The War Within

This was the first time I really sat up and took Kanye seriously. Before that he'd been a B-list Roc producer who took a fairly straight forward approach to his soul beats and sounded like a fat tongued retard on the grainy random freestyles you'd come across at the back of mixtapes. Then Talib taught him how to rap on the Sprite Liquid Mix Tour. Here's Kanye in his essence, the brashness, the brilliance, the intense self awareness and unapologetic contradictions. I'm a fan of the new album but I have to say I miss the old Kanye. Back then he didn't take his issues quite so seriously, and had the ability to laugh at his own preposterous behavior, which made his continuous outbursts all the more interesting. Is it real? A performance? A joke? Maybe a little of all three? It seems he was happiest back when he walked around with a chip on his shoulder, and he was the only person who knew how big he'd become.