A phoenix! In I Didn’t Mean to Haunt You, Quadeca contemplates his life and loved ones from beyond the grave. His new mixtape Scrapyard sees him reborn with Ye-like confidence. “Room packed out with the fans,” he gloats on “Guess Who?”. “They said I was naive … ‘cause they couldn’t tell a masterpiece from a type beat.” They don’t doubt him anymore: Anthony Fantano rates Scrapyard a coveted “light 9.”
Scrapyard’s “Texas Blue” features Kevin Abstract, who underwent a rebirth of his own on Blanket. He doesn’t want to rap on this project — a position reminiscent of André 3000’s press ahead of New Blue Sun. It’s this trend in music lately: a felt pressure to transform, with full confidence, or not be taken seriously.
Kanye West has exhibited that pressure for his whole career. “I’m 10 years ahead mentally,” he says, “and I am trapped in today’s time. Every now and then I’ll crack you a smile for 2013, but I’m cracking you a frown for 2023.” He was right — the avant-garde industrialism of Yeezus, which Ye owes to Gesaffelstein’s pioneership in electronic music production, sounds more familiar now than it did at release in 2013.
If Yeezus was meant for the ’20s, was Vultures meant for the ’30s? Probably not. But it might be impressive enough to catch up to the present while mainstream music feels stuck in the late ’10s (i.e. Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, 21 Savage). Tracks like “Carnival” and “Vultures” are decisive affirmations of trap influence in stadium music. Those of us who did not appreciate the experimental attitude of Playboi Carti in 2017 are now forced to reckon with the proliferation of his deliberately provocative start-from-scratch attitude in a hip-hop frontier more invested in the creative potential of synth design than melody. Since 808s and Heartbreak, Kanye has been a well-recognized authority on experimental hip-hop. His co-sign tends to be a reliable indicator of coming developments in the genre. His anti-semitism has put that authority in jeopardy — will it drive emerging artists away from his influence? It seems most likely to persevere through Carti, who has continued to closely collaborate with Ye ahead of his upcoming third album. It’s not like Carti is going anywhere; see the new music video for “Popular,” his feature with Madonna and The Weeknd.
I sometimes think that Charli XCX’s pandemic opus, How I’m Feeling Now, is the white girl Yeezus. It normalized the “hyper” in “hyper-pop” to redundancy; now you can have artists like Brakence and Ericdoa break into the mainstream. Crash, her 2022 album release, met widespread critical acclaim but lacked the avant-garde appeal of her previous project. “Von dutch,” her latest single in anticipation of the upcoming Brat, revisits her old industrialism without the vulnerability of How I’m Feeling Now. It asserts the mix and master as art-in-itself: excessively filtered drums, distorted vocals. One Reddit commenter remarks, “[T]he song is so hypnotic that it kinda makes me feel like I’m clubbing inside a microwave.” It compels you to dance with a consciousness of the technology in the music. She sings, “It’s so obvious I’m your number one; life Von Dutch, cult classic in your eardrums.” Her qualified musicianship is an essential theme of the music itself. Zane Lowe commends her self-assuredness: “It’s become an all-too-familiar cliche for artists to reject their music when it comes out … like, why wouldn’t you listen to your own shit?”
Critics have come to appreciate the kind of blistering self-confidence that Kanye West has heralded for years. The exception, as always, is Kanye himself. Fantano says of Vultures, “He is very apparently not sorry for anything he’s been saying or doing. … You can’t separate this crap from the music because it’s in the music. Look at the lyrics!” We should be interested in this position that lyrics have bearing on consumer ethics. Hivemind TV released a March Madness bracket of Kanye songs two years ago. Their commentary on “Hurricane” sticks with me: “He feels like he’s very self-aware and rapping from a place of really being distraught and getting it out there. Like the whole, ‘Architectural digest // but we needed home improvement.’” Riley Savage recalls that sentiment on Ye and The Life of Pablo, two of Kanye’s most vulnerable albums. At points of controversy, audiences receive Kanye best when his music is contemplative. It might not be a coincidence that Vultures, his latest critical failure, could be his least personal project in recent memory.
That’s what’s so promising about artists like Quadeca. We have, as Lowe indicates, grown tired of insecure music. We prefer an assertive artist, unafraid to shed skin. But being bold, apparently, should mean being candid. Quadeca, at least, is not afraid to speak on his insecurities, as long as they are sung with the utmost artistic conviction. From “Texas Blue”: “I’ll be honest // It hurts so much more than I knew // But who askеd you? // Who asked you?”.
Eric Han is a sophomore in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be reached at [email protected].