By: Owen Gallagher
Kanye West has always been an idol of mine. As a young male at a Catholic high school I identified with his teachings more than the ones of Jesus H. Christ, which never played over well in my theology classes. So when I heard Kanye would be performing at the Bryce Jordan Center I knew that I had to make a “pilgrimage” of sorts, to hear the modern-day prophet preach.
Taken by: Owen Gallagher
The night of the concert was cold and damp, and while I often complain about the weather, I did not that night. Long before the concert started, I had decided that I was going to go to make this pilgrimage by myself. Sure, I had friends that would also be attending the event, but I knew that anything less than 100% focus on Kanye himself would take away from my experience.
As show time neared I started to take in my surroundings, and quickly noticed the DJ tent right in front of my section of seats. The man DJing before the show was exactly whom you would expect; a white dude with dreads wearing a black shirt covered in Old English font that read, “I FEEL LIKE PABLO”. He was simply getting the crowd pumped up for the true entrance, so I swayed to his culturally ambiguous musical samplings for a while. The dreaded man stopped playing his set about 10 minutes before 8:00 PM, when Kanye was supposed to begin. And out of the tent in front of me popped up one of the greatest producers of modern hip/hop music, Mike Dean.
If I were going to continue this whole, “Kanye as Jesus” anecdote, then I would describe Mike Dean as the literal God to Kanye’s Jesus. Mike Dean has produced every one of Kanye’s albums since Graduation, including every Kanye’s G.O.O.D Music albums and the joint Jay-Z/Kanye album Watch the Throne. His presence can be seen on production credits from modern hip/hop’s formation era with Tupac and UGK, all the way up to the modern era of hip/hop on Beyoncé’s Lemonade and Jay-Z’s Magna Carta… Holy Grail. He is the omnipotent force that has driven hip/hop, rap, and R&B to the point it is at today. Even though Mike Dean is indistinguishable from any other tall white guy on the street, rest assured, I squealed like a tween girl at a Justin Bieber concert the moment he came strutting out of that tent.
Mike Dean went about tweaking all of the synthesizers and tuning up his guitar, as the crowd underneath the floating stage grew larger and larger in anticipation of Kanye’s entrance. Then, the overhead lights quickly shut off and the gospel sample from “Father Stretch my Hands” slowly rose in volume as the crowd cheered and multi-colored lights shot out from the back of the absurd floating stage. The stage was suspended about 30 feet above the diehard fans that were on the floor of the BJC, and it hovered all around the arena throughout Kanye’s performance. Screaming continued as the stage descended to the far side of the auditorium to pick up Kanye and raise him high above all of his disciples. While Kanye began to ascend into a place above me, I heard the chorus of gospel singers on the sample begin to hold the high note, and soon those notes gave way to Young Metro’s tagline, and then to Kid Cudi’s hook as anticipation built. I prepared myself as Kanye’s stage reached maximum height – and then the levee broke, and Kanye’s slurred auto-tune voice began to chant “I just wanna’ feel liberated ayayay ayeeee.” In that moment a wave of liberation seemed to sweep over the crowd as tens of thousands of voices came together to chant with Kanye as he began to take us on the journey we all knew would come.
Taken by: Emily Schlackman
“Father Stretch my Hands” is a two-part song, so the enchanting and wispy gospel vibe of part one was soon ripped away from us listeners as it quickly faded into the sample from “Panda” by Desiigner, which is the main focus of the song’s part two. Part two isn’t a gospel rap song like many are on Kanye’s The Life of Pablo; part two is a banger, a party anthem, a song that gets the listener hyped up, so I knew that for at least the beginning section, this concert would have a huge party vibe.
My conclusion about the beginning of the concert was spot on as “part two” was quickly chopped into Kanye’s “Famous”, which happens to be the most controversial song on the album. It seemed like the crowd knew every word, and Kanye smartly played that to his advantage, commanding Mike Dean to run back parts of tracks that Kanye believed we did not sing loud enough. From my own personal expertise and experience with hip/hop concerts I can tell you, nothing gets the crowd going harder than having the performer interact with them, and no one can incite a reaction quite like Kanye. During this “party” phase of the concert I slightly lost myself. I can’t remember the set list in order, but I just remember staring at the magnificent stage zipping around 30 feet above the standing room viewers, and watching them migrate with Kanye’s stage, like the pied piper luring his rats around with his music. From the “party” phase I remember hearing the songs “Don’t Like”, “All Day”, and “Can’t Tell me Nothing”; some of my absolute favorite pump up songs of all-time. I wasn’t too sure if Kanye was just going to go with hard songs the whole time, but I knew we would move into a different phase when I heard the beginning to the “Jesus Walks” sample come out from right behind “Freestyle #4.”
After careful review, I began to call phase two of the concert, the “emotional Yeezy” phase. “Jesus Walks” was the first song he played, and also Kanye’s first super-hit ever from his debut album The College Dropout. It was also the first Kanye song I had ever heard. I remember being introduced to the song around the sixth grade, which was around the same time I had moved to a new school, and some of my only memories I still have from then are of me, sitting on my bus to and from school, listening to “Jesus Walks” and maybe two or three other songs on repeat. To me that song isn’t just a song; it’s a memory. It’s something that will take me back the first time, every time I hear it, and something about hearing it alone again almost brought a tear to my eye.
Taken by: Emily Schlackman
It is mostly “emotional Yeezy” due to the fact that the songs he played are songs where you can really feel what Kanye feels during the performance, and feel the passion that was put into the making of all the songs. Kanye then played “Flashing Lights”, one of his own self-described “all-time favorites”, and one of mine too. He played a group of other songs, but he finished out the phase with what I believe to be two of his most powerful tracks ever, “Runaway” and “Only One”. There was a period of time when Kanye went dark, right after the tragic and unexpected death of his mother, a time when many doubted he would ever return to his prime. However, the song “Runaway”, to me, is when Kanye really jumped back on top of the hip/hop game, seeing as “Runaway” is a nine-minute-long “toast to the douchebags” off of his most critically acclaimed album of all time, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. It is his most triumphant song off his most triumphant album, and it truly captures the wide lens with which he views himself as an egotist and narcissist, but also as an utter and total genius. It’s riveting. He closed off the “emotional Yeezy” phase with “Only One”, a song he wrote when his daughter, North, was born. It’s simply beautiful, and written from the perspective of his mother in heaven, having a conversation with Kanye in a dream. One of the lines states “I talked to God about you/he said he sent you an angel/and look at all that he gave you/ asked for one and you got two”, and I truly believe Kanye made this song to tell the world that he is finally happy again.
Just as he ended the “emotional Yeezy” phase, he began my self-dubbed “good vibes” phase. He kicked this phase off with the song “Waves”, which describes the how life has relationships that come and go, but in the end “even though somebody go away/ the feelings don’t really go away/ that’s just the wave.” This seems to be an ode to the many turbulent relationships Kanye has been a part of, and how in the end they have all shaped him into the changed man he is today. He then transitioned into the song “Touch the Sky”, which is an uplifting ballad featuring Lupe Fiasco from Kanye’s Late Registration. The song talks about how we can all “touch the sky” and achieve greatness if we pursue our dreams with every fiber of our being. It is perhaps the most upbeat and positive Kanye song ever. There were a few other feel-good hits he played, but he ended the show on what I believe to be the cumulative product of his entire music career, “Ultralight Beam”. The song is all about Kanye’s belief that God’s plans for him have come true (which is absolutely the case if Mike Dean is God), and how he is so blessed to have been through every experience in his life. The Ultralight Beam is a biblical reference to the light that Saul saw on the road to Damascus that blinded him for three days, but eventually made him become the man that Christians know as St. Paul the Apostle. Kanye too believes that he has seen the light after all of the darkness, and that he has become a better person because of it, and after devoutly following Kanye’s career for 10+ years I can say that he has definitely changed as a person.
I can say I have a deep connection with music, and I let it influence my emotions far more than any other art form. Therefore, this entire concert experience was, in a sense, a religious one. I implore everyone to find an art form that allows you to be moved by it. Something that transports you elsewhere when you experience it, and then become completely consumed by it, like I was at the Saint Pablo Tour concert.