Dissect - S2E11 – Runaway by Kanye West (Part 1)

Episode Date: October 17, 2017

We continue our serialized analysis of Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by dissecting "Runaway." Follow Dissect on social media @dissectpodcast. Purchase Dissect merch at dissectpodcast.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone. Before you jump into the show, I wanted to quickly let you know that Dysack Season 2 merchandise is now available for pre-order. This season, I've teamed with Rocky Clark Clothing, a sustainable streetwear brand in New York, and we've created a long-sleevee tea and dad hat, with graphics inspired by my beautiful dark twisted fantasy. Seriously, these things came out really clean. I think you'll really dig them. And what's more is that we're donating 100% of the profits made from this apparel to Donda's house, the Chicago creative youth initiative began by Kanye's friend Rimefest and named after Kanye's mother, Dr. Donda West. To order your shirt or hat and support this great cause, go to rocky clarkclothing.com.

That's rocky clarkclothing.com. I'll also have links on my social media outlets at Dysect podcast if that's easier. Okay, thanks for your time. Enjoy today's show. Welcome to Dysect, long-form musical analysis broken into short digestible episodes. I'm your host, Cole Kushna. Today, we continue our examination of my beautiful dark twisted fantasy by Kanye West. On our last episode, we dissected Devil in a New Dress, a track that found Kanye involved with the woman he coined his sensation. As you'll remember, we heard how their mutual attraction deteriorated over the course of the song,

with the two no longer on speaking turns by the song's end. Our last episode concluded by looking at the final measures of Devil in a New Dress and bringing to light its unresolved ending, an ascending piano build that abruptly stops without warning. This ending, combined with the tonal ambiguity throughout Devil in a New Dress, and Bues the track with an anxiety and uncertainty that's masked by the romance of lest strings and sultry guitar. It's a fitting musical metaphor for the song's theme of uncertainty and resentment towards a woman he once thought was gorgeous and irresistible. But if you'll remember, we also saw how our perception of both the harmonic and thematic ambiguity of Devil in a New

Dress changed when we considered the album's next track, how the next track provided both tonal resolution with its iconic opening piano lines, while also providing thematic resolution to Kanye's confusion over why his sensation left him. Of course, we're talking about My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy's nine-minute emotional centerpiece, a masterful stroke in music history, and the subject of today's episode, Runaway. Runaway is produced by Kanye West, with additional production by Emil Haney, Jeff Basker, and Mike Dean. The initial brushstrokes of the track belonged to Emil Haney, who was at the Hawaiian sessions working with Kid Cuddy on Man on the Moon too. Regarding the creation of Runaway, Amil told Complex magazine, quote,

That song is just the perfect example of the brilliance of Kanye West as a producer, and I got to witness that dude's genius. It was late one night, and we were hanging out, and Connie asked if I had any beats, and I started playing him some beats, pretty low, no big deal, and we're just chilling playing some beats. I didn't know if I had anything that great, because his album's production was coming out so fucking next level. I had a beat and I played it and it was the foundation of Runaway.

It was pretty different from the production now. The chord progression or the way I put the chords together must have rung out to him. It was pretty amazing to watch. He heard the beat once, then asked the guy to play it one more time and then it was just like, okay, put it in Pro Tools. And when he said that, the room was like, oh shit. He probably had listened to the beat for four minutes and got in the booth and almost verbatim to what's on the song today just did it.

I don't know if he wrote it in his head in those four minutes, but he just got in the booth and was like, yeah, always fine, yeah, always find something wrong. And almost the whole song just came out. Something about the chords and the way the music worked, I don't know. It just hit him and worked out perfectly, unquote. I can't help but repeat one sentence before finishing with Meal's story. Quote, he probably had listened to the beat for four minutes

and got in the booth and almost verbatim to what's on the song today, just did it, unquote. Runaway, arguably the greatest song on one of the greatest albums of all time, was a freestyle, conceptualized in four minutes. Yeah, let that sink in. Amil continued his story saying, quote, The lyrics and the concept were what they were, and that's when the Kanye West Genius producer mode came into play. He totally reproduced the record and kept working on it and working on it, along with Jeff Basker, who played the piano line and played a lot of keys on it. Those two guys really went in on the production.

I was upstairs doing Cuddy's thing, and I just kept hearing the song getting better and better and better. Connie is a super producer in the truest sense of the word. He turned it into this epic song. It's just a beautiful record. It's a masterpiece, unquote. Runaway's iconic introduction begins with a single piano note, a high e-natural played 15 times. The drawn-out repetition of this note is an oral and emotional palate cleanser.

It's stark nakedness, a fitting metaphor for the vulnerability Connie will express on the track. There's a few musical mechanisms that work on this introduction I'd like to point out. First, the piano part is full of rich overtones. Whenever you play a note on a stringed instrument, including a piano, there's more than one note that sounds besides the main note that you hear. That main note is referred to as the fundamental. The extra notes above the fundamental are called overtones. Overtones are faint, not at all as audible as the main note, but they add color and texture.

I'm going to play the introductory notes of Runaway again, but this time. time I'm going to turn up the volume as the note begins to decay. This will help you hear the faint overtones present as the note resonates. There's a lot of color in that resonance, right? Those are overtones. What's cool about overtones is that those extra notes you hear are predictable, meaning they're always the same series of notes in relation to the main fundamental note you're playing. This predictable set of overtones is called the harmonic series. The harmonic series occurs on a stringed instrument because when activated, a string vibrates at different rates simultaneously. And while the vibration of the entire length of the string will undoubtedly be the loudest are fundamental,

the string also vibrates at half its length, a third its length, a fourth its length, and so on. And all those micro-vibrations are what produces our overtones, our harmonic series. So let's hear this predictable sequence of notes. In case of that high E on the introduction of runaway, the harmonic sequence heard as overtones are E, or fundamental note, E but one octave higher, B, E, E, or. again but another octave higher, A flat, B, D, E again, and F sharp. We'll stop here, but know we can go on for quite some time. Let me play this sequence again, this time without talking.

All these notes and more are present in just that one E played on the piano on Runaway. What's cool is that when the fundamental note changes as Runaway's introduction progresses, the E and its overtones are sustained, overlapping with the next note D-sharp and its overtones. So now we briefly have the overtones of E and the overtones of D sharp overlapping, creating incredibly rich color and texture. Just to give you a picture of how many overlapping notes we're hearing, I'll play the first eight overtones of the E and the first eight overtones of the D sharp. Pretty crazy, right?

The same happens when the fundamental note changes again, and so on throughout the entire introduction. I know this long-winded explanation about overtones may seem excessive, but I took the time to point them out because this piano line is the heartbeat of the first. runaway, the thing around which all else is built. I believe Connie and his producers felt the overtones were essential to the emotional tonal quality of the part. As proof, let's skip ahead to when the drum and bass drop in after the solo piano introduction. Listen to the piano line closely. When the bass and drums kick in, a synthesizer doubles the piano line, a synthesizer that sounds a lot like it's mimicking the resonance of the overtones we heard in the introduction.

Let's listen to the runaway excerpt one more time. Hear it? It's very likely the synthesizer was added to replicate the sustained piano and overtones that are so essential to the part. Without the synthesizer behind it, the drums and bass would swallow up the resonance and sustain of the piano, diminishing its prominence. But the piano line is runaway's heartbeat, and adding synthesizer allows a piano to keep a strong pulse, despite the fact that more dynamically dominant instruments are added. It's a subtle but brilliant compositional stroke. And before moving on to this piano line's rhythmic deception, I do have to quickly point out a similarity between Runaway's introduction and a piece by Gorgie Ligatee, a 20th century classical composer. The piece in question is Ligatee's Musica ricericata number two, made popular by its use in Stanley Kubrick's final film Eyes Wide Shut.

We have a repeated note on piano, played aggressively so as to make prominent its overtones. Of course, while Runaway eventually progresses toward a more somber emotional direction, the two are still strikingly similar, especially when you consider Kanye's admiration for Kubrick's work. Because as I get into content, I'm like super inspired by Kubrick. I always say like none of these guys have the balls at Kubrick's had. Like his last film, this dude is super old. He's done everything. He lives through Hollywood. He's done all that. And his last film, he's literally got Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman telling Tom Cruise why she's in his night gals, smoked with the weed, about how she saw a guy at another party that she wanted to hook up with.

That was his last film, the premise of his last film. And who's the tale telling Stanley Kubrick's there, he should do it or not do it. Like I watched, you know, like, Eyes Wide Shut inspired Runaway. Connie speaks specifically about Eyes Wide Shut being an influence on Runaway, the short film, and we might suspect for the opening piano light of the song as well. There's another subtle stroke of compositional brilliance to the seemingly simple piano introduction, This one has to do with rhythm. Before we get into the specific use of rhythm on Runaway,

we have to very quickly cover a few basic principles of rhythm and meter. If you've had any music experience, even in elementary school, you know that most songs follow a pretty simple pattern of four beats per measure. That's why you often hear musicians count, one, two, three, four, and then go back to one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, and so on. This is the pulse of a song. And in those four beats, there are strong and weak beats. Beats 1 and 3 are traditionally our strong beats, especially beat 1.

That's our anchor. Both beat 1 and beat 3 keep things together, I mean more often than not place emphasis on those beats. 1, 2, 3, 4. Our weak beats are beats 2 and 4. They are typically unaccented, and while they're essential, they're kind of secondary to our strong beats 1 and 3. 1, 2, 3. Whether you know it or not, you've been trained your whole life to recognize or at least feel beats 1 and 3 as strong and beats 2 and 4 as weak.

As an example, I'll play the same drum pattern, but I'll accent verbally beats 2 and 4 instead of 1 and 3. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 4. Awkward, right? It's kind of disorienting, not something you want to dance to. Okay, now let's bring it all back to runaway. Rhythmically, the piano part in the piano part in the way. the introduction is very straightforward, almost childlike. Let's play the opening few measures

and I'll count along. 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. So on what beats do the piano notes fall? Beats 1 and 3, right? Are strong beats. Nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, it can't really get any simpler rhythmically. This is elementary school learning my first song level rhythm. Now let's skip ahead a bit and listen to what happens when the beat drops in. Like before, I'll count the beats. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, one, two. So what's going on here? Did you notice how awkward my counts felt once the drums dropped in?

That's because the piano part, without our knowing it, has been playing on the weak beats two and four, not beats one and three. One, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. Because it's just the piano alone in the introduction, There's no way to know it's playing on the weak beats. It's ingrained into our DNA to feel the first note we hear as beat 1, sending us up to feel those piano notes on strong beats 1 and 3. Let's hear the introduction again, but this time I'll count the piano on beats 2 and 4.

1.2, 3, 4, 1. Better, right? What's cool about this rhythmic sleight of hand is that it gets us every time we listen. Unless you're consciously making a point to hear the piano on the weak beats 2 and 4 in the introduction. you're going to always hear them as beats 1 and 3 until the drums drop in. And that's why the drums are always so impactful when they come in, no matter how many times we hear the track. They're always a bit unexpected,

and it takes our mind and bodies a moment to adjust to the change of pulse. Kanye and his team are manipulating our innate musical assumptions, and to see small details that make the execution of runaway so successful. If you aren't picking them out on a conscious level, which most of us aren't doing, they go to work on our subconscious, and become the reason we can listen to this song over and over and over again. Just for fun, and because I can't resist, let's hear how these piano notes would sound if they're in fact played on the strong beats one and three.

Not quite as interesting, right? It sounds rather bland in comparison. By placing the piano on weak beats two and four, we get a kind of rhythmic slide of hand. For me, it always feels like the piano and synth are floating when the drums drop in. The snare drum, piano, and synthesizer all sound on the same beat, with a snare cracking like a whip, projecting the piano and synthesizer gracefully into the air where they're allowed to soar freely over the drums and bass. The drumbeat of Runaway is a sample of a sample. The source material is taken from the backyard heavy's 1971 track Expo 83.

These drums were sampled in loop by Pete Rock in the introduction of his 1992 song, The Basement. It's this drum loop featured on the basement that Kanye samples for Runaway. Next, a distorted synthesized bass is added. The drums, bass, and the unified piano and synth comprise the musical foundation of Runaway. Over the top of this foundation, we hear a sample taken from a live version of Rick James' Mary Jane. The phrase, look at you, is taken from this clip and repeated multiple times on Runaway, while panning from the left and right speakers. The panning of this sample creates the effect of being surrounded,

while the phrase look at you, isolated and taken out of the context of its source material, sounds like someone yelling aggressively. The overall effect is one of persecution, of torment. Of course, it's hard not to think of the 2009 VMAs and the torrential onslaught of public disgust that followed. And as we'll see, this sample takes on greater significance in the context of runaway's premiere at the 2010 VMAs, Connie's first public performance after the Taylor Swift debacle.

There's one final sample used on, on Runaway, James Brown's is 1968 introduction to Star Time. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Star Time at the Apollo Theater. Million dollar seller, try me! Ladies and gentlemen is taken from this excerpt and placed lower in the mix just before Connie comes in with his vocals. The Ladies and Gentlemen sample provides a feeling of cinematic introduction, as if Connie is preparing to address a crowd.

In some ways, he's about to do exactly that. Runaway is just as much an acknowledgement of Connie's failing relationship with the public post-VMAs as it is his failing relationship with a woman. Connie admits as much in an interview in which he talks specifically about the meaning of Runaway. In a way, it's funny, it's like the songs that just sound like they're talking about a girl could also be talking about my relationship with society or my relationship with the fans or anyone who I let down or people who had to defend me that really love me and everything and it says, you know, with the douchebag.

And I like leaving songs ambiguous a little bit where it's like it could be about other people, it could be about yourself. It's funny. It's like it's a man's anthem, but it's a woman's anthem also. Like, let's have a toast with a douchebag. One of them that I know.

Kanye states that runaway could be about a woman or his relationship with his fans or society. With that in mind, let's dive into Kanye's opening lines. Find something wrong. My shit is way too long. I took it for. We find what I don't like the most. So I think it's time for us to have a toast.

We find Kanye here very plain spoken. There's no lyrical acrobatics, no grand abstractions. It's an emotional nakedness that resembles the starkness of the opening piano line. He sings, I always find something wrong. You've been putting up with my shit just way too long. I'm so gifted at finding what I don't like the most, so I think it's time for us to have a toast. There's a few ways we can interpret these lines.

Coming off the heels of devil in a new dress, we may think Kanye is saying he always finds something wrong with the women he's with, that he's virtuosic in his detection of the imperfection of others, and that he always ends up calling out those imperfections. This may be one reason he'll later call himself a douchebag, his inability to keep his negative thoughts to himself. Of course, we know that those who are overly critical of others are typically extremely insecure themselves,

and that leads us to the alternative and understanding, undoubtedly more powerful interpretation of these opening lines, that Connie is talking about himself, that his virtuosic detection of imperfection is most acute when it comes to his own flaws. The you and the line, you've been putting up with my shit just way too long, can either be his girl or the public. In both scenarios, Connie is acknowledging his flaws and mistakes. He proceeds to commemorate the mutual understanding of his imperfections with a toast, leading us into the song's hook. Doosbags. Let's have a toast for the assholes.

It's have a toast for the scumbags. Every one of them that I have to never take word. I got a plan. Run away fast as you can. Connie calls for a toast for the douchebags, assholes, scumbags, and jerkoffs who never take work off. Undoubtedly, the main subtext here is that Connie is speaking about himself. It's an omission of guilt that's somehow a melancholic, ironic, heroic, and

comedic all at once. Connie would later refer to runaway as a backhanded apology to society post-V-MAs. It's backhanded because while he acknowledges his douchebaggery, he doesn't claim to want to change. Rather, he embraces his inner douchebag, he champions it, he toast to it. And there's something admirable in the acknowledgement of his flaws. Who among us would be so brave to not only accept our imperfections, but do so in front of the whole world? This is undoubtedly one reason why many of us feel so strongly about this song. We joined Kanye and his toast because we all have a bit of douchebag in us.

We're all an asshole to someone at some point. Moreover, we've all loved an asshole, whether it be our father, our mother, an ex-boyfriend, a current girlfriend, or our best friends. It's typically the ones we love who we sometimes allow to be a scumbag, and they allow us to be an asshole sometimes too. Runaways hook is a universal toast to our most negative but unavoidable human attributes. Runaway is a toast for us all. Before moving on, I do want to point out some interesting melodic techniques that this hook has going for it.

I think we'd all agree Runaway's hook has an anthem-like quality. It's something that compels us to sing along. No doubt the catchy repetition of the phrase, let's have a toast for the, contributes to its anthemic quality as well as the multi-layered voices of Kanye and Tony Williams. But to really understand completely why this chorus is so addictive, we have to briefly return to a bit of music theory. Throughout the entire song thus far, we've had nothing but descent, things moving downward from high to low. The opening solo piano part is a descending line down from E, D-sharp, C-sharp, A, and G-sharp.

When the bass enters, it plays a similar descending line. By the time the hook rolls around, these descending parts have been established for quite some time. They're finally challenged by the melody Kanye sings on the hook, which is a melody based on ascension. It climbs higher and higher until reaching and sustaining a pinnacle tonal area. Let's break down this line by line. Connie sings, Let's Have a Toast for the Dushbags. With Let's Have a Toast for the Assholes, we climb a little higher. Let's have a toast for the scumbags, we climb higher still into our pinnacle tonal area.

Once established, Connie will continue to reach for this high tonal area as he sings, every one of them that I know. Let's have a toast for the jerkoffs who never take work off. It's only when the lyrical cadence changes that the melody resigns back to a lower tonal area. Kani sings, Baby I Got a Plan, run away as fast as you can. Sinking back down to this lower tonal area provides resolution, or he might more accurately say, resignation, as he sends his girl running away. Let's hear these contrasting descending and ascending elements together,

noting how they work against each other, creating an emotional push-pull. This is just plain good writing. We intrinsically pick up on this dichotomy of opposing melodies, adding tension and harmonic thematic interest. A melodic descent is submissive and offers a feeling of resignation, while a melodic ascent is aspiring and offers a concerted effort towards triumph. When Kanye reaches those higher tonal areas, we can hear his voice struggling to hit the notes, which of course only amplifies the emotional quality of his performance. We can hear him fighting against the descent of his life at the time, his struggle against the societal forces trying to wrestle him to the ground.

Runaway continues with Connie's half-wrapped, half-sung opening verse To find pictures in my... I sent this bitch a picture of my dick. I don't know what it is with females, but I'm not too good at that shit. See, I can have me a good girl and still be addicted to them hoodwress. And I just blame everything on you. At least you know that's what I'm good at. Kanye wastes no time presenting himself as a scumbag, saying,

she found pictures in my email. I sent a bitch a picture of my dick. It's a line rooted in truth. In 2010, during the time of writing Twisted Fantasy, photos of Connie's junk leaked on the internet. How did people get a hold of that picture of your area there? Like, how did that happen? You know, I...

Have you sure heard the first line of runaway? Is that how I mean it's a reality I only rap reality Okay You know so I went to the end of that You know because I'm like oh you know I'm looking at my My Twitter like I just go to mentions

To see what people talk about And they had like the link I went to it Were you surprised? Man you can not imagine how disappointed I was I got cut off Um I'm like damn You wanted to

Connie's dick pick gesture is doubly crude. Sending a dick pick is offensive enough in itself, but doing it while involved with another woman is one step removed from cheating. Connie uses the gesture to display his immaturity and inadequacy and romance, confirmed by the next lines, I don't know what it is with females, but I'm not too good at that shit. Next, Connie says, I could have me a good girl and still be addicted to them hood rats. The use of the word addicted seems strategic and implies his attraction to hood rats, it's impulsive. A quality about himself he dislikes but can't control. Here we have a dichotomy of authenticity versus facade, of love versus lust, of vulnerability versus superficiality.

It's a dichotomy that extends beyond the realm of romance. Throughout twisted fantasy, we've seen Kanye struggle with confronting his emotional distress, indulging in women, drugs, and alcohol to mass of pain he feels within. As we all know, it's nearly impossible to give yourself completely to someone else when you're wrought with insecurity or emotional damage. Connie lacks the discipline and maturity to resist the things that feed his ego, because he's not yet comfortable in his own skin, and it seems to be having a devastating effect on his life. The concluding lines of the verse again display Connie's self-destructive behavior.

He says, and I just blame everything on you, at least you know that's what I'm good at. Connie isn't strong enough to admit the fault of his own behavior and instinctively places the blame on his partner. It's a tactic we probably all know well. We've all been the blamed and the blamer. It's typically a tactic bred of insecurity, a wall we throw up to shield us from confronting our imperfections. Of course, the flip side here is that Connie's recognition of his behavior on the verse is his way of confronting those imperfections. Like we said earlier, runaway is a cathartic admission of guilt. Thus far in twisted fantasy, we haven't yet heard Kanye nearly as vulnerable and defenseless as he is here on this verse.

That raw emotion and vulnerability is accentuated by his singing, which is out of tune, a quality I suspect was done on purpose, or at least purposely not corrected. We all know Connie is familiar with autotune. He could have easily pitch-corrected his voice or re-recorded this verse until he sung it in key. But his voice being flat adds to the honesty and purity of his expressive will, and considering what producer Emil Haney said about Runaway's miraculous conception, it may have been done on first take. After a repetition of the song's hook, Kanye performs a heartfelt bridge.

Kanye sings, run away from me, baby, run away. When it starts to get crazy, why can't she just run away? Baby, as fast as you can. It's a sad expression of isolation, but in a sense, strange way, Connie's sentiment would seem to come from a place of compassion. He knows his inadequacies as a partner. He knows the lifestyle he lives, knows his inability to change right now. Ultimately, he knows she's better off without him, and because he cares for her, perhaps even loves her in his own way, he encourages her to leave. It's the complex psychological tanglings of a man who can't properly love anyone because he doesn't love himself, but he's also too weak to be the one that leaves, and so encourages the woman to run away.

The look-after sample in this passage becomes especially intrusive. Kanye is attempting to express himself with honest, heartfelt vulnerability, and that tormenting voice continues to hound him, relentless in its persecuting screams. Personally, it always makes we think what it might be like to be famous, how you're forced to work through personal problems or tragedies or mistakes, while under the microscope of public scrutiny, constantly harassed by paparazzi and journalists regardless of what's going on with your life at the time. Runaway continues with the introduction of a new character, Pusha T.

As we'll see, Pusha T will be used as a foil, a contrasting character that adds complexity to the story and illuminates aspects of the protagonist either by contrast or amplification. Indeed, Push is a douchebag, asshole, and scumbag personified, a role that we'll see was carefully curated by Connie himself. Push delivers a cruel, malevolent verse filled with heartless insults, spiteful taunts, and virtuastic chauvinism, which will be able to be. We'll thoroughly examine on part two of our runaway double episode. Next time on Dysect.

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