This isn't new: Kanye West's music is about being a specific celebrity more than anyone's since the solo works of John Lennon. But filtering these ideas through John Legend or Chris Martin or whomever would essentially kill the whole effect. These are expressions of the specific feelings of one guy there is still, to West at least, more emotional nourishment to be wrung from song than speech, which certainly colored his decision here. But it functions here as a democratizer as much as a crutch, because like all Kanye West songs, these are primarily about the experience of Being Kanye West. West's singing is shaky, of course, which is in part why he leans on the Auto-Tune. Instead we get bedroom pop, quiet ruminations in which after staying up night after night pursuing and living the good life, Kanye wakes up to a cold, lonely dawn. If this guy was jumping on a radio fad here, we'd likely get an LP's worth of "Put On"s, his summer hit and collaboration with Young Jeezy.
But Kanye has always been more of a master assimilator: He's achieved in part because he's used wealth and fame to explore the wider world- culturally and artistically- rather than shut himself off from it. Stylized Auto-Tune seems to be on about every third song on top 40 radio these days, making West seem like an opportunist or a bandwagon-jumper. In part it's because it's not what people want or expect from Kanye West. So why is this approach, from this guy, now such a problem? And, lest we forget, Kanye West himself made his name as a producer in part thanks to his "chipmunk soul" vocal samples. In this decade, records like Radiohead's Kid A/ Amnesiac, the Knife's Silent Shout, and Daft Punk's Discovery were heralded in part for screwing with vocals last year both Battles and Dan Deacon revived the old Alvin and the Chipmunks trick of shifting pitches and speeds and Bon Iver's forthcoming EP features a song sung through vocoder. But vocal manipulation isn't only the practice of radio-ready rap, of course- it's been a signpost for "futuristic music" ever since Joe Meek heard "a New World" almost 50 years ago.
The recent embrace of the common studio aid seems akin to pro wrestling saying, "Fuck it, this isn't real" and making it more transparent and scripted (and successful).
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