I grew up in California's Central Valley. After I finished my freshman year of high school, my parents moved from the city of Stockton to Jerome, Idaho. Most of my spiritual music reviews don't go back to my California childhood. Mostly because I don't remember much about it. And we never visit Stockton. And after a year in Idaho, I morphed into a totally different person.
Raised an active Mormon in an active Mormon family, I wasn't allowed to listen to rap. And I had no desire to. In fact, I often made fun of it. I thought of all forms of hip-hop as a joke. As usual, if you can't understand something, you mock it. It's how children (and a concerning number of adults) make it through.
Perhaps I can blame this on my introduction to rap being "One Week" by the Barenaked Ladies. I was in 2nd grade. But yeah... I'm trying really hard not to bring race into this, but that's gotta be one of the whitest songs ever made. And I said a lot of racist things as a kid, whether it was just my young white subconscious speaking out-loud, or trying to get a cheap laugh from my peers. As much I've flexed having a California childhood, I can honestly only count every black kid I went to school with on one hand. While I've definitely accumulated a bunch of white guilt for how I used to mock black culture as a kid, I should admit, my childhood hatred for rap actually wasn't rooted in racism. It was the swear words.
I quickly wanted to get into music my older brothers were into. And at one point, my parents. I collected a lot of CD's over just a few years. I remember always skipping parts of songs that had swear words. And I'm talking about words like "damn" and "hell," or even saying the lord's name in vain. Ironically, pretty much every sexual reference went way over my head. Be that Barenaked Ladies or Aerosmith. I just wanted to be a good Mormon boy. And I thought all profanity was either inappropriate or silly. Noted: All my friends in elementary school were definitely not Mormon, and definitely did swear like sailors. I had to find some humor in it, without partaking in the sin.
So there was zero swearing in my house growing up. Wanna know where else swearing wasn't allowed? The classroom.
I'm not gonna go into my the emotions of my freshman year at high school. Because it was all kind of a fever dream. We lived on the border of a small farm town called Linden. My dad was teaching at Linden High School and coached their soccer team. My older brother Todd was a senior at the time, and we both played trombone in the school bands. I actually attended high school with a handful of older friends from church. I did not see them at the 5:30am Mormon seminary class. I saw them in their element. It was clear to me that these kids didn't have the same strict goody-goody mindset that I tried to keep at all times. I was more-so confused than disappointed. But I sometimes went along with it.
I was in a journalism class. An interest I'd go on to practice on-and-off throughout my life. Due to weird scheduling rules, I was in the class with just one other person. A girl named Mollie, and of course the teacher, who was her mother. Instead of having a whole classroom to ourselves, we were crammed in the corner of the yearbook class. I had never seen anything like it. Everyday was a freaking party. Kids just goofed around with each other while their teacher kinda did nothing. But there was usually music booming through the classroom. And it was hip.
It was 2005. I remember hearing this rap song with this cool, chopped-up piano part. I had never heard anything like it before. Over time, I would learn that a studio trick like this is an easy task in the world of Kanye. But I was a 15 year-old white boy, and I believed Coldplay were modern musical geniuses who knew how to magically tug at my heartstrings. This melancholia rap song that made a piano sound like something futuristic? I loved it.
And of course I remember that catchy chorus. It's funny, because I had no idea that was the guy from Maroon 5. And they were definitely part of that "alt-rock-lite" circle with Coldplay, Barenaked Ladies, Goo Goo Dolls, etc. But I felt an emotional impact and musical respect for that song. Which is funny, because I hated "Gold Digger." I saw that track as just an annoying rip-off of Ray Charles. Yes, that's how I viewed art as a young teenager. And yes, I totally knew who Ray Charles was. Oldies stations used to play stuff from the early-60s... But I digress.
I also remember getting into Eminem's "Lose Yourself" and Kanye's "Jesus Walks" before my parents upgraded from dial-up internet. I would get into music by coming across Rolling Stone reviews online, and "streamed" music by looking up songs on YouTube. "Heard 'Em Say" was one of the first YouTube videos I ever watched. My enjoyment for rap as a teenager then snowballed from Kanye to Eminem to Jay-Z to OutKast. Respected Jeezy and T.I. and Lil Wayne. While I had heard some full rap albums in my young adulthood, it wasn't until my first listen to Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d city at age 22 when I realized I needed to learn all I could about this genre. Now here I am at 31. I'm still the whitest guy in the universe. But I think rap is a totally gratifying rabbit-hole for music discovery. I still follow Ye. And still love "Heard 'Em Say."
Here's a link to the song for those who want to try it out. It's rated PG.
Just wanted to talk about the actual song for a sec. Because it's definitely not just a cool piano loop and a catchy chorus.
As far as musical and production elements, this is totally a Stevie Wonder track. I don't how Kanye did this, but put on a good pair of headphones and listen to that synth-bass part. It's a perfect emulation of the sound Stevie uses on Innervisions. Impressive. Yet why would you try to work so hard to replicate a such a specific sound? Just for the sake of showing off? Or maybe because the song itself sounds like something Stevie would write.
As a heterosexual white guy, I often see important topics as either personal or political. They rarely coincide. But when you're part of a marginalized population in America, the line between what's "personal" and what's "political" can get thin and blurry.
As a teenager, that "I know the government administer AIDS" line went over my head. And yet as bold and conspiratorial as that may sound, it's doesn't sound farfetched at all next to the harsh realities Kanye touches on. Growing up in disillusion of your future and surrounded by generational cycles of misfortunate. You want fame, but you can't even earn higher than minimum wage. You need money, so you're tempted by lottery tickets. You love your mom, so you smoke the same cigarettes she does. You pray to Jesus, but you can't live up to his expectations. You need a job, but promotion possibilities are stunted by racial prejudice at the top. "Nothing's ever promised tomorrow today." I guess these are all pretty basic descriptions of poverty and racial injustice. And a lot of people have already rolled their eyes by this point of the paragraph. But every topic I just mentioned... Where's the lie?
Maybe this is just a nice little 3-minute song about some assorted sad life events that y'all are just pretending like you've experienced yourself. It's a beautiful piece of music. Point-blank. And Kanye West, who's spent most of his career posed--both by the media and by his own mouth--as a narcissistic egomaniac... I don't know how you listen to these 3 minutes of music and think he's not being real. Probably the closest to Stevie his music ever got, on all fronts.
Kanye's always had soul. It's usually in his beats. It's often in his lyrics. And I'm glad I got introduced to his music as a kid. This is the song that got me into rap. Just perfect timing. Because I can't imagine my 15 year-old Mormon boy self getting into Yeezus if that was his new stuff at the time. I liked a lot of the soul music my parents were into. Earth, Wind & Fire. The Commodores. And of course remember hearing classic Smokey Robinson and James Brown songs on the radio. Somewhere in my self-conscious and insecure white boy heart, I made a little room for some soul. Just enough room let in Kanye West's "Heard 'Em Say." And from there, rap music in all its forms.
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