Artist of the Week: Kanye West

Runaway Film

All of the Lights


Love Lockdown



With his release of “Runaway”, a short film compiling all the songs on his latest alum titled My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West once again solidifies himself a one of the most influential artist of our generation. Runaway pushes the envelope in ways that no other music video has before.  In my view I am more attracted to the way the film looks. My main interest in media is video production and I think that the shots and colors utilized are amazing. The camera movement through the use of pans, tilts and tracking is a great contrast to the use of static shots, where the characters are centered. The stylized film could be interpreted as a thickly layered metaphor for Kanye’s journey to fame, which he has compared to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Prince’s ’80s video hit “Purple Rain.”, both videos that have transformed the way the music industry looks at the standard of the music video. The metaphor is reflected in scenes like when Griffin crashes his MTX Tatra V8 in the forest echoing West's car accident that was the inspiration for "Through the Wire", and Revolutionary ideas like this full-length film are on of the reason why I view Kanye West as an inspirational artist to me.  Another is his mass array of collaboration with various artists, along with his tendencies of mixing genre like hip/hop and rock. One of his song in which he utilizes both is “All of the Light”. In this song he collaborates with several different artists like Alicia Keys, Charlie Wilson, Elly Jackson, Elton John, Fergie, John Legend, Kid Cudi, Rihanna, Ryan Leslie and The-dream. When each one of these artist is featured in the song their individual segment changes from the rest of the song, putting pleasantly unorganized feel to the song.  Also in this song he mixes traditional marching band rhythm and melody with traditional orchestra and choir, having them perform at a modern pace and speed, creating unique melody that is completely original. Kanye West also merged genres on his album named 808’s and Heartbreaks. On this album West experimented with auto tune, electric guitar and techno-electronic. The song Love Lockdown is the epitome of what he came up with on this album.  The use of the high-pitched auto tune, and the low bass throughout give the some a distinctive sound. He also does something interesting with the rhythm. It beat at a constant rate like a heartbeat drawling; analogous sound, in reference to the plot of the song as well as the title. The sound also has that flatness in the bass that we are not used to hearing alluding to the strange techno-futuristic approach. These are just some examples why I am an admirer of Kanye West and also why he is our Artist of the week. His strives in not only music but also in video design, letting his videos speak to the audience while his strong collaborations and new age approach provides distinctive music.