Dissect - S2E1 – Kanye West: The Elephant in the Room

Episode Date: August 1, 2017

We begin our season-long examination of Kanye West‘s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy with a brief look into Kanye's childhood and his rise to stardom. Follow Dissect on social media @dissectpodcast. Purchase Dissect merch at dissectpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to Dissect, long-form musical analysis broken into short, digestible episodes. I'm your host, Cole Kushner. On September 13, 2009, a 15-second sequence of events altered the trajectory of contemporary popular music forever. Yo, Taylor, I'm really happy for you. I'm going to let you finish. But Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time. One of the best videos of all time. I know, I'm sick of hearing this too. But there's really no avoiding its significance.

Now permanently embedded in pop culture infamy, Kanye West's drunken interruption of Taylor Swift's acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Music Video Awards caused torrential public disgust across the globe. Kanye was instantly vilified. The night following the VMA incident, Kanye briefly appeared on Jay Leno's tonight show to apologize. When Leno brings up Kanye's mother, Donda,

who unexpectedly died two years prior, Kanye is visibly and audibly shaken. Let me ask you something. I was fortunate enough to meet your mom and talk with your mom a number of years ago. What do you think she would have said about this? Would she be disappointed in this? Would she give you a lecture?

Yeah. You know, obviously, you know, I deal with her and, you know, so many celebrities they never take the time off. And I've never taken the time off to really you know, I just music after music and tour after tour and tour. And I'm just ashamed that my hurt cause, you know, someone else's hurt. My dream of what award shows were supposed to be caused, you know.

And I don't try to justify it because I was just in the wrong. That's period. But I need to, after this, take some time off and just analyze how I'm going to, you know, make it through the rest of this life, how I'm going to improve. Because I am a celebrity and that's something I have to deal with. Later, Kanye would write an all-capped pseudo-apology on his blog. In it, he says, quote, I'm so sorry to Taylor Swift and her fans and her mom. And later, quote, she's very talented.

I like the lyrics about being a cheerleader and she's in the bleachers. Later still, he says, quote, Beyonce's video was the best of the decade. Many took the apology to be backhanded. And based on what Kanye would say about the incident years later, it would prove to be an accurate assessment. Kanye's apology seemed less about regret and more of an attempt to get back into the public's good graces. But the world was not ready to forgive Kanye West. The VMA incident inflated into a global spectacle.

Celebrities and musicians publicly lashed out at him. He was the butt of seemingly every late night talk show joke. His national tour with Lady Gaga was cancelled. The president of the United States called him a jackass. The VMA backlash, his mother's death, and the breakup with his fiancé. would cause Kanye to temporarily abandon music and flee the country, a self-imposed exile, a much-needed respite. Literally left America.

I stopped doing music altogether. I just took some time. I went to Japan just so I can get away from paparazzi all together. And then in November I moved to Rome and just lived there. And then when I came back to the States, I moved to Hawaii and lived there for like six months and just worked on music again. I mean, what was good about going away? was it was the first time that I got to stop since my mom had passed because I never stopped

and I never tried to even, you know, soak in what all had happened. Or it's the first time I stopped since I actually, you know, made it since I started. And it was time to, you know, take a break and just develop more as a person, as a creative and focusing more on like my thoughts and my ideas and what I wanted to bring, just what I wanted to bring to the world. The recording sessions in Hawaii had a distinct purpose. there he'd concox scheme to once again win over the world. Because I really put myself in a zone that I felt like my life was dependent on the success

of this album. You know, and with that being the case, I say, you know what? No matter what anybody says about me, they won't. I can write something that can make someone that hates me the most have to really respect to love the song. To achieve this ambitious scheme, Kanye indefinitely blockbooked all three session rooms at the AVEX recording studio in Honolulu, Hawaii. Engineers dressed in reservoir dog-style suits manned the board's 24 hours a day. Kanye would import some of the world's best producers, MCs, and artists to form what he called rap camp.

He would rarely sleep, working long hours through the night, moving from room to room until inspiration struck. Yes, a seemingly silly incident at a useless award show would become a. primary ingredient in the creation of one of the most critically acclaimed albums of all time. Its 13 tracks are ambitiously scaled, a musical maximalism as yet unheard in the world of hip-hop. Within this sonic Coliseum, Kanye bears a confliction between his ego and insecurity, between the purity of his creative gifts, and his incessant need for adoration. It would be Kanye's comeback album, a universally acclaimed modern masterwork, the album that would for many solidify his stature as one of the most influential artists.

of the last decade. Of course, we're talking about Kanye West's 2010 album, My Beautiful, Dark Twisted Fantasy. Season 2 of Dysect will be dedicated entirely to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. There's certainly a lot to unpack on this album, from the lyric and thematic density of songs like Gorgeous. Hip-hop, just a euphemism for a new religion, the soul music of the slaves that the youth is missing, but this is more than just my road to redemption. Malcolm West at the whole To the star-studded epilactic fireworks show of All the Lights,

All of the Lights, to the album's vulnerable centerpiece Runaway. It's having toast for the douchebags. Let's have a toast for the assholes. Just having toast for the scumbacks, every one of them that I know, just having toast for the jerk-offs. Gotta never take work off Maybe I can get up a plan Run away fast as you can

My beautiful dark twisted fantasy Is an oral pageantry of West's uncanny talents As a producer, a sonic amalgamation of the four solo albums that preceded it. Thematically, Twisted fantasy is a loose narrative that outlines Kanye's rise and fall from public grace,

a kaleidoscopic meandering into the deep recesses of his mind, his fantasies. One moment he's, brash and confident, the next he's vulnerable and lost. This dichotomy is a reflection of Kanye's psyche, and as we'll see, it's a dichotomy that existed well before his rise to stardom. Our first three episodes this season will serve as preface to twisted fantasy. Today, we'll explore Kanye's early life and hard-fought ascension up the ranks of the music industry. On our next episode,

we'll use the track through the wire to examine Kanye's early production and rapping style. Finally, we'll take a look at his early dysography and detail the events leading up to the creation of my beautiful dark twisted fantasy. This will, of course, provide the requisite contextual backstory to twisted fantasy, which is so much the synthesis of Kanye's compositional skill set, his dramatic personal life, and his faltering public persona. But before we dive into our analysis, we might as well address up front the enormous elephant that's forever in the room with Kanye West. George Bush doesn't care about black people. Yes, Mr. West is a challenging, polarizing figure. I'm standing up and I'm telling you I am Warhol. I am the number one most impactful artists of our generation.

I am Shakespeare in the flesh, Walt Disney. Yes, his arrogance and ego are monumental. You know, he's got a God complex because he said if they wrote the Bible again, he would be in it. Duh, yeah, I would be in it. Yes, he's now married to a cartoon. Kardashian and one of the most famous people in the world, and it would seem that everyone feels some type of way about him. Some find him a musical genius, an inspiring cultural curator. Others find him a narcissistic, disrespectful asshole. Some can look past the shenanigans and enjoy his music unsullied by his persona. Others find it hard to enjoy or even give his music a chance, as they cannot separate Kanye's character from his work. This challenge is nothing new. Lovid van Beethoven, despite his revolutionary musical contributions,

was by all accounts a troubled, notoriously arrogant, and temperamental Scrooge. Worse still was Rickard Wagner, influential titan of the late 19th century opera music, infamous egomaniac, and a very public anti-Semite. John Lennon, famous for his peaceful anthems like All You Need is Love and Imagine, was physically abusive to his first wife, emotionally abusive to a son, and nearly beat a man to death over a joke. More recently, the sex scandals of Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, and Roman Polanski

make a second guess our enjoyment of their critically acclaimed work. Even historical influential figures like Gandhi, who held strong prejudice against black Africans, and Martin Luther King, who cheated on his wife, have blemishes on their otherwise very noble resumes. And so how are we to feel about admiring the work of those with troubling persons, personal lives. Does one's behavior or personal life affect the perception of one's public contributions? At what point do we draw the line, if we draw one at all? Of course, there's no unanimous answer here. It's largely a decision we make for ourselves. But in the case of Kanye West, whether you're a zealous devotee or a staunch opponent, I would kindly ask that all of us begin this podcast season

with as much of a clean slate as possible. Let's neither be prosecution nor defense. Let's replace judgment with curiosity. Let's approach Kanye West and his work like honest, objective anthropologists, seeking insight into our contemporary culture through one of its largest irrefutable icons. Because in a world fueled by digital narcissism, intoxicated with personal brands and celebrity, and where hip-hop is the most influential music genre of the day, I think there's a lot we can learn about ourselves through the musician, the cultural curator, the unavoidable iconoclast that is Kanye West. And so without further ado, let's dissect. Kanye Omari West was born June 8, 1977 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Two things about Kanye were very apparent from a young age, his independent, confident disposition, and a strong interest in the arts. Regarding the young Kanye, his father Ray West, a successful photojournalist, said, quote, he was always quite the character. Lots of energy, quick and dearing smile, you could really see a certain confidence with himself. His mother, Dr. Donda West, college English professor, adds, quote, He wasn't the greatest at playing with others because he always had to be the leader, always wanted things to go his way.

At three years old, Kanye spent most of his time drawing. By age five, he was writing poetry. After he and his mother moved to the south side of Chicago following his parents' divorce, Kanye attended an arts-focused elementary school. At age 12, Kanye received his first keyboard. He immediately proclaimed that he wanted to be a child. a music producer and rapper. While he didn't have the patience to properly learn how to play piano, he began making music,

and at age 14, he discovered sampling. I had my computer, and I was trying to draw on, and then I got a sound program. Like, somebody bootleg the copy of the disc with me or the sound program. I found myself just wanting to work on that all the time. Then I found myself, like, running home from school, because I have an idea, like, looking at the clock, looking at 2.30, like, yo, man, I want to get this beat down. But I didn't even know anything about sampling. I was 14 years old.

I went to Chuck Levens out in Maryland, and they told me, yo, people, you know, that do the type of music you do, they sample. I had no idea. I was just be trying to, I didn't know why my stuff didn't sound exactly like the stuff on the radio. But the sampler was like, yo, $2,000.

And for somebody who's 14 years old when you get an allowance, that was like $8 million. My father was like, yo, maybe you can save it with your allowance. I had like $20 a week. Like, how I'm going to save up for $2,000? So I'm just working with that. Then I found out you can get like a little 8-bit sample for the computer.

So I got that. And of course, the first thing I wanted to sample was James Brown. By age 15, Kanye was spending every spare minute making music. Kanye's mother had a friend whose son was a music producer, a man that would come to have a profound effect on the developing Kanye. His name was Dionne Wilson, aka No ID. She's like, yo, you ever heard of Common Sense? I was like, yeah, I heard of Common Sense.

She got a song called Take It Easy on the radio right now. He's cold, right? He's like, well, I know a friend of mine said her son produces for him. I was like, old word, you know what I'm saying? So she's like, yeah, I give you his number. His name is Dion. His rap name is like immense mountain, immense something. His name was Amit Slope back then.

So now I went over his crib, and I remember walking in there. It's like walking in death jam now, like walking in the Kevin's office or something. Like, that's the closest you could possibly get to the industry because they actually had something that you'd, heard on a radio and it was dope, you know what I'm saying? So, you know, he changed his numbers about a hundred times of me, but I always figured out how to get him. I'd be knocking on his window while he with his girl. So then I had to go out on my own at that point. He taught me a lot, but I had to take a poem myself to just listen to the music that was out there and

try to get my music as good as that. Through his mentorship with no ID and his unwavering work ethic, Kanye began to make a name for himself as a high school kid who sold beats for $50 to local MCs. All the while, Kanye was honing his craft as lyricist and rapper. After graduating high school, Kanye, who also excelled at painting, received a scholarship to attend the American Academy of Art in 1997. His attendance was short-lived, as he would transfer to Chicago State University, where his mother was a professor. During this time, Kanye continued to passionately pursue music. He formed the group The Go-Getters, in which he would both rap and produce.

An early sign of Kanye's unrelenting drive, he and others would protest outside radio stations with picket signs, trying to get the go-gator single, uh-oh, played on the radio. And make me a three-80s make it hotter. 87th Street A deep in a Cadillac Escalada that I just leased out with my pants freestown. When I pull the peace out, niggas like peace out.

Oh, oh, oh, oh. Why these niggas want to hate me, man. The go-getters determination paid off as the song became a local hit in the Chicago area. Kanye acknowledged his lyrical deficiency in his early days, but, and we'll see this time and time again throughout his career, he ever came his weakness with passion and perseverance. I'm always rapping. I had groups, and I was always the weakest rapper out of the people in the group. You know what I always be like somebody who really had it,

but they just didn't have a passion for it. But I had them every night I was working. Every night I just, like, it wasn't nothing that was going to stop me. Like, people would look up and say, yo, I just heard of Kanye. Like, I've been doing this since really, like, yo, telling my teachers, like, man, I might not even have to turn to my homework this year because I'm going to be fin to be signed this year, you know what I'm saying, back in seventh grade. A major milestone in Kanye's production career would come in 1998 when Columbia record artist Germain DePree use Kanye's beat for the song, Turn It Out. lose. All I do is when calls.

College Park is in the house. They call me gun, cheat, cheat, and I turns it out. Some y'all dread like lock get bred by the fly. Fitches love me and I'm duggy from the head to the slide. I'm too much to handle here. A man of the year. The production credit for a marquee major label artist exposed Kanye to the big leagues of the music industry.

He secured a meeting with Columbia Records in New York City. Kanye was so convinced he was going to land a record deal, the 20-year-old dropped out of college. Confident and all likely a bit cocky, Kanye was flown out to Columbia Records in New York City. The deal seemed to be in place, but in the meeting Kanye pulled a Kanye, boastfully telling executive Michael Malden

that he was going to be bigger than Michael Jackson, that he was better and would sell more records than Germain DePri. Little did Kanye know that Malden was actually Germain DePri's father. Kanye left the meeting, never to hear from Columbia again. Kanye flew back to Chicago, devastated. He'd gotten so close to his dream, only to see it slip away in a matter of moments. But Kanye used the setback as fuel and doubled down on himself. He would stop going to parties or clubs altogether to focus solely on his music every night.

Rapper GLC said of this time, quote, He ain't taken no showers, no haircut, no new shoes, nothing. He was just in front of that keyboard every day. Connie was more determined, more focused than ever. To keep the lights on, he sold beats for 500 to 15, $100, Ghost wrote for bigger producers like D-DOT and ran his own small production company. Through no ID, Kanye would connect with Kiyombo Joshua, aka Hip Hop, an A&R representative at Rockefeller in New York, the record company owned by Jay-Z and an imprint of Island Def Jam Records.

Hip-hop chose one of Kanye's beats for Rockefeller artist Beanie Siegel, eventually becoming the song The Truth. Connie considered the truth his angle into the Rockefeller camp. I feel like the first record, where I really got recognition for it, was the truth. Even though it wasn't a great commercial success, it's like I just really got that respect. Because I always wanted respect for my music. Like I told you, man, it's the real thing right here, man. I'm not trying to do this for a check, you know what I'm saying? So the truth means a lot to me.

Then that was a great record because I also formed our relationship with Rockefeller. Then the next joint was Can't Be Life. This Can't Be Life is a song produced by Kanye from Jay-Z's 2000 album, The Dynasty. Kanye first played the beat over the phone from Chicago to hip-hop in New York. Kanye visited New York to track the record, and it was then. there he met Jay-Z for the first time. This can't be life seemed to make two things clear. He needed more soul-style beats, and it might be time to leave Chicago for good.

For a long time, people are telling me, man, if you go out to New York, you could really get your music on, you could really kill the game out there. But you got your family out there, I got my girl out there, have my group out there. I felt like I had a responsibility to the city to stay there and help try to make it blow. But then it's like, straw after straw, until the straw broke the camel's back. I had two artists, one artist ended up leaving me getting signed and didn't get any beats from me. Then I had another artist and I signed them to my company and then he ended up leaving.

And when he was telling me he was leaving, my landlord came upstairs and was like, you have too much traffic in your house, you evicted. So I was like, man, at that point, if I weren't ready to leave by then, so I really thank God, That's another one of the situations where I knew that it was alighted. And automatically when that happened, I said, oh, I see what's happening. God don't want me to be here no more. Within a week in New York, a chance encounter at Baseline Studios gave Connie an opportunity to play a number of beats for Jay-Z.

The story is now the stuff of hip-hop legend. That was the key right there, being able to walk up in the bass line and play these rappers, these beats. I remember it was Beanie's birthday. And I came and I played a bunch of like, soul. Like we have soul beats here and there, but I had a bunch that I was building up. Like, just like the, from the success that can be life. I was like, I need to make some more stuff in this vein right here.

Um, so I'm playing beanie some beats and he gets the smile like, yeah, it's hot. You know, but he had to go somewhere. I don't know, he was going somewhere for his birthday. So then Hove came in. I remember he had a Gucci hat on like the fisherman joint and hip hop, my manager, who definitely saved my life. life was like, yo, play that one beat for Hove. Then he was listening to like, oh, it's crazy right here. Then he got to the chorus and the chorus was like,

ain't no love in the heart of the city. He's like, oh, oh, he's doing his face like that. Then he's like, play next beat, play the next beat. I play another beat. He's listening to it like, yo, man, you're a soul for do. And everything that Hove is saying is like, in stone, like I will never forget none of these words because I'm off the train. I'm from Chicago.

I got $10 in my pocket right now and I'm just having an opportunity to play these beats. So I'm, you know what I'm saying? I've had different show call hit records and everything up to that point. But at this point, it's like I'm just, this is like the moment of truth for me right here. So now I play another beat. Then I play another beat. Then I play this one beat and it was like, never, never, never changed. I never changed.

Yo, he took his head down. He's like, oh. I was like, yo, maybe he liked him. Maybe he hold him like by this beat. So he was like, yo, putting him joints on CD. And then he left out, right? I was like, okay, I'm putting these joints on CD. We'll see what happened.

So then two weeks later, the blueprint was finished, right? So basically at that point, everything started rolling. Kanye had five of the 13 songs on Jay-Z's seminal album, The Blueprint, a bona fide hip-hop classic. Among them was the track Izzo, Jayz's first top 10 single. Kanye's production style, which we'll explore in detail on our next episode, came to be known as Chipmunk's soul, for its utilization of pitched-up soul music samples.

Building off the success of the blueprint, Kanye's chipmunk soul would shape hip-hop sound in the early 2000s. After the blueprint, Kanye became one of the industry's most in-demand producers. During the years 2001 through 2004, he would produce for Naz, Cameron, Scarface, Talibu, Lee, Little Kim, Ti, DMX, Ludacris, Alicia Keys, Twista, Janet Jackson, Mo Steff, John Legend, Mob Deep, and many more. And while the majority of us would be satisfied with a very successful production career, including a stockpile of chart-topping singles, Kanye was not. He continued to view his production as secondary to his rap career that he was desperately

attempting to get off the ground. He would rap and play his demo for anyone who'd listen. Most indulged Kanye because they wanted his beats, but no one took him seriously as a rapper, largely to a suburban middle-class background and preppy attire that was at odds with the quote-unquote gangster persona so popular in mainstream hip-hop at the time. I was always rapping, and it just so happened that really, really phenomenal rappers got to rap on my beats before I got a chance to. So that pushed me into the classification of a producer. But I'm a rapper from the heart.

Like, I got something to say, you know what I'm saying? And people are like, yo, what you're feeling a rap about? You never so crack out your house and put a gat to a mouth and put your fist to your spouse. Say, how are you going to move the crowd? I bet a thousand that you get booed out. You know what I'm saying? Like now, the rap game has changed so much you go from Trial Car Quest to Onyx

to Swiss Beasts to Rockefeller to the bad boy and so many different sounds. And it's, you know, it's like almost playing like double dust. Like, where are you getting the game? You're like, trying to, like, yo, how does my style fit into what I'm doing right now? So I'm lucky that I had the opportunity to have a plateau to stand on now now now that my style of beats is the most popular style on the radio right now.

Indeed, Kanye would continue to leverage his production to expose his demo to industry executives. He met with as many labels as he could, often jumping on top of the meeting table to perform over his beats. As he liked to recount later, Kanye played for these labels Jesus Walks, the song that would eventually earn him a Grammy, and he still didn't get signed. In fact, Kanye was sometimes laughed at.

Rapper Hot Carl, who worked with Kanye in the early 2000s, recounts one such occasion. Quote, I remember one day while recording, Kanye played an early version of Jesus Walk several years before its release, to a room that included myself, some A&Rs, some assorted industry types, DJ Clue, rapper Fabulous, and Engineer Duro. As the song played, Kanye acted out in mouth his life. lyrics, something he always did while his own music played, and I assume still does. He acted as if a music video was always being filmed around him, displaying yet another

example of the unaware enthusiasm and egotism that would make him the butt of almost every joke at baseline. The song ended, some people shared some positive but subdued comments, and Connie left for the kitchen. A few seconds passed before the entire room erupted in laughter. A few people even mocked him, mimicking his rap voice and making fun of the over-the-top zeal. One major producer in the room even asked his assistant to make sure Kanye never performed like that again." Can we just quickly pause here and consider how truly remarkable Kanye's will and belief in himself was at this time? Seemingly no one respected him as a rapper. Rejection from label after label, mocked and

criticized by his respected peers, and still Kanye persevered and continued to follow his dream unpers persuaded by the rejection and naysayers. I feel like everything that anybody ever said in life would be a disadvantage to me, I'm going to make it my advantage. When I was playing basketball, everybody said I was too short, I'm killing them with the scoops.

You know what I'm saying? Everybody says, you can't rap because you're a producer. Okay. Oh, I ain't hear that beat. Oh, yeah, I know. I produced it. I just rapped on it before you got a chance to hear. You know what I'm saying?

Like, I'm going to use everything that everybody says that I can't do or, and I'm gonna flip it to the positive. Like, I look at everything as a glass half full and half empty. And it's like, I'm the type of person I don't hold grudges. Like, one of my best friends made a song dissing me.

And I looked at all the positive in the situation. I'm like, look, that's probably my name or more. He came to me like, yo, I'm sorry. Like, I feel like maybe a lot of the rules of hip hop, like a lot of the aggression and the negativity that people have towards people, maybe I'm not hip hop because of that. Because of where my heart is

because I won't confide to what people say. A lot of stuff, I feel like 10% of life is what happens to you, 90% is how you react to it. Kanye would continue his pursuit of a record deal, finally getting interest from a young 19-year-old ANR executive at Capitol Records named 3H. 3H met Kanye, loved his music, and convinced the higher-upset capital to present Kanye with a record deal. Of course, Kanye was ecstatic, but his excitement was short-lived. According to 3H, quote, in the 11th hour, head of Urban A&R felt that the producer-rapper thing wasn't a sure shot, and ultimately the deal got shut down. When Dame Dash, co-owner of Rockefeller, heard the news about Capital pulling out, he decided to go ahead and sign Kanye.

He'd heard Kanye's recent songs and was impressed and thought that if anything else, they could load Kanye's album with guest features from established Rockefeller artists. And so on August 3rd of 2002, Kanye West signed a Rockefeller records, and Kanye finally got the record deal he dreamt about since third grade. I'm not using rap as a way that I think I'm going to get paid or something. I'm using it as an opportunity to really say some stuff that I think needs to be heard that I think people will enjoy. I'm trying to give back. I want Q-Tip to hear my shit and be like, I can listen to this album every day. I want to give back to when I used to listen to Mob Deeb's album on the train with my headphones on. And that's what made the train ride feel like I was in the bends because I just had that album.

You know what I'm saying? It didn't matter what car I was in. It didn't matter if I was walking the street. It didn't matter if I was in the rain or what happened because I had the headphones on. I had that hip-hop in my ears. Like, it's done so much for my life. So until I feel like I could really, really give back, you know what I'm saying? that I feel, but definitely like I got to always show love to like

Rockefeller, D.D.D. Jermaine Dupree. It's a lot of people that's helped me in my life. But maybe now Rockefeller has finally letting me get to the point that I've been waiting to get to my entire life since third grade. Kanye began at once on his debut album, by all accounts pouring everything he had into it. Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that for Dame and Rockefeller, signing Kanye may have been more about securing his beats than actually putting out an album.

Rapper GLC recalls, quote, Dame knew Kanye was the best producer, and bottom line, he wasn't fend to let them good beats get away out of Rockefeller. He was right. Kanye's album was not prioritized by Rockefeller. To continue progress on it, Kanye would show up early and stay late at his production sessions. The phrase, nearly working himself to death is not hyperbole in Kanye's case.

After a late session at his studio in Los Angeles, Kanye fell asleep at the wheel on his way to his hotel. He crossed the intersection and collided head on-on into oncoming traffic. His face smashed against the steering wheel, breaking his jaw in three places. Surgery was conducted immediately, and it was questioned whether Connie would ever be able to rap again. Of course, Connie was able to rap again and did so sooner than most would have thought possible. In fact, he recorded a song while his mouth was still wired shut. after surgery. The song would become a bona fide hip-hop classic, the track that would eventually force Rockefeller's hand in prioritizing Connie's album.

Of course we're talking about the song through the wire, Kanye's first hit from his debut album The College Dropout, which we'll thoroughly explore next time on Dysect. Dysect is written and produced by me, theme music by Birocratic. If you enjoy Dysect, consider dropping a review on Apple Podcasts, tell a friend about the show, or share a link on your favorite social media outlet. There's no team behind Dysect. It's just me, and I can use all the help I can get growing the show. Follow at Dysect podcast on Twitter and Instagram and join our Dysk community group on Facebook

by Searching Dysect podcast. If you'd like to support Dysect, you can do so at patreon.com slash dissect. By pledging as little as $1 per month, you can help Dysk become more sustainable and help me offset some of the costs of the show. A big shout out to my Diamond Level supporters Evan Sweat, Sam and Chaudry, and Jonathan Hardyway, for their extra generous pledges. That's Patreon, spelled p-a-t-R-E-O-N.com slash dissect. Okay, and one last thing.

As many of you know, last season was dedicated entirely to Kendrick Lamar's to Pimp a Butterfly. I teamed up with a very talented artist and dissect listener Hannah Sellers to create a book. That book is called The Black or the Berry, and it's a visual exploration of a single song, Kendrick Lamar's The Black of the Barry. Hannah created beautiful graphic collages that accompany my analysis of the song, and it really enhances your experience and understanding of Kendrick's message. Seriously, this thing is absolutely gorgeous, a true piece of art. Last month, we launched a Kickstarter for the book.

Right now, you can visit kickstarter.com, search the Black or the Berry, and back this project by pre-ordering your very own copy. We'll be donating $1 for every book order to Social Works, a youth empowerment charity founded by Chance the Rapper. The Kickstarter ends soon, August 12th, so be sure to pre-order your book now. Again, visit Kickstarter.com and search the Black of the Berry. Okay, thanks everyone. I'll talk to you next week.