's outflanked by the musical inspired by John Lennon, which ranks highbrow/despicable cuz John is great and all, but the show about him sucked.

Aug. 28th
Now this one is interesting cause it's throws water on the idea that the reason Jay and Diddy keep getting downgraded is cause their musicians: The Roots concert is lowbrow/brilliant, but what sits right above it in highbrow/brilliant? Try a Sonic Youth and Yeah Yeah Yeahs concert on for size. For good measure, the captain of the New York Yankees gets a lowbrow/despicable rating for the launch of his fragrence. And then "sending Samuel L. Jackson Snakes on a Plane voicemails to all your enemies" (huh?) gets tossed in to Jete's right in lowbrow/brilliant.

Aug. 14

No people of color at all are mentioned in this week's Matrix, but I admit to feeling very confused by the ranking of Mel Gibson's "anti-semetic lunatic meltdown" as highbrow/despicable. What is it about bigotry committed by white folks that New York finds so upper crust? It can't just be because he's a millionaire cuz Diddy and Jay-Z aren't exactly living paycheck-to-paycheck.

And that's about where I stopped. I suppose you could go back through the entire archive for this column and find all sorts of examples that even out everything I've listed above, but I kinda doubt it.

In fact, I checked in on "The (Year-End) Approval Matrix" for 2005 and whadya know, The Black-Eyed Peas status as "craven, hit-hungry sellouts" makes them lowbrow/despicable, as is Dave Chappelle for going AWOL on his show. Smack dab in the middle of the Matrix is actor Terrance Howard and to his right in the lowbrow/brilliant square is R.Kelly's "Trapped in the Closet" video saga. (And if you have ANY insight at all on how Kelly is brilliant but the Black-Eyed Peas are despicable, please don't hesitate to contact me!)

Some of you may read this and think I'm picking nits--especially given the light nature of the column, but if you figure that the the mindset of the writers for this column is fairly reflective of folks who write more "serious" stories then you catch a glimpse of how mainstream media is full of minetraps for people of color.