Like so many of his American hip hop contemporaries, Kanye West is a legend in his own mind. Sure, he’s occasionally walked the walk with releases such as ‘Diamonds from Sierra Leone’ and ‘Jesus Walks’ but he’s still one hell of a long way from achieving true greatness.
New single ‘Stronger’, which “samples” Daft Punk and is taken from his forthcoming album Graduation, may well take him one step closer. According to hearsay, Kanye enlisted the services of no less than eight world class studio engineers to work on the track simultaneously in order to fine tune it.
The single is available for download now and on general release from 13th August. Don’t’ all rush at once.
They say:
Digital Spy: “So much better than what West might have managed on his own.”
We say:
Admittedly, ‘Stronger’ is a decent enough slice of electro hip hop and quite possibly Kanye’s most workout friendly track since, well, ‘The New Workout Plan’.
But you’d be unwise to applaud his so called excellence. The poppiest of hip hop stars has not so much sampled Daft Punk’s ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger’ (and Edwin Birdsong’s ‘Cola Bottle Baby’, if you want to get all smart arsed about it) as simply rhyme over the top of it. Which begs the question: does it really take eight engineers to essentially plagiarise a dancefloor favourite? (Although to Kanye’s credit, he does acknowledge the French prog disco dwellers in the liner notes and expensive looking music video.)
As for the lyrics, let’s just say Lupe Fiasco won’t be looking over his shoulder anytime soon. Kanye has always struggled in this department, but ‘Stronger’ really takes the biscuit, shifting between cringeworthy self importance (“Bow in the presence of greatness/Cause right now thou has forsaken us/You should be honoured by my lateness/That I would even show up to this fake shit”) and downright crudeness (“Heard they’d do anything for a Klondike/Well I’d do anything for a blonde dyke”).
He’s one classy guy.
Like this? Now try these:
Daft Punk – Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
Kanye West – The New Workout Plan
RELEASED
Out now
LABEL
Mercury
POSTED...
Fri 10 Aug 2007 at 10:14am
