Clearly this won’t always be the case, but September 11th falls on a Tuesday this year. For the first time since bin Laden’s boys came through and crushed the buildings, artists will be able to use the date as ammunition for their pending releases.
The fall of the Towers did not prevent Jay Z from releasing the first volume of the one-volume-too-many-and-there-were-only-two Blueprint series. Much to the delight of New Yorkers and hip hop heads across the globe, Jigga dropped a classic. Start to finish, the album overflows with a soulful vibe that few would have come to expect from a hardened veteran coming out of one of New York’s housing projects. But it happened. And quite frankly, the rap world hasn’t been the same ever since.
Kanye West ushered in a new regime of music. West left his imprint all over the Blueprint. Although he may not have been the lead architect in the venture, he wasn’t very far behind Mr. Carter. Without West’s foundation, it is uncertain whether or not the album would have managed to firmly solidify Jay Z’s position as the G.O.A.T. – sorry LL!
Now Mr. West finds himself in strikingly similar position. With his pending release next Tuesday, Kanye has a unique opportunity to elevate his superstar status to a level rarely reached by rap acts in a pop-driven American culture. Because of the musical drivers in American society, many view “going pop” as a viable channel to attaining the glitz and glamour associated with winning the hearts of White America. Artists seem to stand at a fork in the road that forces them to choose between going left and keeping it real, or going right and crafting friendly albums aimed toward achieving mass consumption.
Next Tuesday, music fans will be privileged to watch Mr. West assert his lyrical muscle and showcase his musical genius while going up against 50 Cent’s third major release, Curtis. Fans will be forced to once more make a statement about the current state of rap music and the direction in which it’s headed. Given the early arrival of both albums on underground music sites, I’ve had the opportunity to listen to each project a number of times. And I can only pray that hip hop fans casts their votes with me in hip hop’s version of Election Tuesday.
Now, this discussion could easily shift into one aimed at identifying the merits found in the mixture of tough talk and corny pop found on 50’s album versus the musicality and the message found on Kanye’s album. But not everyone views the game through the same lens as me. So I’ll let Kanye assist me as I close:
Good morning
On this day we become legendary
Everything we dreamed of
I’m like a fly Malcolm X
Buy any jeans necessary
Detroit Red cleaned up
From the streets of the league
From an eighth to a key
But you graduate when you make it up outta the streets
From the moments of pain
Look how far we done came
Haters sayin’ ya changed
Now ya doin’ ya thang
Hopefully it’s time to get away from the high school raps that grown ass men continue to spit. Time to get away from the talk of guns going off and drugs being sold. Kanye West is right – it’s time for Graduation!
