Love Lockdown - The Kanye Experiment

It's no secret that the way music is made, sold and listened to is in a state of reinvention and that many of the old models are getting shown the door. A perfect example of an old practice that's outstayed its welcome is the frustrating delay between the white-hot moment of conception - that original burst of inspiration when the artist believes in their new work the most - and the moment a recorded version of that music actually reaches the listening public. Musicians have bitched about this for years. They'll write a song, which will be demoed and set aside until enough songs are collected to amass an album. Then, depending where in the album-writing process the song was written, you could easily be talking a wait of a year or more until that tune is officially recorded. And once it is, it then has to suffer the time-eaters of mixing and mastering and - the biggest lag of all - the time it takes for a record label to lay the groundwork of promotion and tour planning. That last bit is usually another year or more, depending on the size of the act and how full the label's hands are. Sure, this kind of wait is a part of other art forms like film and books but, with pop music, it's just not necessary. And worse, by the time the music is finally being performed, the artist is bored with it.

In recent years technology has given artists and fans ways to chip away at that foolishness. For one, albums generally leak months ahead of their releases, allowing the faithful the opportunity to get in on the listening action early. And to combat piracy, more and more albums are being rushed into an online digital release first, followed by a traditional CD or Vinyl release a month down the road to tap the funds of the loyal few actually willing to pay for the tangible product. Radiohead have been one of the most vocal gripers about the big delay (among other things) and they surprised everybody last fall by releasing, online and without warning, their new album In Rainbows the very same week it was mastered. A physical release came much later. It was the first time that the enormously successful and powerful group had had the pleasure of giving the public something new to listen to that was actually still fresh to the band as well. By using the internet, they got some of their control back.

It hasn't always been this way. I just finished reading the autobiographies of Al Green and Quincy Jones back to back and they are both full of stories of singles that were tracked, pressed onto acetate, and shipped to radio stations the next day in strategic rushes. Stand alone singles are still released today, but it's so rare that the majority of artists are forced to wait it out and play the album game.

This has turned into an overly didactic post, when I really just wanted to write about something that has excited me: the saga behind Kanye West's new single "Love Lockdown." I should say, first of all, that I love Kanye. I love him almost without reservation. I love that he's a spazz and says a lot of off-the-cuff things that look idiotic in print. Half the time he's just having fun anyway and even if he's serious, I love the fact that in that moment he clearly believes whatever's he's saying. But most of all, I love his energy and constant innovation. I love the way he might be one of the only high-profile black artists willing to call out the black community on its blanket homophobia. There are very few public social or political stances that actually take this much guts. I love that he was one of the first hop hop artists to try something new with fashion and take it into the present. And I can't help but love that he's mining for inspiration in the mountains of my own nostalgia: Akira, Miami Vice, and '80s futurism. The bottom line about Kanye is that he has little to no filter, and it's that lack of a "waiting period" that makes the story of "Love Lockdown" so interesting to me.

Kanye has a blog which is updated all day long, all week long, and far more often than anything else I subscribe to. It's a regurgitation of the wide variety of stimulation he is soaking in on any given day. Lots of fashion, art, poster girls and, of course, music. And his readership is intense. A single post can generate between 500-1000 comments in a few days. He's used his blog not as much as a promotional device for his own music, or even as a journal of real-time experience, as a journal of real-time inspiration. He wants you to know, right this second, whatever is turning him on. And of course, the by-product is a promotional opportunity for him - a fan base of people looking to Kanye for a road map to the zeitgeist.

I said all that to say this. A few weeks back, on the evening of Sunday Sept. 7, I was busy working when my girlfriend called me into the living room: "Kanye's performing on the VMAs." (She knows I love Kanye.) I remembered hearing something about the fact that Kanye had promised to perform a new song at the awards show which he would release the next morning on iTunes. Within seconds my jaw had dropped. The first shock: he was singing, not rapping. And I mean singing. Some people said he was pitchy. I say he was feeling that song up and down and to me it was soul singing of the highest order. His performance began in almost total darkness, save the glowing red LED heart pinned to his suit's lapel, as he crooned acapella over a simple 808 drum heartbeat, clasping a microphone and rocking forward in time with his inflections. The tune itself had an old-time slave spiritual quality to it that reminded me of something Nina Simone would have dug up and reinvented. "I'm not loving you, way I wanted to" was the first line, obviously targeted to his ex-fiance Alexis Phifer , whom he had just publicly split with, and that topical urgency made the performance more electric. The verse kept it clipped close, but the chorus blew up. He belted "You keep your love lockdown. You lose," as a small army of ninjas weilding drum sticks sprung up behind a wall of taiko drums, pounding out a heavy, stark rhythm and his singing grew more forceful.


You could hear heavy auto-tuning on Kanye's vocal, not in a corrective way, but abused for effect, Daft Punk style. The autotune wasn't a crutch - it was responding to his voice in real time so that the harder he sang the more it bent his notes in the wrong direction - and all of his soulful embelishments came through untouched.

I don't know if what I just described sounds awesome, but man, it was awesome. Watch it here.

The next day that shit hit youtube and the entire internet was full of props for Kanye, everybody saying that he was the saving grace of a dismal VMA awards show. Kanye himself posted photos of the performance on his blog with this caption: "Love Lockdown... wrote a week and a half ago, it's my favorite song 2 date!! Go where your heart takes you..." I posted the youtube clip on one of my blogs and searched iTunes for the single, which didn't appear after all.

Then, two days later on Sept. 10, the single finally popped, not on iTunes as promised but on Kanye's blog. It was available as a stream which was not downloadable, and the post included artwork: a deflated red balloon in the shape of a heart on a typeface and plane background that played with shades of white and gray.



It was true to the modernist sheen exhibited daily in the architecture and art featured regularly on his blog. The art wasn't the only thing that stayed true to that minimalist impulse. The arrangement of the music itself was just as bare - only that 808, some digital piano, and Kanye's heavily auto-tuned vocal, with a watered-down version of the taiko drum figure that had made the VMA performance so propulsive.

Listen here.

Unfortunately, the recording paled in comparison to the VMA performance. In the same way that Kanye's use of real-time auto-tuning for effect was an interesting use of technology with a sense of immediacy, the release of the single online, smack in the middle of the buzz he created the night before with that amazing performance, could have been a major cultural event only possible in today's climate of tech-fueled culture. But it wasn't. This seemingly hastily prepared studio version of Love Lockdown kind of sucked. And the fans agreed. A gush of blog comments by Kanye's devotees (829 to be exact), which seemed eager to echo Kanye's enthusiasm but confused by what they were hearing, actually damned the track with faint praise. Or worse, flat-out told him that it didn't measure up to the live version and that he ought to go back to the drawing board.

An example of one of the kinder but disappointed fan posts was this one by "theinfamousamf": Thanks! Been checking itunes everyday waiting for it to drop. I have to say though, the chorus was more powerful in the VMA performance...but i think it is genius either way. Thanks again! Others were more blunt: ok....um kanye...what happened

I myself was really shocked at the frankness and honesty of Kanye's digital family, who were blatantly giving their hero a gentle thumbs down. Several online music sites and blogs linked to Kanye's stream of "Love Lockdown" within hours, and all, without exception, inferred in one way or another that, compared to the VMA performance, the single was a letdown.

I could only imagine Kanye's disappointment at having tarnished the public excitement he had just created with his phenomenal performance. Especially considering the fact that, based on his own words, he was still really feeling the song. One thing is for sure, he was in a foul mood the next day when, at LAX airport en route to Hawaii, he got arrested for assaulting a paparazi photog and smashing his gear. I couldn't help but wonder if the state of mind that led him to react that way was in any way related to the public flop of the "Love Lockdown" single.

On Sept. 12, the day after his arrest, he addressed the scandal in a matter of sentences on his blog. We back in the lab!!! I'm cool with the paparazzi. This guy wasn't cool. I gotta work now... I'll rant later!

The rant never came, but true to his word he did get back to work. And a few days later, posted this: Your prayers have been answered!! There's a new version of Love Lockdown coming. We used new taiko drums and I re-sung it... it's being Mastered now...

This was incredible. An artist of Kanye's popularity and single-mindedness was responding directly to the voice of his fans and reshaping his art to meet their expectations. He also posted a touched up version of the artwork with this caption: Here's the newer artwork with perfected type 4 all design snobs lol... Sidebar... if you don't like autotune... too bad cause I love it and have been using it since the College Dropout!!!

Dig the complete lack of filter! Kanye is demystifying the process of creating pop art. He's admitting he didn't get it right the first time and telling us the steps he made to fix it. He's making mention of the technological minutia that plagues all successful artists, but which most try to pretend doesn't exist so that they perpetuate the myth that fame comes easy. And to further push the power of all this real-time interaction, the song itself was a public grievance addressed to his ex.




On Sept. 16, nearly a week after the initial version dropped, Kanye posted his reformed "Love Lockdown." As promised, it had fatter, more kinetic drums and a re-energized vocal, plus a cool distorted effect on a bit of the verse vocals. It wasn't as energetic or as passionate as the VMA performance, but it was a marked improvement over the initial mix.

Check it out here.

The fans were feeling this one a lot more. g1n1sth3maN wrote: Damn Ye you smashed it this time...this is what I'm talking about, can really feel your voice now.
"§y§t3m 0verload!" And ilpadrino6 said: The song needed a little change and it has been done by a master...Awesome Song!!!!

The music-buying public was feeling it too. After being validated by his jury of blog readers, he put the track for sale on iTunes that night. It was a hit. The next day he posted a screen grab of the iTunes ranking with this title: WE WENT #1 @ 745 NY TIME!!!

Three days later it was still at number one, with over 215,000 downloads already.

The man is obviously energized. After just releasing his extremely successful Graduation album last year, there were surprised reports in the press during all of the "Love Lockdown" commotion that a release date had showed up on Amazon for a new Kanye West album slated for December of this year. Today, Kanye put the rumor to rest with a picture of him hard at work in the studio and this: I CHANGED MY ALBUM TO NOVEMBER SOMETHING CAUSE I FINISHED THE ALBUM AND I FELT LIKE IT.. I WANT YALL TO HEAR IT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE

I'm sure that Kanye could probably benefit from a little bit of self control, and practicing a cooling off period could have saved him from a few bouts of public embarrassment, but I for one appreciate his urgency and I predict that the way he has been working without a filter is the future of music and that people will look back on Kanye's methods as one more example of his innovative spirit.