I’ve got Kanye West’s “Love Lockdown” stuck in my head. This is not good thing because it reminds me of his performance on Saturday Night Live last night, which in turns reminds me about how much I dislike hip-hop’s Auto-Tune trend.
I think there are times when using technology to bend, break and boost your vocals absolutely works and might even be necessary (Thom Yorke’s disfigured voice on the experimental and defiant Kid A comes to mind). Rappers who can’t sing but figure they can fudge it with Auto-Tune? That’s just brings the industry’s self-indulgence to new levels of obnoxiousness — and not in an entertaining way. Auto-Tune makes for bad studio albums and even worse live shows — I mean, I cringed every time Kanye took a pass on the high notes last night. Why would he do that to himself? (Lots and lots of people disagree with me. Check out these comments, for instance. What I will give Kanye’s SNL performance is that visually, it rocked. He rethought that drab SNL stage, and that backdrop was sweet.)
That said, I’ve still got that damn song looping through my head. Time to get rid of this earworm.
Tags: Auto-Tune, earworm, hip-hop, Kanye West, Kid A, LinkedIn, Love Lockdown, Radiohead, Saturday Night Live, SNL, Thom Yorke
Self-indulgence is the key word when it comes to hip-hop. I think Tha Carter III might be the best album of the year, but it would have been significantly better with a little editing and tightening. These guys could really use someone to tell them “no” from time to time.
That said, I will give Kanye credit for stepping so far outside his safety zone.
Heres one more listen to loop through your head lol, although youll appreciate this version much more than the original “Love Lockdown”. I found this dudes remix, its brilliant….enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBUBiIrggtY
I missed this “Love Lockdown”/”Reckoner” mashup when it dropped in October: http://is.gd/57GA (As a side note, I wouldn’t have necessarily expected The New York Observer to weigh in on it: http://is.gd/4pYK)
if Kanye did lip-sync that night, then he could use it to his advantage like Ashlee Simpson…