But as a performer and lyricist he (Kanye West)’s got nothing. The celebrity thing is annoying, but it’s his music that brings out the ass-suckery.
He has, in my opinion, no flow as a rapper and no skill as a writer. Nothing really important to say. No clever word play (which is arguably one of the foundations of rap). Nothing.
-sarielthrawn, April 17, 2009
Are we even surprised that he (Kanye) may have never seen any ‘Robocop’ movies? He probally [sic] thinks anything by Tyler Perry is genius!
-CyanideSmoker, April 17, 2009
After my last article for this site, in which I discussed the disjuncture between the Robocop films and the Kanye West song of the same name, a few of our readers left the comments that you see above, calling into question the very premise that Mr. West is worth Overthinking. Chief among the complaints were that Kanye’s skills as a rapper are sub-par and that his lyrics are as vacuous as the most banal of his peers. I had been planning on jumping in on the discussion, but by the time I had gathered my thoughts (and refreshed my memory of several of Kanye’s songs), several days had passed (which amounts to years in internet time), so I just let it drop.
Then, last week, the internets were abuzz with the leak of the new Clipse single, “Kinda like a Big Deal,” which features a guest verse by Kanye. Hearing him rap (rather than autocroon) made me think again about the debate about Yeezy’s merits as a lyricist and rapper. In particular, my attention was captured by this quatrain near the beginning of his verse:
Spittin fire on the PJ in my PJ’s
Fire Marshall said I took it to the Max like TJ
Yeah people I said Marshalls, replay
I guess I’m like the Black Marshall meets Jay
At first glance, it would seem that the haters are right—this guy isn’t saying anything! After all, ‘Ye uses the word “marshall” three times in four lines and apparently just keeps saying the letter “J” over and over to make his lyrics rhyme. However, as Fenzel’s discussion of Dragonball has recently shown, repetition can be a powerful device for creating meaning within works of art. After the jump, I’ll parse the layers of meaning in these lyrics and will show how viewing this brief quote in the context of Kanye’s total output as a rapper challenges the notion that he has “nothing really important to say.”
