Liner Notes| April 2016

Manchester, England: The Detroit of England. Or is it Liverpool? Anyway, it’s got a lot of bricks and used to have a lot of industry. Nothing cool happens there anymore, right? Wrong. KENDRICK LAMAR, at an event sponsored by Reebok and Brighter Sounds, performed for some of England’s best and brightest young folk. But it wasn’t a concert in the strictest sense. He moved into the crowd and had freestyle rap battles with English teenagers. Watching the videos of the event, which are circulating online, gives one an insight into the vitality of hip-hop in the lives of young people, how it can be a force for social change and positivity in the way which Lamar has done throughout his career. His most recent album, Untitled Unmastered, continued several themes he began with his masterwork To Pimp a Butterfly. But he also explored new ground and has been receiving near universal praise for the work. This enthusiasm was evident on the ground in Manchester. The teens gathered around him, jumping and shouting and smiling. Even if the event was little more than a promotion for a line of shoes, this kind of audience interaction seems even more vital today than ever.

On this side of the pond, KANYE WEST is also promoting his own new album in an unusual way: By “fixing” it. Kanye famously tweaked The Life of Pablo meticulously before it came out, changing its title, cover art and of course its music several times, all in the public eye. It became a kind of joke: What will he change next, and why wouldn’t he wait until it was “done” to release details? Recently, he changed the track “Wolves” so that it featured a verse from VIC MENSA and vocals by SIA. Mensa and Sia both performed with Kanye West when he premiered the track on Saturday Night Live! one year ago. These changes also pushed FRANK OCEAN’s contribution to the track out of the song and into its own standalone piece, now called “Frank’s Track.” He also made slight changes to “Famous” and has signaled that he’s not done, either.

This is not the first time a band has changed or updated one of their songs. Bands and artists release remixes, live versions and other alterations on subsequent releases. In film, one has the “director’s cut.” In literature, Walt Whitman made so many changes to Leaves of Grass over the course of his life that today, undergraduates are just as likely to study how the poem changed as they are to read the poem itself. But what makes West’s tinkering interesting is the way in which, at least through TIDAL, he’s able to revise history. He’s able to not just release updated tracks, but replace the currently existing ones. This has caused various media outlets to ask age-old questions: When is a work of art “done” and does it matter?

Does West’s ability to change the official version of his album compromise the integrity of an album as an artifact of its time and a reflection of the artist’s emotional and creative state? I’m not sure. It’s 2016, so the old versions of the song are out there, lastingly lodged in the infinite series of tubes that is the internet. Fans will have access to each iteration that West takes us through, so isn’t it possible to see this not as excessive pruning or a distraction from new creation, but as a window into an artist’s process?

It’s not difficult for me to imagine a time in the near future when various versions of the songs on The Life of Pablo are held up side-by- side and studied by young musicians and producers. There’s a lot to learn from someone as talented and prolific as Kanye West. His perfectionism might irk some, but it will certainly help others.