Kanye

If you told me five months ago that I would dedicate an hour of my life to streaming a motionless fashion show on my brand new Tidal subscription, I would have shown concern for your health. I neither understand nor truly care about high fashion. Despite my undying devotion to Jay Z, I think that Tidal amounts to little more than a cash grab from a group of super rich artists. Yet on one beautiful Thursday, Kanye put the world on notice that he defines the culture.

Yeezy Season 3 is Kanye’s heat check. Commonly used to refer to basketball players in the middle of a hot streak, a heat check is when someone tests the limits of their momentum. In Kanye’s case, “The Life of Pablo” and Yeezy Season 3 test the grip of Kanye’s stranglehold on the public consciousness. After dominating Twitter for weeks, performing on SNL, and finally releasing a finished album, Kanye just put up a three from the logo and started jogging back with his hands raised to the heavens like Swaggy P.

At this point in his career, Kanye has truly outgrown comparison. As a culture, we do not genuinely have the appropriate frame of reference for Kanye. No artist has transcended his or her art to dominate a new one like Kanye does. While many cringe at his self-comparisons to Walt Disney and Steve Jobs, only these figures have managed to fundamentally alter their fields as Kanye has.

Lets take a step back to truly appreciate the significance of Yeezy Season 3. Simply selling out Madison Square Garden for a marquee concert would qualify as an artist’s greatest accomplishment. But Kanye sold out MSG for a fashion show in the middle of a brutal New York winter. Unlike most high fashion designers, Kanye welcomed the masses into the world of fashion week.

Many artists, rappers in particular, have become moguls before. Jay Z and Diddy are just two rappers who have parlayed musical success into fashion lines. But none have managed to break into the highly exclusive world of high fashion. Basketball players have sported sneakers named after them for decades, but few had any role in the designing process. The mere fact that Kanye has broken these barriers puts him in a category all his own.

On Thursday, Kanye exhibited complete control and comfort while orchestrating an incredibly complex production. All at once, the show displayed the larger-than-life quality to Kanye and made it feel like we had the privilege of sitting in on his studio session. As Tidal continued to crash from the enormous site traffic, Kanye conducted the mass listening party more like a summer cookout amongst friends. In an oversized long sleeve and with all his famous friends, Kanye simply rolled into MSG and hopped on the AUX cord as if the presentation was not the most anticipated musical events of the year so far.

And while the show was billed as an album debut, “The Life of Pablo” was only part of a much broader experience. After watching the show, I had little to no idea how I felt about the album, and I certainly could not distinguish between any of the songs.

After dedicating the better half of a long weekend to listening to the album, I think it’s utterly forgettable. Potential classics like “Ultra Light Beam,” “Real Friends,” and “No More Parties in LA” mark high points on an album that feels otherwise lackluster and disjointed. A potent combination of a lack of topical depth and lyrical sparseness makes it clear that Kanye focused more on the production than rapping, which is perfectly fine. By no stretch of the imagination is the album bad. I simply do not see myself listening to it in three months. But even this seems besides the point. Music has not only become secondary to the genius of Kanye, but his sheer cultural control will likely make this album significant anyway.

Far more than just playing the album for the world, Kanye manufactured a moment with himself squarely as the focus. For over an hour, Kanye held us all enraptured as he molded culture. Kanye may have finally begun the paradigm shift away from pigeonholing artists into small boxes that he has so loudly advocated. Today, he designs the hottest sneakers in the game, has the most heavily hyped album released of the year, convinced 20 million people to stream a fashion show on a service most of them had to take the time to download, and married into the most successful reality TV family in the country. Considering Mr. West a rapper alone for the first time seems irrefutably inaccurate.

Jaime A. Cobham '17, a Crimson editorial writer, is a government concentrator living in Mather House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.