Pitchfork

Photos by Joseph Mohan

Today we conclude our coverage of Lollapalooza 2008. 

For Joshua Klein's coverage, click here: Friday, Saturday, Sunday
For Amy Phillips' coverage, click here: Friday, Saturday, Sunday
For Scott Plagenhoef's coverage, click here: Friday
For Matthew Solarski's coverage, click here: Friday, Saturday, Sunday

Despite weeks of rumors to the contrary, Barack Obama did not show up to introduce anyone at Lollapalooza. It was, to say the least, a wise move: The presumptive Democratic nominee would have gained nothing from the event, and with the John McCain campaign gaining traction with an ad blitz that attempts to flip Obama's popularity on itself and paint his appeal as that of frivolous celebrity rather than politician, leader, or statesman, appearing at a music festival-- no less one whose big headline-grabbing guest to date was Lindsey Lohan-- would have just provided his opponent more ammunition.

Unfortunately, in the wake of the Ludacris mixtape fiasco, it also would have provided Obama numerous additional associative dangers, opening him up to be tarred with the lyrics and actions and thoughts of anyone else who appeared on the Lollapalooza stages this weekend. This would have been bad enough before boneheaded, self-absorbed Rage Against the Machine fans decided to associate civil disobedience with a total disregard for safety and security, but their actions effectively made it impossible. (As our friend and former colleague Brent DiCrescenzo said in his Time Out Chicago blog: "when Zach de la Rocha complains about 'cops and politicians' at a concert where cops on horseback protected people from injury, it deserves a hearty round of Shut The Fuck Up.")

Kanye West is another artist that self-appointed cultural watchdogs would have loved to associate with Obama. The political right has done an excellent job of keeping its own mouthpieces quiet on the subject of race, gamely ignoring it. One could argue that turning a blind eye toward race (and the lower- and middle-class) isn't restraint so much as an extension of their basic political policies, however-- as famously articulated by West himself. In a country in which serious debates and discussions about complex, multi-level issues such as racial disharmony don't take place, Obama simply couldn't introduce the guy.

Tonight, therefore, it was literally all Kanye. There was no parade of guest stars, as there had been at West's 2006 Lollapalooza appearance. There was no A-Trak, or any other DJ for that matter, and therefore no chunks of time in the set given to bits of records that West produced or grew up with, as there has been at previous shows. Even West's large band-- there seemed to be eight or nine of them, many inexplicably wearing some sort of visor helmet that never served a purpose-- spent the evening clouded in smoke and shadows. Instead, as on the Glow in the Dark Tour, we got 90 relentless minutes of West.



The show's first 25 minutes were performed almost as a non-stop suite, with a headstrong West virtually attacking the crowd and setting the tone for a night in which he seemed dedicated, in the wake of the Bonnaroo disaster, to proving his credentials as a hard-working showman. The one moment in which someone other than West took center stage was his band's abbreviated performance of Journey's "Don't Stop Believing" sandwiched between "Hey Mama" and the show-closing "Stronger". With West nodding and smiling and basking in the moment, it almost seemed like some kind of redemption for the guy, and a weird reminder to himself to not rest on his laurels. (Journey were everywhere on Sunday: That same song closed the Gnarls Barkley set, and Girl Talk ended his show with "Faithfully".)

The set itself was a mix between West's darker tracks and/or moments of self-examination ("Can't Tell Me Nothing", "Jesus Walks", "Flashing Lights", "Diamonds From Sierra Leone", a version of "Get 'Em High" in which his voice was filtered through some sort of anti-Auto-Tune that turned it into a deep baritone), Kanye as motivational speaker ("Champion", "Touch the Sky", "Through the Wire", "I Wonder"), and Chicago-centrism ("Homecoming", "Put On", "Hey Mama", plus "Diamonds" opening with a JumboTron shot of the Chicago skyline's distinctive, diamond-shaped Smurfit-Stone Building.) The only outright pop songs performed were "Gold Digger", "Good Life", and "Stronger". Knowing this audience, he made shout outs to the North Side alongside the usual ones for the South and West. (He also may as well have thrown in the North Shore, since a large part of the crowd seemed to be from the affluent burbs.)



West's band, despite being shrouded, deserves a lot of credit for the show's success. As entertaining as A-Trak is live, West now performs like a rock artist rather than a hip-hop one-- his songs, sonically richer than the work of most of his peers, are better suited for it, and his use of a full band means the entire sound isn't just coming from one place. The big criticism of West's production style-- that it lacks an emphasis on rhythm-- weirdly becomes a strength live. Rather than the quickly fired-off and clipped runs through tracks that often characterize hip-hop shows-- a hook from the DJ, a verse or two, onto the next one-- West and his group extended his songs like an art-pop band. His musicians created big swathes of swelling sound, washes and builds and lush expanses that allowed West himself to roam around and, after that bullying opening 25 minutes, begin to inject his personality and ego into the tracks rather than into between-song speeches.

It's what could be classified as the egomania portion of the show that is likely getting headlines today. West at one point went on to ask artists to "push the envelope, advance the design." He rather clumsily went on to point out that in other fields-- some guy in the 70s had a computer the size of a room, and dreamt one day he'd have one inside a phone was his wtf example-- accomplishing something new is always a goal. He also lamented that, unlike in other fields, the greats of music history are placed too high on a pedestal, that contemporary artists and fans are conditioned to believe that they've missed the chance to live in extraordinary cultural times, that their work and their heroes will never live up to those from the past-- a condition that has made cyclical revivalism rather than progression the norm. (Yes, I get the irony that a hip-hop artist would make the complaint.)

OK, I get that this is the Kanye West that people hate, but...hey, he's right. What's more, his cockiness, his drive-- this is exactly what makes Kanye West the world's best pop star. It's what makes him one of the few capital-I Important people making big, communicative music. It's what drives him to experiment and explore with his sound, to seek and assimilate ideas from relatively unusual sources such as Jon Brion or Ed Banger. It's what makes him-- between his "SNL" freestyle, his stage-storming showdown with Justice, his "Stronger"/"Hey Mama" Grammy performance, and that very real and, yeah, brave Katrina reaction-- the only current pop star worth watching at every turn. He's the one figuratively off his publicist's leash ("figuratively" because Def Jam seem smart enough to not to try to box the guy in); he's the one making big gestures and trying to engage with the whole of the world in very demo-split times.



Over the past few years, we've watched West and his regular-guy shtick be replaced by naked ambition and superstardom, two things that are offensive to many listeners who simply want their musicians to be approachable. We need a balance though, and even though it's hilarious and disturbing to many that West admits that he wants to be bracketed with James Brown, John Lennon, and Jimi Hendrix-- as he did last night-- if not him, who? For all the cheers that are accompanying the major-label hara-kiri this decade, the destruction of the pop star, of the imagination-jarring entry-level musician, will be the quickest route to ensuring that your kid's exposure to music will be limited to songs attached to other mediums: gaming, film, TV, internet, ads-- four out of five of which are arguably already more central to youth and pop culture than music itself.

And part of the fascination of watching West grow in the past few years, is that, well, he's grown. He's a naturally curious guy who has wrestled with fame or fortune or status and intertwined those experiences into his music-- not through a series of shell games, as Eminem did, but in very transparent and honest ways. One result is that he sometimes fucks up-- the guy is willing to look foolish, he's willing to be human, he's willing to be who he is at any given moment rather than who he wants to project.

The thing lost in West's braggadocio-- which has curbed since the Justice incident, actually-- is that he turns his accomplishments into motivational speeches, adding to his "I did it" ethos a sort of "and you can too." His "let's push music forward" functions as a chart pop version of music's DIY pleas-- not necessarily, "do it all on your own," but "go out and produce something" or are the very least "insist on something more than you're being given." Oddly then, West's talking points and his globally curious approach to his work echo the political phrasing of Obama-- and, just as with West, the ambition and drive of Obama is oddly dismissed as elitism or arrogance.

West has allowed his fame to open doors for himself, exploring fashion, architecture, music, travel, and design. It's a stark contrast to the willful incuriosity of those who use their money as a shelter and shrink their world. That same willful incuriosity has, of course, poisoned the policymaking of the U.S. Despite McCain's Obama-as-celeb ads, it's the current administration that instead reflects the self-absorbed, inward-turning, restrictive Spears/Hilton reaction to wealth and power. George W. Bush himself is an Ivy Leaguer from a dynastic political family, he's not a "regular guy"; yet somehow being giving every tool with which to succeed in life and then instead stumbling through much of his adulthood made him approachable and real rather than ill-equipped to lead. Meanwhile, the relative accomplishments and pursuits of excellence from fellow Ivy Leaguers and birth-lottery winners Al Gore and John Kerry were "elitist" and out of touch. (OK, they were also terrible, terrible campaigners.) Somehow, so too now is the bootstrap-pulling efforts of Obama.

Obviously, West is no Obama, and pop music is not politics (and sorry for the soapboxing but 13 weeks before a general election, this stuff should permeate far more of our time and thoughts), but outside of just geography, class, and race, the position each plays within his field is similar-- the internationalist who actually looks beyond our borders when their peers are more focused on regionalism; the unifier who seeks to appeal to all demographics in a culturally Balkanized America; individuals who risk alienating people by saying they have aspirations for themselves, and therefore for the rest of the country, to do and be better. Weirdly, they're each also getting blasted for those same shared impulses.