Ever since it leaked I can’t seem to stop listening to the Kanye West SNL rant audio, soon it began creeping into my thoughts for my current project exploring the voice. After you’ve listened to this a few times it begins to morph into some form of aggressive spoken word poetry, changes in tone and volume crescendo into a listing of influential figures punctuated by declarations that we shouldn’t fuck with him. Listening to the voice on a muffled amateur recording gives a layer of noise that seems to add to the immediacy of the words, when we’re considering the voice that can be recorded on many different devices and is so often done so, for the everyday person, without any high quality production techniques. This feels real, but when it’s Kanye what even is real? Authenticity, intent, reality are all subjective when you’re experiencing the voice out of context and don’t know the space or even the structure in which it was delivered.

Let’s take a second to appreciate the poetic aggression:

But let’s not forget, #prayforkanye.