On Friday 4th Dec, I saw Kanye West in concert, and I am still buzzing from the experience. I have been putting myself in his shoes a lot lately, by listening to his music, and feeling really good, like I could touch the sky!
I don't want to sound cocky, but he's sort of inspired me to literally touch the sky. I'm a musician myself, playing in a soul blues band. On New Years Eve, 2009 we played our version of Kanye Wests' "Love Lockdown" to a 'mostly' receptive audience in Melbourne. Live music is so much fun to play, especially playing covers of music such as Kanyes'.
In this blog, I want to share with you who my influences are in music, namely hip hop producers. People like Kanye West, Madlib, J Dilla to name - a few are pioneers in my eyes. I want to make music a career, and it may be difficult, but producers I idolize did it, because of the influences they had that drove them to develop their creative outlet in music producing.
Getting back to Kanye - he's someone who has found a path through his musical geniusness and let it carry him to wherever he ends up. I really feel every musical decision and artistic direction he has taken is made with a purposeful meaning. At his Glow in the Dark concert, he partly reminded me of the late James Brown. Like Brown, he commanded an orchestra/band of musicians leading them to come in when he wanted them to, to get loud and soft when he wanted and to rock out when he wanted, maintaining a charisma and energy all the way through.
In my eyes he has become a genius because of his energy, perseverance and biggest factor of all: love for his fans and what he does. What he puts into his music, emotes every listener in ways only they can experience.
From his first album, College Dropout, I had a great amount of respect for Kanye, because he described how he got to a position to make an album through Jaz- Z's Roc-A-Fella Records label, in the song "Last Call". I still think about it when I hear anything new of his, because he works so hard to put out music he has put his heart into, and it shows.
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