Kanye Can’t Sing
Published on December 15, 2008 by Dallas VonKillbot · 8 CommentsIf you’ve been hiding under a rock recently, let me give you a little insight into what’s absolutely raping the music industry at the current moment. No, this isn’t a Major v. Indie thing, it’s not about file sharing and it’s not about Chinese Democracy; it’s about the discovery of a piece of software generally called Auto-Tune. A some years back, engineers and producers would use this tool as a form of pitch correction on vocalists, improperly set up guitars, etc. The system worked, because there was still a small credibility to the artist’s ability to actually hit notes. In 1998, Cher released a song called ‘Believe‘, in which she purposely effected the vocals with the effect to give it a different sound. The single became a hit, and everyone saw it that song with that cool voice thing. Everything was fine until some hip-hop/pop/rock producers heard the results and got a huge hard on, knowing that they could abuse the effect to hide a vocalist’s performance under the manipulated sounds…
Fast forward to the modern age in the music industry. Producers like T-Pain and who ever’s been touching Britney’s last couple of albums have been exploiting the hell out of it, calling it their signature sound. One of these new Auto-Tune producers, Kanye West, has started incorporating it into his most recent efforts. It works well to get the records up the charts, but then all of a sudden you have to perform live… then this happens:
Kanye, being the ‘trend setter’ that he likes to think of himself as, decided to bring a mix of the effected vocals (as a backing track) and his strait vox when he sang on SNL this weekend. The results speak for themselves: Kanye can’t sing, and moreover made a complete ass out of himself for making the poor judgment not to know his limits… besides, it fucking sounds like bad karaoke.
On a side note, the more I keep watching this video, the more I realize this is the single worst/most painful performance I’ve ever watched from SNL, and that’s including anything with Jimmy Fallon and the embarrassing Ashley Simpson ordeal.
Kanye Can't Sing,Tags: 808 and heartbreak, Antares, Auto-tune, Believe, Britney, cher, Chinese Democracy, credibility, Jimmy Fallon, Kanye, Kanye West, pitch, pop, rock, saturday night live, Simpson, SNL, T-Pain
Readers Comments (8)
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Killbot, there is obviously some quality issues there with his voice (love the voice crack he gets in the chorus) But regardless, it isn’t *horrible.* Think back to Ashley Simpson, at least he knows which notes he is trying to hit… I don’t like Kanye myself, too poppy, but I give him respect for not lip syncing and giving it a shot. Oh, and Auto-Tune killed the underground star.
It seems as though you just go to other, more interesting blogs, and copy what they say. Opinion and all.
Oddly, I don’t hate this. It certainly exposes his limitations, and for that I appreciate it. I detest the vocoder treatment 90% of R&B “producers” slap on their records today.
Amen, down with auto-tune. Maybe this will scare a few wannabes away from hiding behind that crap.
na3s my friend, the majority of watching this and seeing it as absolutely horrid is the fact that the guy holds himself in such high regard. I believe there’s a quote going around where he stated that the latest album rivals the white album. I don’t know what it is, but that fall down from that obnoxiously high pedestal he’s put himself on is quite the spectral.
Never mind electronics, Auto-Tune and whatever else; the original premise is correct: the man cannot sing. Not even a little. His efforts are child-like.
Thanks for the backup Marc
I couldn’t agree with this post more. I preach this stuff – seriously! All the way down to how auto tune started with Cher a decade ago.
The notes that Kanye writes and probably hears very clearly in his head are pretty good hooks, he just needs to do a little “love lockdown” on that ego and understand his limitations. A gifted producer knows his strengths and hires the right people to do the stuff that are his weaknesses. If he want’s to write songs with melodies he needs to have singers sing them – or at least have singers perfom them.
And I disagree with the comment above that his was better than Ashlee Simpson’s shit show. At least she was smart enough to know she sucks and try to lip sync.