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Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Two notes on Kanye West’s ‘Gold Digger’
1. We start with Jamie Foxx, singing unaccompanied and in a high register:
She take my money when I’m in need
Yea she’s a triflin friend indeed
Oh she’s a gold digger way over town
That digs on me.
Then the drum-machine stutters, West goes ‘uhh’ and the song chunters into life with West rapping and Foxx continuing his singing. And a very attractive balance of harmonies is thereby achieved: spoken against singing, low-voice against high, many rapidly spoken short spoken syllables against a series of drawn-out lyrical phrases. But there’s a strange little step down involved in this; what Foxx sings after the music has begun is a whole tone lower. And instead of simply repeating his opening lines, Foxx now sings:
She gives me money when I’m in need.
Why the shift from taking my money to giving me money? The former is, of course, in keeping with the rather sour reputation of the song as an attack on women as money-stealing seductresses and vixens. The latter paints a contradictory and very different picture. Where’s the answer?
Ah. The answer is here:
Jamie Foxx’s only vocal contribution is the a capella introduction to the song, an interpolation of Ray Charles’s “I Got a Woman” (Foxx opens the song with the line “She take my money/when I’m in need/Yeah she’s a trifling/friend indeed,” a twist on Charles’ original lyrics, “She gives me money/when I’m in need/Yeah she’s a kind of/friend indeed.” A sample of Charles singing the original is repeated throughout the song).
So the drop in tone marks the translation from Foxx-imitating-Charles to Charles himself. But it creates an interesting kind of havoc with the theme of West’s song—the confusion as to how to relate to women. Foxx’s lines express the song’s reactionary outrage at the very idea that men should be expected to pay for the upbringing of their children (‘I know somebody paying child support for one of his kids/His baby momma’s car and crib is bigger than his’), or the neanderthal group-yell of ‘we want Prenup!’. But the sly, understated shift back to Charles’s original informs the song’s second verse, about a woman who sticks with her man as he works his way up, doing his washing, supporting him and meeting his sexual needs, only to be abandoned when he finally manages to trade his Datsun for a Benz (‘But when you get on he leave your ass for a white girl’). In other words, the song’s most celebrated couplet
Now I aint saying she a gold digger
But she ain’t messing with no broke niggers
is more than simple irony. On the one hand he clearly is saying she’s a gold digger. But on the other it really isn’t as simple as that. You need to pay a little more attention to get at the more balanced mode of gender portrayal.
2. The rhyme that made this song famous (gold digger/broke niggers), though striking, is not especially close, and palls rather on repeated listenings. But one rhyme later in the song continues to give me pleasure, howevermany times I hear it.
18 years, 18 years
And on her 18th birthday he found out it wasn’t his.
What’s so wonderful here is the way, in West’s delivery ‘years’ and ‘his’ rhyme exactly. Best. Rhyme. Ever. Or, at least, the best rhyme since John Joseph Lydon managed to make
I am an antichrist
I am an anarchist
into a perfectly rhyming couplet. Actually, come to think of it, perhaps even better is his achievement with:
I wanna destroy
The passer by
which also rhymes exactly. It’s halfway between on the one hand pronouncing ‘destroy’ with an ‘ai’ inflection, and on the other pronouncing ‘by’ as ‘boi’, and it’s wholly genius. But that’s another question.
Comments
My favorite part of Kanye West’s work is where he tells his audience not to go to college. I think that’s superbad.
College is, like, for squares man.
Is that really your favourite part of the enormous Kanye West oeuvre? There’s so much to choose from ... viz., in an interview with Playboy in January 2006 he asserted that if the Bible were written today he is famous and important enough to be included in it. “I throw up historical subjects in a way that makes kids want to learn about them”, quoth West. “[I’m] definitely in the history books already.”
Well, his second album was entitled Late Registration, which so he’s sort of admitting that there’s a bit more to it than that.
He also included interesting tidbits about college: “Forrest Gump mama said, life is like a box of chocolates / My mama told me go to school, get your doctorate / Somethin to fall back on, you could profit with / But still supported me when I did the opposite / Now I feel like it’s things I gotta get /
Things I gotta do, just to prove to you” (Hey Mama)
Kanya West? Damn, that guy doesn’t even count. Here’s perfection in rhyme, from Lil Kim’s suck my dick:
Bum bitches know better than to start shit/
Niggas love a hard bitch/
One that get up in a nigga’s ass quicker than an enema/
Make a cat bleed then sprinkle it with vinegar
You won’t find a a better rhyme than enema and vinegar. It is impossible.
That is a great song. Not Jones’ best, but in her early hardcore days, who - besides the Notorious Big - could even come close to the Queen Bee?
If we’re going to be nominating great rhymes from pop songs, my vote goes to Steely Dan rhyming “Oleanders” with “I can’t stand her,” in My Old School. If were not, well, that’s still my vote.
Doesn’t the drop in pitch mark where Jon Brion needed to put Foxx in key with the rest of the recording?
John Joseph Lydon, as is usual with anarchists and nihilists, probably had more actual religious feeling than most people who profess to be religious. When I wrote a poem about the sad appeal to nostalgia around the 25th anniversary of God Save the Queen (here, if anyone cares), I discovered during the process that it has lyrics like “Oh lord God have mercy all crimes are paid” and “When there’s no future how can there be sin”.
Laura: the only bit that Foxx actually sings is unacompanied, a capella, at the very beginning of the song; the rest of the refrain is Ray Charles’s original, and it’s a tone lower. There no need for Jon Brion to get Foxx in key with anything, except possibly with Charles, which is something he omits to do. It’s no big deal, just a small puzzle.
Bah.
Far better is MC Paul Barman’s “Cock Mobster”:
“I’m putting taxing long things in Maxine Hong Kingston
which brings in Amy Tan
She said, “Lay me, mon.”
Cynthia Ozick takes off her clothes quick and likes exposed brick”
Better rhymes in hip hop:
I wanna devise a VIRUS
To bring dire straits to ya environment--
Crush corporations with a mild touch,
Trash whole computer systems
And revert them to PAPYRUS.
-- Del.
She got a white-skinned friend,
Look like Michael Jackson,
Got a dark-skinned friend,
Look like Michael Jackson,
I play Ready for the World,
She’s ready for some action…
-- Kanye West
I’ve always enjoyed:
“Got more stories than J.D. got Salinger
I hold the title and you are the challenger”
--Beastie Boys, “Shadrach”
But De La Soul’s “Three is the Magic Number” is still probably the best hip-hop lyric of all time.
Conrad,
Well, Deltron 3030 is just about the best hiphop album in existance.
I’d go for this.
This and this are up there too. I’m not very up to date though.
I like the switch between taking and giving money. It reflects the way all people feel in relationships...they’ve got their guard up on the one hand, but on the other hand they know a good relationship can be a life saver. I never even noticed this subtle difference in the song before. I thought it was just a knock on women as gold diggers.