I am writing this blog for the sole purpose of making up points that I did not receive because I was not in attendence for class on the day that the other classmates gave presentations about music/their ipods/itunes/pandora etc..
There is a man. A man who is at once extremely creative and also extremely dim-witted. A man who has been called a "jackass" by our nobel peace prize winning president Barrack Obama. One who stood next to Mike Myers and stated former President George W. Bush (godbless him)"doesn't care about black people". And a man who, in his most wacky move yet, stormed the stage of the MTV video music awards and stole the microphone away from a tearful 19 year old country/pop singer - furthermore telling her she did not deserve the award... This man, Chicago's own Kanye West, has recently used an unconventional version of the internet/music relationship in order to promote his most recent, second-best album, "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy".
This fall Kanye West has been releasing one song available to download, free of charge, through his website each and every friday. These single downloads are leading up to the full-release of "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" on November 22, 2010.
By "giving" to his fans, Kanye is rebuilding an image of respect to offer to the mainstream audience(like the people who believe that W. actually does care about black people [see New Orleans, LA. August 2005]. These same people being the ones who watch/take stock in the MTV awards and say things like "you know I have to admit I really do like Taylor Swift...")whom he needs support from. (BTW I like Taylor Swift's hair)
It's hard to tell whether the friday releases, which he called the GOOD friday series, will have any noticeable effect on the profit margin for this latest album. But in our modern internet age profit margin on a single album is not the point. Kanye West is an image, a label, a self-titled renaissance man. His real profits come from this image, not from single album sales or itunes downloads. What is truly essential for Kanye is the self-perpetuation of this image. He has to stay on the public radar. His popularity with the masses is what keeps him and his people rich. The GOOD friday series was just another way of hyping himself (not to say that the latest album itself was overhyped because it's a great album). Like his past controversies, which could be argued are all 100% pre-meditated, the GOOD friday series was just meant to keep people talking, blogging, and googleing all things "Kanye West".
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