People Should Stick to What They're Good At.. Ahem Kanye, *Cough Cough

Kanye West is good at rapping and producing. Not writing movies, not singing, and DEFINITELY not acting. I'm not saying that if you're a rapper, you have to stick to rapping, if you're good at acting, go for it. Will Smith pulled it off. So did Eminem, Common, and hell, Will.i.am wasn't too bad in X-Men. All I'm saying is just because you're famous, doesn't mean you're good at all things that can possibly get a person famous. I'll give Yeezy this, the dance the ballerinas do to that song he "sang" at the VMA's about assholes and dueschbags was pretty good, but honestly? How much weed was the boy smoking when his mind conceived this video?

This artistic new direction Kanye is going for could definitely work and I'm all for him expanding his horizons. This is not, I REPEAT, not, the way to go about doing that. If you can't act, attempting to act will only make you look retarded. If you wanna out-do Gaga in the strange video department you best be prepared to get crazy. Again, this didn't do that. Sure it's weird, but it's missing any charm, any edge that would possibly keep somebody entertained for 33 minutes. This was no Telephone and surely wasn't The Wall or Thriller.

It's a shame really because usually Kanye's videos are pretty decent (Jesus Walks? remember that?) Not an abundance of scantly clad chicks humping expensive cars. Yet I'm not sure how much control he had with the artistic direction.

This movie is another sign that he is taking the path to the darkside.

Luckily, Monster, his first single off the new album, while being different and new, is still rap and offers a glimmer of hope in the shadow of this video. I can't lie, I was a big fan of College Dropout and Late Registration. Graduation was meh, okay (Stronger was cool) but 808's & Heartbreak?

HATE!

He didn't try to expand what he already was good at, producing phat hip-hop beats and rapping, he threw all that out and made experimental hip-hop-esque beats and sang through a vocoder. Just listening to the album made me feel icky on the inside.

This movie is another sign that he is taking the path to the darkside. But that's from the standpoint of a movie viewer. The songs seem to be in way a return to old form, combing his new artistic direction with what we know and love from him. Once the songs are isolated from this hodgepodge of strangeness, he could definitely have a potential hit.