Harder, Faster, Better, Stronger

On Friday, coming back to Cité Universitaire, the 4 passed through Montparnasse-Bienvenue. The other side of the quai was full. Full understates things; full is glass with plenty of water. This was the fullest full. A crowd stood on the quai and spilled into the stairs leading from the other parts of the station.

Yet there was little anger on their faces, merely resignation. I have partaken of the same resignation. Today, while waiting for the 5 to take me to the Kanye West concert, I found myself with another crowd, which only filled half of the quai this time. We waited, we waited, we waited. This was a special kind of wait: it combined the stultification of waiting for the airport with the nervousness of the ER. I never knew whether the metro was going to come and I never found out; I left and searched for a cab.

Unfortunately, a cab entails its own set of difficulties in Paris. Place d’Italie, which is where I had been waiting, has a taxi line, which is a perfectly good way of matching up cabs that are empty with people who want a ride. Wait, I’m being American here. Cabs that are empty is the wrong way to describe potential drivers. Let us start with the chief difficulty that Place d’Italie avoided, which is actually hailing the car. Now, black people in America (by this I mean people who actually look black and are black, unlike myself) know that it can be hard to actually get the car to stop for you, which is something that everyone can appreciate in Paris. First, it seems as if all cabs leave their lights on, regardless of whether they have passengers or not. Second, even if they don’t have passengers, their actually stopping to take you appears dependent on whether they feel like taking you—after the show, at Nation, I must have seen seven cabs zip past without passengers and lights on. Once you have actually gotten the car to pull over, you aren’t out of the woods, because you can’t ask to go just anywhere, you must negotiate with the driver to see whether he is willing to take you where you’re going. I unreservedly prefer American taxis to Parisian taxis.

However, having said that, the taxi driver I ended up with at Place d’Italie turned out to be a wonderful Sengalese who saved me seventeen euro, had a delightfully warm cackle, and was an amusing conversationalist. She saved me seventeen euro by taking another girl, about my age, with me. The deal was this: the girl would pay for her trip to République, and I would pay for the République to Avenue Jean Jaurès leg (where Le Zenith, the venue for the concert is located). This was hugely beneficial for me and the taxi driver, and not at all for the girl, who at first pretended as if she didn’t have enough money (!), offering the excuse that she works fifty hours a week. Then, when we reached République, she promptly dropped a fifty like it wasn’t a thang. This annoyed the taxi driver to no end, leading her to laughingly insult the girl the rest of the way, “You can work fifty hours a week, but you’ll have to pay like the rest of us.”

Avenue Jean Jaurès was unfortunately clogged like a cold, which allowed a couple of Asians to hop on, slashing my costs even more. The taxi driver then joked about how immigrants don’t use taxis, especially the Chinese, provoking laughter from all concerned. But then they left, and the emboutillage was so bad that I felt compelled to run from No. 40 Avenue Jean Jaurès to 211 Avenue Jean Jaurès.

Once actually at 211 Avenue Jean Jaurès, I joined the current of the massive stream of people drifting down a tree-lined pathway towards points unknown. I assumed that they must be going towards the concert, and they were. But then I was confronted by another line, which was the checkpoint for actually gaining entrance.

It moved painfully slowly, so much so that it made me wonder what was going on up there. I guessed that it had to do with searching bags, and I jokingly thought that the only way the line could be slower is if they were individually hand-searching each person. So after flashing a ticket at a fleshy security guard, I found that exactly that was occurring. After submitting to my search from a gap-toothed old woman, I had finally gained entrance, and how glad I was.

*****

The concert was certainly the whitest hip-hop concert I’ve ever been too. Also, too, whereas in the United States, people wave cell phones almost exclusively instead of lights, the concert-goers of Le Zenith waved a mix of cell phones and lighters. The fashion was imitation American. All this is to say that this concert was heavily attended by the French.

This might perhaps seem natural to you; the concert took place in Paris, therefore isn’t it natural that the vast, vast majority of attendees were lily-white Frenchmen? To which I say no, it is not natural at all, in a way that was very clearly brought out by Common’s performance.

When I ordered the tickets, I ordered them mostly for the chance to see Common because I hadn’t seen Common yet. I was expecting a strong performance from Common, and we got one. Common attacked the concert with passion and verve and really got the audience on his side, starting strong with “Forever Begins,” “Go” and “Be (Intro).” Common utilized a very simple arrangement, performing in front of a white sheet, with merely a DJ, drummer, keyboardist and gofer backing him up (whose sole duty seemed to be bringing in fresh towels for Common to towel himself off in his snatched-instants-long breaks).

This last paragraph, actually, was not clear at all why it is not natural at all why it is a bit strange that the audience (which admittedly was smaller than the eventual audience, which I will blame on the overzealous security, the strike and the remote location—the concert is in the nineteenth arrondisement in the northwest of Paris) should be Frenchmen who responded relatively well to the concert, but I’ll attempt to show why it was pretty strange. The aforementioned three songs are great, three of the best in Common’s catalogue in my opinion. They are all hits, and deservedly so. What Common is doing right now is to me one of those miracles of artistry, as he is an intellectually substantive rapper who is producing hits and endorsing the Gap, which is a triad that not many rappers have achieved (at best you can get two). Common absolutely does not condescend to the audience.

However, once Common shifted to songs that are critic’s favorites but not popular favorites, the crowd became slightly less response. Few people know “Paid in Full” by Eric B. & Rakim, and while “I Used to Know H.E.R.” made Common’s critical reputation, it was not a huge hit. Even Nas’ “N.Y. State of Mind” rebranded as “Paris State of Mind” put in a medley with “The Corner” produced little plaudits from the people (well, except from me—I loved it).

That’s why it’s a bit strange to me, to hear the Parisian crowd thrilling to my favorites “The Light” and “Drivin’ Me Wild,” to name two other examples from the concert. As a genre, Rap, for all the criticism directed at it to the contrary, is powerfully connected to the language, perhaps the most powerfully connected to language of any form of art. Because rap must be played over a fast-moving beat and comprehended at speed, it demands a level of efficiency from writer and a level of investment from listener unparalleled lyrically. So you have to be really, really good with language to produce good rap, and in turn, to appreciate rap, you must appreciate the particular form of English that rappers speak. It’s a language-intensive enterprise. Not to diss the French here—their English is far better than our French—but few French that I have met have the fluency with English to really get the references that rappers make on a line-by-line basis.

I’m probably being too elitist here—Americans, too, don’t get everything out of rap that they should, whether from prejudice or laziness—but still, the basic issue remains, why would the French appreciate the most language-intensive of all contemporary American music?

What was always true is the audience loved when Common lived up to his name and showed the common touch. High-fiving the audience is always an easy way to obtain cheers, but the audience really responded to “The People,” I think in part because of the title. That might be what these French love about rap. They like that the genre is the most democratic of all: all it requires is someone with a voice who can organize words rhythmically in time, and the listener gets out what he puts in, a kind of citizenship of music.

For me, having listened extensively to Common, I appreciated the passion, variations on his own music, and general showmanship that he brought to the table. I’m surprised that he was willing to be the opening act to Kanye West, but he probably wanted to build his brand in Europe, and that was a smart move. He left and we waited for Kanye.

****

Kanye came preening, which is a typical move. He entered through fake smoke. It was pretty cocky, of course, but that’s Kanye, of course.

The whole cockiness issue does not sit well with some, but I’ve always accepted, because he makes great music. It was only during this concert that I realized how non-disposable it was, how much a part of his narrative his arrogance is.

The narrative of Kanye is a kind of bildungsroman. His points of departure, and consequently his touchstones, are these: college (he’s a college dropout, haven’t you heard?), Chicago, his mother and the car crash. In dropping out of college to follow his dreams, he embarked on a typically American journey. That, his mother and Chicago, all of them must be honored, and hence his journey. It’s no wonder that many of his stories reference some sort of journey or height that must be ascended (“Jesus Walks”, “Spaceship” [Quote from concert: “One of my favorite songs”], “Touch the Sky”) in order for Kanye to prove himself worthy of his rewards. But the next question is, are the rewards I’m receiving the proper ones? (“All Falls Down”, “Can’t Tell Me Nothing”, “Diamonds From Sierra Leone”, “Gold Digger”) Do I care more about monetary or spiritual validation? That Kanye, like many athletes, chooses to portray himself as a constant underdog despite his evident successes (“Take this, haters!” he cries in “Stronger,” before saying “Now that that don’t kill me/Can only make me stronger”), may show that all rewards, whether spiritual or temporal, are transitory in the Buddhist mode. (Actually, one psychological experiment shows that people’s happiness, after a great gain, always regresses to the mean, leaving one always wanting more, more, more.)

That Kanye is arrogant and shows it is meant to display that he’s earned it. It’s true, he’s made great music. Few popular artists display as rich a command of musical idiom that Kanye does: for “Spaceship,” he started, with a backing bass guitar, in a blues confessional mode, shifted to a conventional rap, introduced his band in a jazzy-funk-rock mode, with each member taking their solos in turn. His latest album utilizes techno and electronica; Late Registration embraced the orchestral like few rap albums before it. Kanye is voraciously cosmopolitan, and that, I think, is the successful root of his arrogance: it is meant to convey that he has considered all options along his journey, he has consumed all materials, and this is what he likes and he absolutely knows what he likes and doesn’t care whether you like it or not. Put another way, his arrogance is his integrity. And while it lands him in public trouble, it is the source of his success, for he is absolutely confident in what he knows and is therefore willing to experiment broadly and hence succeed grandly.

Because Kanye West is one of the most formidable hitmakers of recent times. Even if you leave aside his producing career (good enough, that), and just consider his solo career, here are the songs in the concert that produced appreciative roars of recognition: “Through the Wire”, “Jesus Walks”, “Get ‘Em High”, “All Falls Down”, “Gold Digger”, “Diamonds From Sierra Leone”, “Stronger”, “Can’t Tell Me Nothing”, “Good Life”, “Champion”, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten some. That’s a pretty damn good list right there, and think about the variety of musical styles represented there. That’s impressive, and it’s all due to Kanye’s integrity and his trust in his touchstones as representing as where he’s come and where he must go.

But he has lost one of his touchstones. His mother died recently. It came out during the concert. “Hey Mama” began playing, and the band went on like everything was going to be OK, and the light shone down on Kanye, and he just stood there rooted for a second and it looked as if he were merely waiting for the beat to ride out until his entrance until his hand came up to his eyes to cradle his face. The vocalists stopped singing and came to comfort him and the DJ and keyboardist joined them and formed a huddle shutting him from the world and I knew, just knew that it must have been the greatest of emotional fissures opening in his soul right at that moment.

****

That is not all, but it is much of what I wanted to write. More tomorrow.