I Got My MTV

So the MTV Music Video Awards were last night. I am twenty-three years old, which is younger than most of the artists nominated, but older than most of their target audience.


I will be the first to admit I don't totally understand youth culture. I don't think anyone does, including but not limited to youths them(our?)selves. But as of recently I love pop music, and I knew all the artists nominated for the VMA's for the first time since 2000, so I watched them. And I forgot what an incredible shit show the VMA's are. This year was no disappointment, rife with divas (Kanye), weirdos (Lady Gaga), and sporadic poignancy (Janet).


Without further ado, some observations from the night. I didn't tweet them, I promise.


--Sway hasn't aged a day (or changed his hat) since I stopped watching MTV almost ten years ago. Props to him.


--Pink and Shakira showed up in the same dress. Shock and horror! Whatever, they both looked great (though if I had to answer a People poll I'd probably vote for Shakira, mainly because I personally want to do her.)


--Madonna spoke about Michael Jackson and it was mainly sweet and a little bit weird and awkward, which is somehow fitting for him. She called him a hero, and for MTV, he definitely was. I don't know yet how I feel about her subtle accusation that we killed him; she might be right but she might be displacing. Maybe it's both and I just feel guilty for loving young Michael, knowing what the life did to him.


--Kanye West made a damn fool of himself as usual, by not only interrupting Taylor Swift's acceptance speech to rant about how Beyonce deserved the Best Female Video moon man, but by ripping the award out of the nineteen year old girl's hands just as she began to tearfully thank her largely pop-oriented fans for making her dream come true and giving a country singer a chance.
There are several things wrong with this:
1 - Taylor Swift is nineteen years old. Give her a break.
2 - It's a freaking MTV moon man. It means a lot to Taylor Swift because she's brand new to the business, she's MTV's almost exact target audience, and it's her first, but it really doesn't mean anything to anyone else, especially Beyonce. Save your soapbox and give the girl her moment.
3 - This was clearly less about Beyonce and more about Kanye's unflinching need to be the center of attention at all times, and the fact that the amount of time it took to talk about female artists was just too long for him to bear.


--Lady Gaga is a nut and I love her for it. She arrived on the red carpet with Kermit the Frog (he says it's not serious), changed costumes several times throughout the night, hung herself onstage, and dedicated her Best New Artist moon man to "God and the gays." More pop stars could use a sense of humor; that's why I prefer hip hop.

--Janet Jackson danced alongside her 100-foot brother in a hastily thrown-together tribute to the King of Pop. That's just beautiful. And really, really sad. And every time I see Joe Jackson's mug I'm reminded of the fact that, no matter our differences, everyone in the world can at least agree on the fact that Joe Jackson is a great big tool.


--Beyonce proved herself to be a beautiful, classy, professional lady and used her Best Video of the Year acceptance speech time to let Taylor Swift finish hers. I can't always agree with the message of her songs, but that was the best possible thing she could do to alleviate a lot of tension, give poor Taylor Swift her moment in the glitter, and distance herself from Kanye's great big mouth. Brava.


So there it is. There actually isn't much about the infamous award show that is different from the way I remember it a decade ago; some of the names have changed and there's a lot more tweeting involved. But the VMA's are clearly still the crazy, glittery, overwhelmingly classless, randomly sweet, earnest hot mess they always were, which is somehow comforting in this unstable world in which we live.


And I'll be listening to a lot of NPR today to make up for it, I'm sure.

The Post-Grad Life Can Be Lonely

Something big in the music world may have just happened. The new album by today's biggest hip hop artist Kanye West is not a hip hop album, and it's not an "experimental" album, and I think that means something. I'm not sure what that means yet, but I'm interested to find out.

Kanye has been at the forefront of the hip hop world since The College Dropout in 2004, continuing with Late Registration in 2005 and finishing the trilogy with Graduation in 2007.

But the post-grad life can be lonely.

The most important thing about the new single "Love Lockdown" and the rest of the 8o8s and Heartbreak album is not the change in tone. It's not even that someone is using Audio-Tune and a drum machine (Roland TR-808). Lil Wayne just got big audio-tuning his voice on the single "lollipop." The big deal is that the biggest rapper in the game didn't just incorporate these new techniques, but has seemingly abandoned rapping altogether on his new album. On top of that, he's been juxtaposing tribal sounds with Daft Punk-style mechanical/electronic sounds. Again, not something entirely new - indie rockers Animal Collective come to mind - but Kanye West is a much bigger force than those guys.

So I'm curious as to what West's new adventure will bring. Will the biggest rapper around rap again? Of course. But by NOT rapping, Kanye may or may not be on to something new.

On the other hand, Kanye West has never brought change. Sure he's been a big deal for a little while now, but he's never done much to actually sculpt the hip hop landscape. When he performed on The Letterman Show with Daft Punk (WATCH HERE) it was amazing, and Kanye proved his live chops once again... and he looked like a modern day James Brown. Now on one hand that's a compliment, but on the other hand, it's not. It's not because James Brown was big 30 years ago, and if Kanye is going to do something to truly break boundaries, then looking and acting and recreating the image of a 70's star is NOT the way to go.

Hip hop, like all music, is expanding and diversifying, but I wonder if the equivalent of the trickle-down economic theory (Kanye can influence the rest of the hip hop world) will prevail, or if it works from the ground up; in which case artists like M.I.A. and Cut Copy can influence the mainstream.

I've never pretended to be an expert on hip hop, and it's impossible to predict the next big music trend (disco? ska? emo? who sees that coming?), but for every critical review of 8o8s and Heartbreak, I appreciate more and more that Kanye West is looking to challenge the mainstream. Too bad it's at the expense of his psyche... oh the loneliness of being number one.