re: Is Kanye West a musical genius?

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You have no idea how many of your favorite albums are actually programmed

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What if you actually know a lot of the people and see them recording it?

I get you and your boyfriend here want to suck kanye off, its ok..its actually quite funny to see someone argue that electronic music is harder to produce than actual instrumentation.

What a dumb thread anyways

No, that is not music!!

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SEClint

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It takes a special type of talent to grab snippets from other people’s songs and put some programmed drums behind it.
What’s wrong with you?

Musical genius?

That's my son's argument.

However, you have to be in the right place at the right time with the right set of tools.

And for the record, I didn't say it was easy. Just can't classify it as genius.

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Let's see him mic a cab, dial in an amp, tune a guitar..much less a drumkit. Then, actually play every instrument, record it and mix it.

Let's see him just play the smells like teen spirit solo for starters before he's crowned a musical genius

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The skills of a small-town roadie don't make one a genius, and I'd bet money that Kanye could pretty quickly mic a cab, tune a guitar, and play an easy solo. I don't think he is a genius, and I don't think his ability to handle the basic shite you listed would make him one. A ton of producers are also musicians. A ton of genius musicians don't know how to tune a drumkit...

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I too know a lot of the same people as you. 

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I seriously doubt that. Unless you've spent a lot of time in Sweden, Norway Iceland, The Netherlands or Poland?

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Modern metal production is anything but actual instruments.

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for weak bands who are lazy, as their live performances will reflect.

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It's no less "assembly line" than what Kanye does it.

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yet he is a genius somehow for taking shortcuts and relying on midi and samples?..no, he's good at marketing himself and getting away with stupid behavior that people talk about. Plus baby momma drama and a fricking clothing line..lol

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Don't believe me?

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I dont.

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I made this in about 3 days.

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sounds more like 3 hours with ezdrummer and DI input through amp sims.

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To act like metal requires some unknown secretive skillset on loan from the God's to produce in this day and age while simultaneously pretending the process for making complex hip hop arrangements is about as hard as making buttered toast is just absurd.

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not all metal is equal. A lot of it is disposable, but the truly talented musicians,..are that. A drummer like Zbigniew Prominski, for example, would not sit around with his sticks up his arse, he's going to be on the album. You want him on the album. Thats how it is with legit musicians, especially drummers. Many won't stand for replacing their performances with fake drums and any producers worth their weight in water wouldn't want fake over real. Unless you can't capture it, for lack of production knowledge and just prefer shortcuts.

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and no one's complaining about program drums in metal.

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I very much am.

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As long as you can pull it off live (I'm looking at you, Dragonforce!), who gives a shite?

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the musicians who take their craft and art seriously.

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Mixing is hard. Mixing live instruments is hard. Mixing live drums is hard. 

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yes it can be, but it helps to know what you're doing. With talent, insight and experience you can achieve a sound that captures a talented player's performance instead of a robotic imitation.

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Playing 3 or 4 chord classic rock songs in a bar is, well, not that hard, but it does take some skill.

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I agree on that, and I'm not a fan of that shite either. Grunge and punk really simplified guitar but I do enjoy some of it.

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Let's not pretend like playing "Bad Company" off the album Bad Company by the band Bad Company at some random cover band bar is anywhere near as difficult as making a modern, top-shelf, album of the year candidate hip/hop album, cause it's not. It's just f&%king not.

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frick bad company and frick any hip hop album of the year, especially in these years.

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If you think it's super easy, by all means, try and do what Kanye does!

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i know it would feel like an extreme waste of my time, I have no passion for sampling and talking about how great I am or whatever he likes to talk about.

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Odds are, he can't do what you do

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then he is no musical genius, because I know that I'm not nor would I ever claim to be. He would pay someone to come in and do all that work for him. He's a decent hip hop producer, and markets himself well to a generation that accepts electronic pre programmed music because its not about the actual music anymore..The music in that genre doesn't matter and hasn't for a while, its about whats being said over some beat which is a lot of the time sampled from an already existing successful song from the past. Thats nothing new at all..and I accept its unfortunately here to stay, as it makes me appreciate actual musicians and legit musical talent even more.

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He would pay someone to come in and do all that work for him

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This is where you sound stupid. You can say that his music isn’t difficult to make, but you can’t say he doesn’t make it.

He produced for 7 years and was considered the best Hip-Hop producer around before he ever recorded an album.

He is the sole producer of his 1st, 4th, and 6th album, all of which were huge commercial successes, and is the main producer on all of his other albums save the one produced by Daft Punk.

Given the above facts, I think we can establish he doesn’t necessarily need a team of people to make successful music, he did it by himself for several years.

So I guess your argument is that now that he’s established he just lets other people do it for him. That might be true but i seriously doubt it, primarily because of his ego. Not to mention no one in the music industry has accused him of it despite there being plenty of people who would love to take him down.

I can’t remember which rapper it was but there was an interview in which he said that you always feel bad about yourself around Kanye because you wish that you could be as passionate about music as him.

And you implied that I am some kind of Kanye fanboy. I’m really not. Hip-Hop is probably my 5th favorite genre. I do like most of KW’s music. I’d still much rather listen to Dire Straits or The Black Keys.

I just think you are just assuming that because most people in that industry don’t make their own music he probably doesn’t either without really being familiar with his content or history.

Complexities of dense electronic compositions and dad chords huh?

First off… kiss my arse. It’s far more difficult to rollout a quality product with an acoustic guitar and vocals than a bundle of 25 instrument loops purchased from the App Store. Secondly, you probably think Taylor Swift writes her own music.

It’s ok to say “I like music that is cheap to produce and is more an orchestration of loops and mumbled lyrics devoid of any sense of a melody. Toss a hi hat over a series of tuned bass drum patterns and boom… we’ve got hit and a badass beat!”

Lastly… can you Steely Dan? I’m gonna go out on a limb and say “Nope.”

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Don't believe me? I made this in about 3 days. One day for guitars and drums, one day for vocals, and one day for bass and mixing. Probably took me and my engineer working together about 18 hrs total in the studio. I'm playing every instrument and singing every vocal. LINK

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Not my style, but well done. And the name is awesome.

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Don't believe me? I made this in about 3 days. One day for guitars and drums, one day for vocals, and one day for bass and mixing. Probably took me and my engineer working together about 18 hrs total in the studio. I'm playing every instrument and singing every vocal. LINK

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damn dude, impressive!