Seth's #5- "Runaway" by Kanye West

Kanye West--"Runaway"

Seth

Up until last year, I thought of Kanye West as a competent singles artist whose work I wasn't terribly interested in outside of party mixes. With My Beautiful, Dark, Twisted Fantasy, though he reached an artistic maturity that is new and thrilling and heralds, I hope, a new direction for hip-hop and pop music. So let's look how it happened.

If we're being honest, the Kanye's stage invasion was the best thing that ever happened to West or Taylor Swift. When he cut the inoffensive teen star off in the midst of her acceptance of a profoundly meaningless award, he solidified his public image as rap's enfant terrible and made Swift seem like a paragon of put-upon restraint. While this has been good for Swift's ability to sell records, it hasn't exactly driven her to any new artistic heights (quick--name a Taylor Swift song that's not about weirdo crushes or slut-shaming) but it's opened up a new facet of West's persona.

Anyone even remotely familiar with the miracle of self-invention will realize that when you have an entirely constructed personality, you eventually begin to act based largely on what other people expect you to do rather than to fulfill your own desires. West's intense desire to sell himself as a brand culminated in his stage invasion and brought him as a character into mainstream America's crosshairs. I actually think West was surprised to discover people had such a strong reaction to his stage antics--remember the sight of him breaking down when the pompous human fuckstick that is Jay Leno grilled him that next week--but it ultimately caused him to create "Runaway," as chilling a look at celebrity sociopathy as has ever been recorded.

Starting with the spare, single piano note, the listener is immediately aware that this isn't West in either of his familiar modes: braggadocio or self-pity. Instead, Kanye takes a hard look at himself. The ensuing nine-minute breakdown is one of the most genuinely scary things I heard last year. It's the sound of a man coming apart as he looks at the distance between the person he thought himself to be and the person he presented to the world and realizes that most people probably hate him. On his guest verse, Pusha T (of my favorite rap group Clipse) absolutely kills and his confidence further deepens West's miasma.

I suppose that I relate a lot to this song because (granted, on a much, much smaller scale) I went through a similar situation when I realized the person I had aggressively tried to live as for most of college was a total asshole. (Also, I didn't relate to any line in any song this year more directly than "I don't know what it is with females but I ain't too good at that shit.") That, however, is a boring story for another time. What we can agree on here is that My Beautiful, Dark, Twisted Fantasy is the work of an artists finally capable of complex self-examination and newfound maturity. Keep it up, Kanye.

Andrew

I honestly can't name any Taylor Swift songs.

Can't Be Tamed?

Runaway is enthralling but is it good music? The Pusha T verse is solid but is it related to the content of the song? Kind of?

Kanye goes some interesting places in 'Runaway', and his willingness to hang his hat on a defiantly simple piano track is admirable but I'm still not sold on the song. For one, Kanye relies mostly on his singing voice, which is terrible, especially in the absence of auto-tune. And the Pusha cameo feels less integral and more tacked on than the more solid of Kanye's collaborations.

On a certain level Runaway feels necessary. I don't think My Dark Awesome Sexy Sex Dream would have been superlative without it. West needed a song like this to be reborn. The great, dramatic, self-reflexive look into his psyche is a staple of the album. But as a song, I don't especially care for it.

The video is stunning, the song is a dramatic diversion for West, but I don't love it. I like other songs on the album significantly better because they feel like Kanye using all his mad-genius superpowers as best he can. West should be applauded for venturing into such bizarre, dark, soul-searching territory but he ultimately does himself a disservice by trying to do depressing soul better than any of the myriad artists who excel at it.