Bob Ezrin is a pretty accomplished producer even if you have never heard of him. He has worked with Lou Reed, Alice Cooper, Kiss, Pink Floyd, Peter Gabriel, and Phish just to name a few. He has been in the music business for like 40 years.
Also he isn’t a Kanye fan.
“Unlike other creators in his genre like Jay-Z, Tupac, Biggie or even M.C. Hammer for that matter, it’s unlikely that we’ll be quoting too many of Kanye’s songs 20 years from now,” Ezrin writes in the newsletter, which has tens of thousands of subscribers. “He didn’t open up new avenues of public discourse like NWA, or introduce the world to a new art form like Grandmaster Flash, or even meaningfully and memorably address social issues through his music like Marshall, Macklemore and Kendrick.”
Ezrin writes that West isn’t on the same producing level as Timbaland and Rick Rubin and that his songwriting “is sophomoric at best.”
West’s most notable achievements aren’t musical, Ezrin writes.
“Instead Kanye’s greatest achievements have been in the form of excessive behavior, egomaniacal tantrums and tasteless grandstanding,” Ezrin writes. “What he is a true artist at is living his life out loud – and shoving it down the throats of the rest of us whether we give a shit or not. He’s like that flasher who interrupts a critical game by running naked across the field. Is that art???”
“I lament for a world where being truly, world-shakingly excellent at anything – at least in the field of popular music if not elsewhere – is no longer absolutely necessary,” Ezrin writes. “You can be a star today just by creating a public life that people pay attention to. That’s it. All you have to do is be interesting or likable or shocking enough and you can have your 15 minutes of fame…even if that means that no one will remember you or what you’ve done in just a few years. Line ‘em up. How many “popular artists” have come and gone in just the last decades. In my mind (which is a pretty busy as often too judgmental place, I will admit) real artists make stuff that changes the world and LASTS.
Kanye didn’t take too well to this, which lead to another one of his Twitter rants.
https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/702352351118696448
https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/702352437697507328
FLIP THE PAGES IT GETS BETTER…..