This has been one of my favorite songs for the last 2 and a half months, so it's great to see a video made for the track. The clip is gritty and stylish but I really dislike how they drowned out Kanye's verse.
Kanye West combined two elements that would typically annoy anyone. First, he's crying about the price of fame and confusion in his life. Boo hoo I can't handle my millions of dollars! Secondly, he used the auto-tune which is irritating enough in it's own right..... However, I LOVED IT. Don't ask me how he pulled it off, but it's seriously one of my favorite verses of the year thusfar.
The sad part is... the emotion and breadth of Kanye's verse is lost entirely in this video. If you listen to the original song, theres a short buildup to the verse, and the vocals are turned up much higher. In the video the visuals and instrumental are at th forefront.
My Trusted MOGs
yeezy and jeezy...gotta love it. i totally dug the revamped American flag too.
My Trusted MOGs
"Auto-Tune" huh? Thanks. Next time I complain to someone how much I loathe this gimmick I'll be able to use the proper name.
According to Wikipedia, the effect was first perpetrated a decade ago, in a recording by Cher.
My Trusted MOGs
thats untrue... it was revolutionized by roger troutman (from the band Zapp) in the 70s and 80s. (i dont know who invented it, but Roger was the one who made it popular)
I don't know how familiar you are with funk music... but if you remember "more bounce to the ounce" or "computer love" or "cutie pie".. that was them. Dr. Dre, DJ Quik, and a boatload of west coast rappers owe a LOT of their success to Roger Troutman.
My Trusted MOGs
That's not vocoder? Not that I'm an expert, but they're apparently two different things. Whatever Zapp's doing here, it's preferable to most such gimmickry, in that the music is fun-loving and betrays a sense of humor (so why the hell not throw in a little gimmickry?). In a 'sincere' ballad, that pitch manipulation -regardless of the name it goes by- is the stinkiest of cheeses.
My Trusted MOGs
From what I've understood Auto-Tune was kind of like a "brand" of the effect... (like pepsi is a brand of cola, etc) but it was essentially the same thing.
I'm not 100% on that though...
Wikipedia uses the terms interchangably so theyre no help. If you go to the vocoder page, it mentions cher using it, but when you go to chers page its referred to as auto-tune.
My Trusted MOGs
It's possible that the fine distinction made somewhere on Wikipedia (I was jockeying around a lot so I forget exactly where) that Auto-Tune (TM) incorporates vocoder technology -but is not limited to it- is accurate. In any case it has the virtue of sounding more detailed than any other explanation offered there.
But again, I could easily live a full and happy life without either one.
My Trusted MOGs
The worst part about Kanye's verse here is that it follows two verses by Jeezy. I swear, hear this song all the time, and this is the first time I've actually paid attention to Kanye's verse. Normally after 16 bars of Jeezy (if not sooner), and that weak-ass hook, I've tuned the song out.