The Barryfest Chronicles

Dear Kanye,

I spent Saturday night at my first holiday party of the season, so I unfortunately was not able to watch the original airing of the most recent Saturday Night Live, in which you were featured as the evening’s musical guest.  No worry, though, as I have been DVRing that shit since I first equipped my audio/visual set up with DVR technology almost two and a half years ago in my apartment back in Minneapolis.

I’ve always been a huge SNL apologist, keeping faith in the show even through the doldrums of the turn of the century with all it’s Jimmy Fallon-tainted misery.  Even then, when the majority of each broadcast featured Horatio Sanz in a variety of ill-fitting get-ups trying in vain not to break character and laugh while delivering terribly written lines, I found it amusing enough to keep watching whenever the mood struck and my schedule cooperated.

But with the advent of DVR, I got the chance to track the week-by-week evolution of the show as it morphed into it’s current, almost dadaist, incarnation.  It is still as inconsistent as ever, but now even the near-misses have their own unique charm.  There are very few sketches, even the really bad ones, that are a failure of both concept and execution.  In most cases, even if I do not laugh out loud at a particular bit, I can easily find something about it – ambition, ingenuity, or just downright weirdness – that I greatly admire.

So when I heard that you would be the last musical guest of the year 2008, promoting an album that is a perplexing departure from your previous work on a television program that is certainly a departure from it’s historical form, I was more than a little excited.  An increasingly eccentric hip hop artist providing the musical appendices to an increasingly eccentric late night show?  I couldn’t think of anything more deserving of a few minutes of undivided attention.

I didn’t get around to watching your sets until Sunday evening, but when I finally did, I was truly mesmerized.  You are responsible for, without a doubt, the most fascinating television I have seen in months.

I’m being serious here, Yeezy.  But I realize that such statements  – not only seemingly hyperbolic but contrary to the prevailing opinion of the blogosphere, which erupted with nothing short of a full on, old-fashioned brouhaha of snark I did my best to avoid until after I gave the incident in question a fair shot – would probably benefit from some addition qualification and disclosure, so here it is:

When you busted into the first few bars of “Love Lockdown”, all my synapses were still grossly misfiring, the result of a rough evening and painful next day.  I spent the tail end of the night before puking all the fine catering, Bushmills whiskey, and cheap sparkling wine I consumed over the previous few hours into my bathtub before passing out fully clothed; and then I spent the better part of the following morning and afternoon spooning one of my roommate’s dogs on the floor of my living room unsuccessfully trying to shake a hangover the likes of which I have not seen since November 5th with the incorrigible mirepoix of midday naps, Union chicory coffee and tentatively approached heaters.

To confirm my initial evaluation of the whole ordeal wasn’t just the result of a strung-out fever dream, I re-watched your collage of earnest (if out-of-tune) singing, sometimes spastic dance moves and over-the-top visual design a few times later that evening and again on a teetotaling Monday afternoon.

My suspicions were correct.  It was fucking awesome.  And I am sure a mercurial savant such as yourself doesn’t need a pep talk from a guy like me – you know, a garden-variety square with little to no knowledge of couture fashion, post-modern bedroom furniture or yatchs – but I’m going to lay one on you free of charge:  I like what you’re doing.

808s and Heartbreaks is a tough listen at times, and I was genuinely perplexed during many parts of your performance in Studio 8H a few days ago.  But the experience as a whole was helped by the fact that it was presented in the context of a show that was responsible for both the genius of “Lazy Sunday” and the stupidity of “Space Olympics.”

Like SNL these days, the conceptual ambition you show in your new record and accompanying live appearances can sometimes send whatever final product you are looking to produce spiraling into the overwrought, cliched or simply unpalatable territory usually reserved for the likes of Robot Chicken and the first two Girl Talk albums.  But when that shit works, as it did more often than not during your eerily beautiful showcase on Saturday night,  it can be a game changing thing that certainly has the potential to frighten and confuse the dreary, huddled masses bred on the mediocrity and predictability of the majority of modern popular music.

I’m not saying that your work with Autotune and a drum machine will revolutionize hip-hop as we know it.  I wouldn’t even really give a shit anyways, because if you take away the hundreds of hours I spent over the last year tracking down and obsessively listening to Lil’ Wayne mix tapes (or my current obsession with T.I.’s “Whatever You Like”), hip-hop hasn’t had a starring role in my life since I was in eighth grade.

I am just saying that, given your impeccable track record, I saw nothing wrong with taking a flyer on your new rap-and-sample-free experiment.  Christ, it is not like you were Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks trying to pass off Calling All Stations as a bonafied Genesis album.  You’re Kanye fucking West trying something new and challenging your legions of fans to do the same.  It is not your fault that they aren’t as honest as I am when it comes to admitting that, while uncomfortable at first, your new technique of melting peoples faces off turned out to be quite enjoyable after all.

Maybe you are simply way ahead of your time.  But fear not, Mr. West.   As I have learned over the past few years, you eventually get used to being way ahead of your time.