Over the years, the hip music critics have easily mocked the Grammy Awards for rewarding kitschy music. See: Milli Vanilli, Best New Artist. Oops. But that doesn’t mean Kanye West gets to declare himself the new dean of the rock critics like Robert Christgau.
Kanye threatened to storm on stage and take the Album of the Year award away from Beck and give it to Beyonce – just as he stormed the stage on Taylor Swift because Beyonce deserved the Grammy. (Shouldn’t Jay-Z be a little suspicious of all this Beyonce defending?) Anyway, Washington Post music critic Chris Richards actually applauded West’s antics on Thursday, with a headline on how "one man's trash talk is another man's treasure."
Kanye West put an exclamation point on Sunday night’s ceremony with a post-show suggestion that the folk singer Beck relinquish his prize for album of the year to Beyoncé. “I am here to fight for creativity,” West said. Pearls were clutched....
[T]he invariable truth is that trash talk humanizes an artist in the eyes of their flock just as it demonizes them in the eyes of their detractors. But it has an undeniable and underappreciated usefulness. As NFL star Richard Sherman is asked to explain whenever a piece of beautiful garbage explodes from his mouth, trash talk is the most direct way to get into an opponent’s head.
In the arts, it might be the most direct way to get into everyone’s head.
Because trash talk clearly and boldly asserts one’s position in the world — and in the music business, far too many artists are terrified to take anything vaguely resembling a position. Pop stars need their brands to be universally accessible, but trash talk draws lines and makes enemies. Taking a stand is bad for business.
That partially explains why so many of us gasp whenever West speaks up. We’re more accustomed to vapid celebrity zombie-grunting, not passionate gushing about the value of art.
Richards thinks that West is an artiste. Whether or not you like his music, you can dislike these impolite and self-indulgent (and self-promoting) stunts, just as you can dislike his self-promoting comparisons to Jesus Christ. (Jesus was the Most High, but he was a "close high," West said.) And guess what? Richards also loved the ridiculous Katrina rant during a telethon about Bush not caring as black people die:
And while many often hear West’s trash talk as nothing more than self-serving petulance [because it is], it’s always about issues greater than him. Don’t forget that West’s televised broadside against President George W. Bush’s mishandling of the fallout from Hurricane Katrina back in 2005 still stands as one of the most far-reaching gestures of social protest we’ve ever seen from a pop star.
And how much money did Kanye West donate to Katrina victims? Was he building homes with Brad Pitt? Or was he just trying to get everyone to talk about him? The gushing continued from Richards:
And on Sunday, West was an agitator at a lethargic Grammy ceremony in desperate need of some agitation — and his trash talk was completely germane. West wanted to know why the Grammys consistently fail to recognize innovative pop music in its own time and he refused to sit back and watch history get written. It wasn’t polite, but politeness doesn’t bring change...
So why are the rest of us so quick to scold these trash-talkers and their supposed erosion of civility in our fragile public discourse? Not only do we live in a time that expects us cultivate informed opinions on the entire world swirling around us, we’re also expected to vocalize those opinions on various social media platforms over the course of a single day. And in doing so, we end up talking so much trash.
And while trash talk doesn’t give art meaning, it is excellent at triggering arguments, rumors and gossip — the very things that give us purchase on art. [Bob] Dylan and West must know this. They’ve made important work and they keep finding ways to steer us back to it. They want us to keep living with it. They want us to keep talking about it. They want us to keep reevaluating our position, over and over and over.
Their trash talk is a renewable resource.
Richards apparently thinks West is a much more significant and innovative than Beck. It’s not like Beck is on an hipster’s par with Milli Vanilli.
PS: I'd advise reading some Jay Nordlinger and Terry Teachout on music, if you like that sort of thing.
