Stale Coffee: the ghost of graduations past

Hello, everyone!

Suffice it to say I am having music feelings this week—I can't say the tea is very good this week, but I still hope it's worth drinking!

"Wake up, Mister West!"

When I think about the modern state of hip-hop, I think about the funniest annotation on Genius, on the first verse of Lil Yachty's 'Peek a Boo', where he spits:

she blow that dick like a cello

Yachty himself is quick to pass the buck: he had the line, thought it was flames-emoji, and he is upset that his A&R never corrected him that a cello is not a woodwind instrument. In Yachty's own words, "I thought Squidward played the cello. He don’t. That’s a flute." (It isn't a flute—it's a clarinet—but that's neither here nor there.)

There is a revealing energy here in this moment: that there is no error in judgment you can't make someone else's business—or someone else's fault. After the record's pressed, either you own your faults or you spin it fast before anyone really lingers on it, because there will be a yes-man in the room you can pass it off on.

That's how I feel about Kanye West these days: that he is trying to spin as quickly as possible, hoping people don't notice he has a lot to account for.

Earlier this month Ye dropped BULLY—and I mean 'dropped' less like Ye released an album and more like quick, alert the guards, someone left the vault doors open, the album escaped containment.

It feels very much like a demo-and-a-half instead of a complete record. There are moments when some of 'the old Kanye' glimpses through—there are some intriguing uses of samples from Stevie Wonder and The Supremes here that feel like, if the rest of those tracks got some elbow grease, they would be hidden tracks on a remaster of Late Registration—but those moments are drowned out by either the man that 'Ye' is now, or… stone dead silence. And I mean that part—these songs are so off-balance, so literally sonically hollow, with one verse giving way to an outro twice as long, or one hook just lingering aimlessly around a drum break for three minutes. The most 'song' there is on this entire album is 'THIS ONE HERE', and I hesitate to say that in my opinion at least 40% of that is a good pitch change of an already-good Lou Reed sample. If there are albums by committee, this is an album by dictatorship—an experiment in the punch-up method quitting halfway. It also doesn't bode well that apparently a lot of artificial intelligence has been applied throughout, souring the experience further.

This comes after a solid month and change of some of the weirdest and worst press for Ye, having antisemitic tirades on Twitter and making a spectacle of his partner to the point where more and more hardcore fans are beginning to wonder—and joke about—whether experiencing his art is worth watching him suffer the consequences of his unchecked emotional dysregulation.

The kicker, of course, is predicated on a hopeful assumption: that there is an 'old Kanye' and that he is still alive, able to resurface from the core struggle that the man is having. And for my money, I… at least see where that kind of energy comes from, and I save space in myself for that energy. It can be re-energising to think of the person in front of us as someone new, a changeling who has taken the place of the man we know and care for, who can at some point lose the war of attrition for his own soul and be reclaimed by that past figure in our hearts.

But sometimes you just gotta deal with the fact that this is the man you love, and he is responsible for all of his shit.

I think Kanye West is a talented and thoughtful musician at his peak. I think we have no reason to discount Kanye's own confessions about his struggles with his own mental illness or his own vices. I also think giving a man grace means giving him ample opportunities to take accountability for his own potential harm.

As a kind of aside, I personally struggle often with how to reconcile this part. It can be obvious that someone is experiencing the more hostile parts of their mental health journey, and coming to terms with the fact that their behaviour is related to that experience and giving them patience can feel like excusing that behaviour, but they can also respond to genuine critique intensely in ways that trigger my own desire to please people in order to escape potential hostility. How do you call someone in when you know that their reaction is triggered by trauma, but you still need them to know that the way they're behaving is alienating them and hurting other people?

How do you tell Kanye that he can make and has made better music—that he can be and has been a better person—than this? How many times do you say it?

How do we do it for our own people? Do we try? Or are we worried that when things turn bad they will blame us? How much of that alleged blame are we willing to shoulder until we can get to that point where, even when things aren't perfect every day, they can at least see that we want what's best for them—even if it means we want them to be better more than we want them to be busy?

As I am finishing this, I am on the official Kanye West YouTube channel listening to one of my favourites, 'Family Business'. In the recent comments of the video are two clear camps of fans: people who feel for the man and worry that he has given way to hatred and hurtfulness, and people who are annoyed at that first group of people for caring that much instead of just digging the music.

And I'm like, only one of those groups of people want Kanye to be in the condition he needs to be to keep making music, and they ironically care less about that music than they do about him.

Tasting Notes

I don't have much of a Tasting Notes today, other than the preacher-like instruction to turn your copy of Can You Sign My Tentacle? to 'Kanye West's Internet Bodyguard Asks Hastur to Put Away The Phone'.

Shameless plug, but if you don't have a copy, you should fix that:

A reminder that this newsletter, as well as the rest of my writing and game design work, thrives with your support. My Patreon is where you can find snippets of new TTRPG projects, exclusive writing drafts, and more:

Today's Tunes

Nothing new, but in an attempt to break a story outline (that I shouldn't even be prioritising right now), I've been rediscovering Sam Cooke, so this song is lodged in my brain right now.

What's On TV?

The Librarians: The Next Chapter

It isn't out yet, probably won't be until very late this year, and I'm very curious about both the delay and the move back to TNT when it was expected to be on The CW quite a while ago, but more Librarians has me excited. That's all there is to it.

The Leaves

So that’s all for today.

A reminder that you can help keep this newsletter and the rest of my work afloat by supporting me on Patreon, buying me a coffee on Ko-fi or sending a donation via PayPal, or by buying one of my small game projects over on Itch!

Don't forget to check out the Con-Verse feature on the Seattle Worldcon blog if you haven't! Finalists for the Hugo Awards—including in the Best Poem special award category—should become news any day now, so stay tuned to Seattle Worldcon official channels to find out more!

Also, my first piece from my new Rascal column should be out soon! More news will come when that happens!

Until next time, I hope you enjoyed the tea!