This week’s column is about the new Kanye video and why in 2011, he’s gotta put that stupid, pretentious warning in front of it…
That’s a groaner for sure, but it’s also sincere. “Monster” actually is an “art piece,” and “as such,” it takes more explication than a rap video really should. Kanye, the self-aware, sensitive rapper has crafted a surreal response to hip-hop misogyny making the implicit violence of in-the-club videos, well, extremely explicit. Women tend to pose stoically in rap videos, so here they’re frozen (thanks to rigor mortis) and dolled up without agency. It’s a pitch-black comedy of rap-video excess and though it’s far too much of a primal purge to rise to the level of satire, it’s a knowing provocation. If Kanye were more mature and not still figuring all this stuff out, he’d create some kind of corrective; but he’s lost and awkwardly working his way through it, and as a result, the best he can do is vomit it up something even more horrifying…
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