Since early adolescence, the music of Kanye West has been critical to my life. In that time of storm and stress, his debut album The College Dropout spoke to me. The themes of family, self-consciousness, and personal struggles in that album made me feel something. The feeling I felt when I read Catcher in the Rye for the first time. Teachers told us not to read Catcher in the Rye when you're older because you start to realize Holden Caulfield is actually a phony too. The tool of comparison with The College Dropout is Kanye's fifth studio album, My Beautiful Twisted Dark Fantasy. After giving another listen to My Beautiful Twisted Dark Fantasy, I realized that I related to it far more than The College Dropout.
The College Dropout has all of the aspects of my high school experience. It feels young and fresh. It is filled with optimism amidst the struggles, hoping for a light at the end of the tunnel, praying for something better. My Beautiful Twisted Dark Fantasy shows significant change. It is my college experience currently. It is cynical, it is hurt, it is beautiful. To me, that album is real. You graduate high school where you were safe, pure, and enter this realm of anxiety and disappointment. The themes of hedonism in My Beautiful Twisted Dark Fantasy speak to my increased exposure to alcohol and romance. The rampant cynicism is strangely relatable, and that was the most odd thing of all. Where am I emotionally when I can relate to a hip-hop mogul?
Will I continue feeling like this? Will I realize that The College Dropout is the better album purely out of nostalgia? You never really know you're in the good times till you're out of them... that's my fear. I'm enjoying this mess of a time right now, but will I enjoy anything as much as this later on?
Love him or hate him, Kanye West is an icon. He changed the rap game. After the 1990's, a goldmine of gangster rap, Kanye made soulful rap. The College Dropout is bereft of the violence and drug use we loved so much. That's why we loved it - because it was different. 50 Cent's Get Rich or Die Tryin' was an anthem for suburban white kids like me. I fell in love with the ruggedness of it. The life I'd never live. The fascinating thing about Kanye's popularity is that we weren't sick of the gangster rap. We just loved the emergence, it was different. The College Dropout paved the way for folks like Drake, J.Cole, or Childish Gambino.
My cynicism often gets the best of me, but I don't see that disappearing anytime soon. My thoughts change every other day. It's fleeting, these feelings. That terrifies me. This truly is my beautiful twisted dark reality.
