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Somewhere downthread, Kanye West was said to have written some of the best wordplay of the past few decades. Could anyone cite some examples? (ideally text rather than video links)
compared to who, yknow?
set the board, 2000 and newer.
k, wipe off every artist who doesn't rap. i like plenty of pop, Heat Waves is great. lyrically nothing.
off Drake's 2021 Certified Lover Boy the T-1 most viewed Genius track is Fair Trade. Drake's longest verse: https://i.imgur.com/elNr1KT.png
off Kanye's 2021 Donda the most viewed Genius track is Off the Grid. Kanye's longest verse: https://i.imgur.com/bWkIdP0.png
listen to both if you want the best context. reading lyrics alone can miss delivery and the point. Hurricane also off Donda has a couple examples:
"I'm that one at Yale" can be heard as "I'm the one that yell" connecting by subject with the subsequent line.
Later
Kanye gives ambiguity in performance, as it can be heard as "ask Him, 'What do you love?'" -- Donda isn't subtle about being a gospel album, but this line is.
but it's not representative to compare Kanye to Drake. it's plenty fair: drake is a worse lyricist, rapper, and producer (and not that i ever really care when it comes to celebrities, a worse person)
representative would be closer with Kanye and Kendrick Lamar.
off Kendrick's 2022 Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers the most viewed Genius track is N95. Kendrick's first verse: https://i.imgur.com/78q6xtA.png
Kanye's is the best of the three by lyricism, performance and production. my method for selection has influenced this, but i think it's better than selecting their most highly viewed tracks on Genius. for Kanye: Mercy, for Drake: God's Plan and for Kendrick: Humble. Kendrick is firmly the best here, but it seems the overall popularity of a song often negatively correlates with its lyrical complexity. see Donald Glover/Childish Gambino. unsurprising of the great polymath-artist of our time, you'd have trouble finding tracks by him that aren't brilliantly written. his most popular is This is America.
Kanye's not as good of a lyricist as Donald Glover, but that's no criticism. Kanye is a better musician, rapper, and producer, and production is where i'll stop.
few artists have a separate wikipedia article for their production discography. Jay-Z isn't the artist he is today (or married to Beyoncé) without Kanye's production on The Blueprint. Artists including John Legend, Common, Kid Cudi, Pusha T, and Travis Scott likewise owe significant success if not their careers to Kanye's work with each. these are careers, on genres? his 2007 Graduation and off it Flashing Lights is the major moment of synth use in hiphop and from it you can draw a straight line to the ubiquity of synth in modern pop. beyond Kanye, only The Neptunes--Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo--have comparable production bona fides. (A little thing I find funny about Pharrell is Happy from Despicable Me isn't even his best song titled Happy. Also this no-right-to-be-a-bop with Trey Parker.)
FiveHourMarathon mentions this below. Kanye's not just the greatest discography of the genre (and MBDTF and Donda are two of the greatest records ever made). his influence can be seen across post-2000 hiphop, and from it all modern pop. in the last 100 years of music, the artists the same can be said of is an extremely short list.
I'm still not sure how you're deciding who had stronger lyricism. Rhyme schemes? Wordplay? Jay-Z is past his prime but latest album blows Kanye out of the water by any technical metric:
Hold "the Uzi vertical", a reference to Lil Uzi Vert, one of the new generation of rappers who can't rap by traditional standards and would be laughed at for his look in the days Jay-Z is reminiscing about.
Or from his verse on 'Drug Dealer's Anonymous' a few years back:
"Before Reasonable Doubt (Jay-Z's first album) dropped, the jury hung/jewelry hung". As the case was concluding, there was a hung jury/before Jay-Z had money from music he was already rich. The "Bling Bling" is him making it obvious that the wordplay was on purpose. The purposeful ambiguity you praise Kanye for is standard in hip-hop.
And as for rhymes, I'll just post some of Black Thought's verse on 'Crowns for Kings':
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MBDTF is one of my favorite albums of all time, so hearing you praise Donda in the same breath puts it on my list.
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I'd just note that Kanye's genius was more in the music than the rap, though he was a good rapper. The best argument for Kanye being a genius is that his worst album, 808s and Heartbreak, is the blueprint for Drake's whole career. Drake, the Wkend, and other imitators, is the top seller of the last decade, unfortunately, and he's just a ripoff of Kanye on an off day.
When Kanye came on the scene in the mid 2000s, it was the moment when rap made the transition to the mainstream. It was a totally new feeling on The College Dropout compared to Eminem or Fifty Cent. He pushed all of American pop music in a new direction, multiple times in his career.
808s is considered his worst album? Weird it's my favorite
It's got 3-4 killer tracks but I see why it's his worst.
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It's definitely musically his most simple and Pop-py, least challenging album; though tbh I heard that argument before his last few albums that I haven't listened to yet and I've heard by reputation are weird.
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Kanye in his prime (haven't listened to his last few albums) had a very fun lyrical delivery with interesting rhyme schemes. example from "Golddigger":
then in the last verse the perspective flips:
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The song is somewhat cliche at this point, but I really like Pinocchio Story from the album 808s and Heartbreak. It's a live recording and Kanye is difficult to hear and understand over the screams of the crowd, but he raps about how he just wants happiness and a normal life, and somehow all the fame and fortune has made everything worse:
The contrast between Kanye singing about how he wants to experience real life and real love with the screams of the fans proclaiming their love for him is really fascinating and you can hear in the reality of the live performance how all the fans and the fame ... just isn't a substitute for what he's really looking for. It's a wonderful example of how form / function can work together in a piece of music. You don't have to just listen to Kanye explain how the fame isn't getting him happiness -- you can hear the fans screaming "I LOVE YOU KANYE" as he sings about how he can't find real love and how he lost the only real love he'd ever had... I think it's a beautiful song, personally.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=OeCdG0Mzrkw
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But to be serious, as someone who used to be very into hip-hop Kanye was known for some very funny lines but was never considered a top-tier lyricist by anyone besides Kanye Stans (superfans) because (i) his lyrics were never as complex as say Lupe Fiasco, and (ii) it has long been known that he makes use of ghostwriters, which disqualifies you from the discussion as far as hip-hop fans are concerned.
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Some of his more memorable rhymes:
The last line finishes on a sample of Daft Punk for the punchline.
I dunno if this is one of the best lyrics of our time or whatever, but considering we're playing the field of pop music, at least he didn't rhyme 'baby' with 'baby.'
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