kidmercury

Regular readers of KidMercuryBlog.com will not find it surprising that I dislike musician Kanye West, as we come from warring tribes: Kanye is on Jay-Z's record label, and I'm still beefing with Jay-Z after he dissed my boy Noel; check the Kid Mercury classic, "Jay-Z, You're a Punk Ass Chump for Dissin' Oasis at Glastonbury."


But Kanye's crimes against humanity consist of more than simply rolling with the wrong crew. Kanye's latest album, 808s and Heartbreak, is in many ways very impressive; it combines pop melodies with a hip-hop lyrical style, and is pretty innovative in the way it uses drum tracks.

There's just one problem.

Kanye can't sing.

To compensate for his lack of singing ability, Kanye West uses a program called Auto-Tune, which modifies the singer's pitch to make it compatible with the rest of the song. Auto-Tune is becoming an increasingly popular tool, and is used by many of the corporate pop stars that aren't really able to sing. There are two problems with Auto-Tune:

1. It makes you sound like a robot
2. Pitch is only one aspect of singing; timbre, pronounciation, rhythm, and "delivery" in general are other aspects, all of which are very important. If a singer is having lots of trouble with pitch, they probably are going to have trouble with the other elements of singing as well, as they are all interconnected in a way. If you have spent any reasonable amount of time singing and experimenting with different vocal styles you may know what I am talking about.

Ultimately what Kanye should have done is found a singer to sing the songs he wrote, though that might take the spotlight off him and thus be bad from a marketing/career perspective. If you want to put the music first, though, that's what he should've done. 808s and Heartbreak could have been a phenomenal album had that been done; a hip-hop masterpiece. Instead it is an album with great songwriting but is sung by something that sounds like a robot.

Now that I've ripped Kanye a new one and have proven myself once and for all to be the better man, let me help re-build his ego that I've shattered by saying a few good things about Kanye. We may be in warring tribes, but my allegiance is always and forever to the Truth -- and I can't deny that Kanye is a very bright guy and a visionary in many ways. In fact, I'd go so far as to say he's the one mainstream musician that I think is closest to understanding the new media revolution.

To understand why, check out Kanye's web site -- specifically his blog. There are a few things I want to highlight:

1. Kanye blogs everyday. This is key to building a deep relationship with fans, which is key to becoming more influential in their minds. As we've discussed before, the future of music is about ROI -- Return on Influence. Once you have influence, you can make money by turning yourself into a brand and endorsing products/services you like.
2. Of course, Kanye doesn't just blog about the weather or how he's feeling. In fact, there is very little text. He blogs about fashion: clothes, furniture, cars....stuff that he thinks is artistic and cool. This makes perfect sense for a musician. The next step is for Kanye to start selling what he is recommending.

If Kanye continues to embrace the notion of turning himself into a brand, he may come to find that that is a better source of revenue than selling music -- at which point the music will become an ad for his brand. Let's just hope he doesn't try to sell us Auto-Tune.