great showmanship using themes
and concepts central to the current
moment and climate of our collective
existence.
“Making money is art and working is
art and good business is the best art.
Being good in business is the most
fascinating art.” —Warhol
Breakfast Club might be that Kanye
doesn’t make albums for “the streets”
or for “the people” anymore, it’s fairly
obvious that Kanye doesn’t just want
to sell rap albums, he wants to sell
himself, his symbol, to anyone who
will buy it, black, white, rich or poor
AND he wants to own those images
statement, highlighted by much of
Magna Carta Holy Grail with songs
like “Picasso Baby” is his ascent
into the ranks of elite society, as a
cultured purchaser of sports teams,
expensive paintings, and designer
brands. Kanye’s latest statement is
rooted in his desire to be seen as an
The more exceptional you are, the more influence
you should have on culture and society.”
Like his heroes: Picasso, Disney,
Warhol, Steve Jobs and Jay-Z; Kanye
understands that being a good artist
means making the biggest impact
you can on culture and society.
“The more exceptional you are, the
more influence you should have on
culture and society” (Kanye on Bret
Easton Ellis). The aforementioned
businessmen, you can argue, offer
nothing “productive” other than
aesthetics that vibrate with the
masses. Art can be useful or wasteful,
political or not, there is no clear-cut
rule. However, how many people
your “product” speaks to is perhaps
the only measurement of a successful
artist that seems relevant given the
inability for art to be categorized
or relegated to a solid definition.
Art loans itself fairly willingly to
commerce and the laws of supply and
demand. Good art demands attention,
energy, admiration, or even repulsion,
which, like it or not, is completely
tied to economic value. As angry
as Charlemagne tha God of the
and ideas. His aim is to push his
brand into the stratosphere of Warhol,
Vuitton, Dolce & Gabana, CocaCola and other omnipresent brands/
personas that garner mass appeal. I
think this is a fairly reasonable goal
for one of the more successful artists/
creators of our age. Kanye’s message
and style is not limited to albums,
and why should it be; as Warhol
quips in his semi-autobiography, The
Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From
Point A to Point B and Back Again,
“You can do so much more with a
chair than you can with a painting,”
meaning, why should a painter
confine himself to paintings? Why
should a musician confine himself to
music?
Some will argue that folks like
Diddy and Jay-Z already perfected
“Business Art” as it pertains to HipHop, which is dually noted herein,
however I think ‘Ye is a new breed.
While Jay-Z is a more successful
business, man, his latest artist
elite visionary and “creative genius”
accepted by the Art World at large.
His collaborations with Bret Easton
Ellis, George Condo (My Dark
Twisted Fantasy cover art), musicians
like Justin Vernon and Daft Punk,
and cult filmmaker Spike Jonze, have
shown his versatility and ability to
be well respected by his artist peers.
In short, you won’t find Lou Reed
absolutely glowing about the latest
Jay-Z album. Jay-Z is a master hustler,
Kanye is an artiste extraordinaire.
Pop-Art and Hip-Hop
Andy Warhol and his fellow PopArtists, Jasper Johns, Duchamp
and Lichtenstein, are arguably the
forbearers of basic tenets of hiphop culture by virtue of their use of
sampling.
Pop Art n.: A form of art that
depicts objects or scenes from
everyday life and employs