“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

— Malachy McCourt

Of all the stories Donda West read to her little son at bedtime, “Pinocchio” must have been a favorite. The tale of the puppet who longed to be human obviously resonates with Kanye West. On “Pinocchio Story,” the bonus live track that turns out to be the key to his audaciously introspective fourth album, he freestyles about the character, repeatedly singing, “I want to be a real boy.”

“808s and Heartbreak,” out Monday on Roc-A-Fella Records but now streaming on MySpace, is a meditation on realness as it’s been defined by materialism and machismo in the hip-hop world, and by love and sorrow in the larger one. Wrought in hushed mechanical beats, computer-altered vocals and samples so subtle they’re barely noticeable, it’s West’s foray into confessional music.

But this star’s constant craving to be original leads him away from the rawness that characterizes such revelations. On an album that he has said is “about emotional nakedness,” West finds his beating, bleeding heart in inanimate objects — the Roland TR-808 drum machine that revolutionized electronic music of the 1980s and the Antares Auto-Tune pitch correction software that’s such a prevalent tool in today’s pop sound.

This is high concept stuff and likely off-putting to the casual listener. Though several tracks — the oddly peppy “Paranoid” and “Robocop,” about a monstrous ex — are danceable, “808s and Heartbreak” heavily endorses the rave scene’s concept of “chill.” Its mood comes closest to the vaporous electronica of obscure artists like the Junior Boys and M83.

A Tears for Fears song forms the melodic basis for one track, but West never reaches for the primal release of that band’s New Wave classics. He also resists the impishness so artfully deployed by his friend T-Pain (and his forefather, Zapp’s Roger Troutman) in many Auto-Tuned hits. Instead, West reins in his natural wit and frothiness in search of a more contemplative experience.

This in itself already has some fans dismissing “808s and Heartbreak” as self-indulgent or even crazy: Why would someone so skilled at making smart hit songs tone down his golden touch? And why would a rapper who’s not a great singer insist on singing on every track?

The answer, I think, has to do with that underlying Pinocchio story. As New Yorker pop music critic Sasha Frere-Jones wrote in his excellent June 2008 piece on Auto-Tune, the program has given producers a way to foreground the unnaturalness of the recording process. Drum machines did something similar 30 years ago, feeding a shift in pop away from a search for authenticity and toward a fascination with technology and the imagined worlds it inspires.

Because they’re so obviously “fake,” the sounds that come from primitive drum machines and manipulative software forces the listener to question what she does consider real — regarding not only the sounds she hears, but also the emotions they invoke.

Puppets have historically been associated with the same questions Auto-Tune raises now. They seem to be more human than human, and if manipulated well can cause that uncanny feeling of not knowing where an object stops and humanity starts.

“Grace appears most purely in that human form which either has no consciousness or an infinite consciousness. That is, in the puppet or in the god,” wrote the German poet and philosopher Heinrich von Kleist in 1810. Watching the dance of a beautiful marionette, which has no sense of self, we begin to ponder our own self-awareness — the very essence of humanity. West seeks a similar effect on “808s and Heartbreak,” a heavy trip indeed.

West has played with puppet-like persona throughout his career. My 5-year-old daughter still thinks he’s a cartoon bear because he so frequently plays one in the artwork and videos by his frequent collaborator, artist Takashi Murakami. The heart pin he’s been wearing of late is a direct steal from the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz.” And on this album, he connects puppet imagery, one of the oldest routes to pondering the question of real versus fake, with computerized music, one of the newest, to confront what stands between himself and his own soul.

West’s obsession on “808s and Heartbreak” is grief. He’s trying to express the way it alienates a person from himself and throws a fog around every former pleasure. The album explicitly confronts the death of West’s mother after plastic surgery last fall and his subsequent breakup with longtime companion Alexis Phifer. Having lost his nurturers, West found himself lonelier and less confident than he knew he could be; this is the soundtrack to his bewilderment.

“I know my destination, but I’m just not there,” he sings in the gently morose “Street Lights.” His words could go either way: He hasn’t arrived at his goal, or he’s just somehow missing, a ghost of his former self. On “Amazing,” which features Young Jeezy, West tries to capture some of his former bravado, but despite his boasting and some comical assistance from two grunting backup vocalists, his vocal is draggy, low-pitched and depressed. “I’m a problem that will never ever be solved,” he mutters.

Bravado partly created this problem. In rap, machismo has long been a force to obliterate vulnerability. Plenty of rappers precede West in pondering the mess within their minds: Consider DMX’s <i>oeuvre </i>or songs like “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” by the Geto Boys. Usually, though, such songs express a kind of fierceness, whether grounded in psychosis or anger. Softer feelings are less acceptable. The joke goes that only when MCs rhyme about their mamas can they expose their hearts.

Having lost his fervently beloved mom — and blaming the materialism of their lifestyle partly for her death — West confronts the void. Auto-Tune masks and distorts his voice in ways that play up how alien such self-doubt and regret seem, coming from a blustery hip-hop star. “I got homies, but in the end it’s still so lonely,” he intones in “Heartless,” one of the few tracks on which he actually raps. As if to prove that point, cameos elsewhere from Jeezy and Lil Wayne are all swagger, no tears.

Like most kingpins, hip-hop’s male stars turn to women for their dose of tenderness; female sexuality is the genre’s life force, as powerful a support as maternal love. (Witness T-Pain’s ongoing quest for the ideal stripper.) But not on “808s and Heartbreak.” The ex-lover whose absence torments West has no voice of her own. There’s only one female backing vocal on the whole album, provided by the electronica queen Esthero; the absence of R&B guest divas and sampled giggles and squeals is notable.

Throughout the album, women appear as phantasms, supervillains or voices on the phone, as hard to fathom as the feelings of the puppet boy they torment.

West undoubtedly will find his way out of this purgatory, and fans will be happy when he returns to the wider vision he’s communicated on past projects. But as strange and even tedious as “808s and Heartbreak” might strike some listeners, it’s not just a puppet show. Or rather, it is, and all the more fascinating for that.

-Ann Powers. LA Times

According to the cnn polls, george w. bush has the worst approval rating in the history with 76% of the surveyed disapproving his post. not really a surprise; read details here

One thing i must say though… kanye west was wrong, George bush does care about black people. if it weren’t for bush doing such a great job as president, there’s no way barack obama wins this election. had al gore or john kerry won either of the two terms bush ran, obama wouldn’t have even been a consideration within the democrats.

so let’s all thank bush for the historic election of barack obama!

The Big 3 automakers now have to sit in an uncomfortable little office while Congress goes out and talks with the manager.

ONCE… TWICE… THREE TIMES A LOSER

Dear Mr Obama,

Re-establish your blackness. Play more hip hop music. That Iowa convention speech where you brushed Hillary Clinton off your shoulder and played “99 Problems but a Bitch Ain’t One” by Jay-Z was brilliant AND classy. Give us more. Use more of that preacher voice of yours. The way you say “Hope” and “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”, well, it sends shivers down my leg. Recycle famous black speeches. “You been took, you been hoodwinked, you been bamboozled, run-amuck, led astray…” — oh man, I thought Denzel Washington, er, Malcolm X was in my living room. Remind the people that John McCain can’t crip walk. He probably can’t jump either. Finally, throw up the ‘O’ sign like a true gangsta.

Holla at your boy when you get to The White House.

Your stan,

Benny Bing.

 

By Eva Lodde, Mike Glindmeier, Jens Todt. 

Mired in betting scandals, riven by infighting and alarmed by recent poor performances on the pitch, German soccer needs anything but more controversy in the few months remaining before it hosts the World Cup. But some recent cases of blatant racism are doing further damage to its image. It started with a Hitler salute. Two eastern German soccer teams in the fourth division, FC Sachsen Leipzig and Hallesche FC, had just drawn 2-2 on March 25 in Halle, and the fans weren't happy. Leipzig's Nigerian midfielder Adebowale Ogungbure was walking off the pitch when hooligans ran up to him, spat at him and called him "Dirty Nigger," "Shit Nigger" and "Ape." He ignored it and walked on. Then, when he passed the main stand and heard fans making whooping monkey noises at him, he decided he'd had enough. He put two fingers above his mouth to symbolise a Hitler moustache and stuck out his right arm in a Nazi salute to the crowd.Given their behavior, one might think they would have appreciated the gesture and even returned it. But a Halle supporter attacked him from behind with a corner flag and another grabbed him in a stranglehold. Ogungbure pushed them away as a teammate intervened and dragged him towards the tunnel, to the safety of the changing rooms."I was just so angry, I didn't care. I could have been killed but I had to do something," Ogungbure told SPIEGEL ONLINE last week. "I thought to myself, what can I do to get them as angry as they have made me? Then when I lifted my arm I saw the anger in their faces and I started to laugh."

The case came to the attention of the governing body of world football, FIFA, which recently implemented tougher penalties for clubs whose fans engage in racist behavior. Possible sanctions now include match suspensions, the deduction of points, relegation or elimination from competitions.

The new rules were introduced in response to recent acts of racism in the top Spanish and Italian leagues but FIFA Secretary-General Urs Linsi told German newspaper Tagesspiegel last week: "We will of course also make sure that something like this is punished in Germany's fourth division as well."

So clubs had better start getting their act together, because greeting black players with ape noises and riling against foreigners is a frequent occurrence, especially, it appears, at matches involving teams from eastern Germany where unemployment is high and support for far-right parties has been strongest in recent years.

Last weekend at a lower division match between Hamburg St. Pauli and eastern club Chemnitz FC, visiting Chemnitz fans stormed Turkish-owned stores chanting "Sieg Heil" and waving imitation Nazi flags. Some shouted: "We're going to build a subway from St Pauli to Auschwitz."

Such behavior is bad enough at any time, but especially damaging now with Germany trying to project a cosmopolitan image under a World Cup slogan: "A Time to Make Friends."

Neo-Nazis plan to spoil World Cup

German officials last week admitted the far right may try to capitalize on the month-long World Cup, which starts July 9. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said neo-Nazi groups were planning to use the tournament to raise their profile. The far-right NPD party and other neo-Nazi groups apparently want to stage a "freedom of speech" march in Gelsenkirchen, in the Ruhr Valley, and further demonstrations in Leipzig, Berlin, and Nuremberg, to show solidarity with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has openly denied the Holocaust and suggested that Israel should be "wiped off the map."

The NPD is also already actively fomenting soccer xenophobia by offering a World Cup match fixtures guide that calls for Germany to field only white-skinned players.

The list is headlined "WHITE — not just a soccer shirt color — for a real NATIONAL team." It has a picture of a player bearing the number 25 — the number used by national team player Patrick Owomoyela, who has a Nigerian father. SOURCE

DeLay implicated in Florida gangland hit of casino boats owner. Former GOP Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s surprise announcement that he will resign from Congress in a few weeks and not stand for re-election after winning the GOP primary in his Houston area district came after a bombshell was dropped in the Broward County, Florida trial of former John Gotti hit man Anthony “Big Tony” Moscatiello for the February 2001 gangland slaying of Sun Cruz casino boat owner Konstantinos “Gus” Boulis. Moscatiello is on trial with Anthony “Little Tony” Ferrari and James “Pudgy” Fiorillo in the murder of Boulis.

On April 1, the Miami Herald reported that Moscatiello was a long time informant for the FBI at the time of the murder of Boulis. Moscatiello quit his association with the the FBI shortly after the murder of Boulis. Recently convicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his colleague Adam Kidan forced Boulis to sell Sun Cruz Casino Cruises to them in a scheme engineered by Gov. Jeb Bus to establish a GOP money launcering contrivance. The state pressured Boulis, a Greek national, to sell Sun Cruz to Abramoff because of an obscure state requirement that shipping companies be owned by U.S. citizens. Jeb Bush, using Florida’s regulatory mechanisms behind the scenes, ensured Boulis was pressured to divest his interests in Sun Cruz to Abramoff.

WMR sources report that Broward County prosecutors are livid about the failure of the FBI to inform them that Moscatiello was an FBI informant at the time of the Boulis murder. They are convinced that the George W. and Jeb Bush administrations in Washington and Tallahassee, respectively, deliberately blocked the prosecution from linking Moscatiello to the criminal cases against Abramoff and Kidan. Kidan placed Moscatiello and Ferrari on the Sun Cruz payroll after Abramoff assumed control of the company. Abramoff and Kidan were sentenced to over 5 years in prison last week for lying to financers in their purchase of Sun Cruz from Boulis. The light sentences were the result of plea agreements in which they prmised to cooperate with federal prosecutors.

However, the Sun Cruz case goes far beyond Abramoff and involves DeLay, according to informed sources. The Broward County prosecutors believe that the FBI’s written summaries (FD-302s) of their interviews with Moscatiello were withheld from the prosecution by the FBI in order to protect senior GOP officials. Had the prosecution known Moscatiello was an FBI informer, he could have been offered a plea bargain in return for his cooperation against Republican politicians in Florida and Washington, DC.

The story behind the story: DeLay’s involvement with Florida gangland mobsters probed by prosecutors stymied by withheld FBI interview forms and obstruction from George W. and Jeb Bush.

Prosecutors and investigative reporters in Miami and Fort Lauderdale are focusing on the time line involving Sun Cruz, Boulis, Abramoff, and DeLay. In February 2000, Abramoff began negotiations with Boulis for the sale of Sun Cruz, which Boulis eventually sold to Abramoff for a mere $147 million. At the time, Abramoff was a lobbyist for the well-connected Preston Gates law firm. After the November 2000 election of George W. Bush, Boulis protested that he had been defrauded by Abramoff and Kidan in the sale of Sun Cruz. To avoid legal issues, Abramoff and Kidan began to make legal moves to move Sun Cruz’s corporate headquarters from Florida to the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas.

On December 13, 2000, Abramoff’s Sun Cruz paid $145,000 to Moscatiello for “consulting services.” On January 19, 2001, one day prior to the inauguration of George W. Bush, Boulis filed court action to block Abramoff’s and Kidan’s involvement with Sun Cruz. On January 20, 2001, Kidan and former DeLay aide Michael Scanlon met in DeLay’s congressional office in Washington to “officially” celebrate the Bush inauguration. Scanlon, former DeLay aide Tony Rudy, Abramoff, and Kidan are all cooperating with federal prosecutors after agreeing to plea agreements.

On January 25, 2001, Abramoff reportedly flew DeLay’s senior staffer Tim Berry, named his chief of staff in 2002, to Tampa for the Super Bowl and a meeting on one of the Sun Cruz casino boats. Suspiciously, Berry did not report the trip on disclosure forms, something DeLay’s office later called an “honest mistake.”

On February 6, 2001, Boulis was shot to death in his car after leaving his Fort Lauderdale office. Florida prosecutors have uncovered preliminary evidence that Sun Cruz was wrested from Boulis to enable hundreds of millions of dollars in cash could be laundered into GOP campaigns, including the DeLay and Bush-Cheney 2004 campaigns, from the casino boats.

Its been talked about for years, in discussions for ages…"The Simpsons Movie" is finally being set for a July 27, 2007 release. 20th Century Fox snuck copies of a 25-second teaser trailer in front of "Ice Age 2: The Meltdown" this past weekend and also showed it during commercials on last night's "Simpsons" episode. The promo spot advertises the movie for a release next year. USA Today reveals that the movie will most likely be rated PG-13 for language "coarser" than TV. Albert Brooks, Minnie Driver and the real-life Erin Brockovich have also been announced as guest stars. The plot still remains to be a secret but it's been revealed that nearly all the Simpsons characters will make an appearance. Al Jean, Ian Maxtone-Graham, George Meyer, David Mirkin, Mike Reiss, Matt Selman, John wartzwelder, Mike Scully,  James Brooks and Jon Vitti are penning the screenplay. David Silverman, series co-producer and animation director, will be directing the feature.