The Swinging Bridge

Issue date: 10/2/08 Section: Entertainment

Media Credit: google images

Media Credit: google images

Last year his hit track "Stronger" flipped a Daft Punk classic into a chart-topping hip-hop song. This year finds Kanye West continuing to push the envelope-this time with ridiculously fast production and the first foray into interactive music. Soon after premiering the first single from his upcoming album 808s & Heartbreak as the closing song of the MTV Video Music Awards, he posted a demo of the new track to his blog.

Why is this important? Because he didn't just post the song once. After the initial post, fans from all over the internet stopped by to let him know what they thought. Comments ranged from "yezzur. amazing Ye." and "I love it!" to "whats good with the hook though, sounds like hes scared to sing lockdown", "why does it sound so weird?", and "I'm just not feeling the mix". Majority opinion-between the comments and response on other blogs-was that it was decent, not as good as the live performance, took some getting used to, and that the chorus could use some work. All this about a heartfelt song Kanye claims is his "favorite song 2 date!!" that he wrote only a week and a half before he premiered it.

But again-FEAR NOT-a mere five days later Kanye hopped back on the blog to assure his fans that their "prayers have been answered!!" and a new version was in the works, on which he added new taiko drums and re-sung the chorus. The following day the new mp3 was posted for the blogging public and received with almost universal accolades, or at least agreement that it was better than the original. A few days later it was made available on iTunes, shot to #3 on the download chart in its first day of sales and has since hit #3 on the actual Billboard Hot 100. This has potentially massive repercussions for the music industry, hinting at the possibility of interactive music with fans having creative input on their favorite artists' music.

After this fascinating process, music blogs all over the internet-whether from magazines, newspapers, djs, rappers, or ordinary people-went absolutely nuts. Kanye was accepting their input into his creative process. He has since posted the component parts of the song to his blog so fans can make their own remixes. First to hop on the train? Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz, beloved of 12-year-old girls everywhere, who-according to MTV's James Montgomery-recorded his own cover version in GarageBand on his laptop in the morning before work. Last time I checked, blog prettymuchamazing.com had four separate remixes up, culled from the rest of the blogging world.

This raises a lot of questions for a struggling record industry still reeling from Radiohead's choose-your-own-price online album release and a new grassroots medium trying to legitimate itself in a world of megacorporations. First of all, as Alex Blagg of VH1's Best Week Ever pointed out, "It sort of makes me wonder what Mozart's music would have sounded like if he had the whole Internet standing over his shoulder going 'That concerto sounds totally GHEY!'" But seriously, think about it. Is this the future? Are we as fans going to have partial creative control over our favorite artists' music? What does this mean for blogs and bloggers? And what does this mean for the struggling record industry? For these questions, I don't think I-or anyone else-have any clear answers.

Kanye West's blog can be found online at http://www.kanyeuniversecity.com/blog.

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