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At the moment, every marginal Kanye West activity feels like a full-blown event, albeit one that is usually trying to get you to buy $350 sneakers. Yesterday, Kanye performed a new song called "All Day" at the BRIT Awards. We surveyed Pitchfork staffers for reactions to the performance.
Meaghan Garvey: I don’t know how many times I have heard complaints about rap shows just being a bunch of dudes standing on a stage watching one guy do stuff. I’ve always thought that to be a pretty arbitrary critique—there are a lot of reasons rap shows often suck, but rarely do they relate to how many people are on stage and whether on not they are jimmy-jangling a tambourine or whatever. You can trace this kind of thinking to rockist views of what a “live show” should entail: the old “how many instruments does Beyonce play? Beck plays 27!” shake-down that floated around this year’s Grammys. Well, here is Kanye to show you that a bunch of dudes standing around on a stage can not only not suck, but trump pretty much anything else you could be doing up there. Suckers!
Corban Goble: "All Day" had me like [RICHIE]:::[SWIFT]:::[AUDIO MUTED]
Jenn Pelly: I think the image of seeing so many people on stage next to Kanye is really moving. Anyone in America who has attended a protest of any sort over the past year knows how powerful it feels to stand next to people with shared beliefs and band bodies together to claim physical space. It requires visceral devotion that the idea of "all day" implies.
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Ryan Dombal: Last summer, Kanye talked to GQ’s Zach Baron about how “All Day” was going to be his all-stunting-all-the-time Jay Z song. “He's the poster child of winning,” Ye said of his mentor, “and I think I was the poster child of, like, fighting and winning. But you always saw the fight. And with Jay, you always saw the win.” Now that he’s a dad and a fashion mogul, the overall plan seemed to be: less fighting, more winning. But Kanye needs to fight—in many ways, that is his win. It’s why he needs you to respect artistry. It’s why he needs you to understand the revolutionary power of his full-body leggings. It’s why he needs to bring out a volcanic blowtorch—nay, two volcanic blowtorches—onstage at the BRIT Awards; in a world of smart air conditioners and magic t-shirts that keeps you dry at the gym, Kanye West needs to sweat. And you need to see him sweat.
There’s a fine line between pushing yourself to the brink and passing out on the treadmill, though. And Ye has been running out of breath more than usual recently—he even starts off the touchingly snoozy “Only One” video huffing and puffing. On the BRITs, he’s clearly working overtime to get all those “All Day” raps in while hellfire spouts behind him, and he makes it that much harder for his 37-year-old knees by forcing a bobbing crouch near the end. As the music ends and the applause starts, he’s gulping air—he made it. But somewhere in the world, Drake is looking on, exhaling normally. Calmly, even.
Jessica Hopper: This is the best Chief Keef song anyone has ever made; terminal Chicago ferocity here. I like the compare/ contrast of Taylor Swift flipping her hair like it's a Thursday night at 9 at Crazy Horse and Kim is all snaps like a mom feelin' it at the street fair.
Matt the Intern: First reaction? HIS CREW IS HUGE. These guys must've known this was a life-changing opportunity. They've been practicing their trap arms for months, hoping for a callback before the big night. The phone rings with a Chicago area code, but they contain their excitement, careful to not expend the energy they'll need on stage. I imagine some pre-show nerves as they realize their dreams of superstardom are just one flex away. Kanye's attention to detail knows no bounds. He will go to the ends of the earth for the perfect levels of hype and that is what "All Day" shows us. (As Hyperdub correctly points out, the artists on stage are UK grime artists like Skepta, Jammer and Novelist).
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Jayson Greene: This is what Kanye is supposed to sound like. He told us, in 2010, that he "figured out I'm not a nice guy." He's not. Or if he is, he should definitely cease playing one on TV. His "I'm being nice" smile, evident on his recent Ellen appearance, looks like someone struggling with intestinal issues in a church youth group. As he tweeted the other day, "Not smiling makes me smile", and on "All Day", he's finally Not Smiling.
And it’s glorious. The synth—if that dinky word can actually describe the full-body growl that introduces the song—sounds as if the opening fanfare of “Black Skinheads” metastasized and became sentient. The careful pop stabs of his recent songs—“Only One”, a noncommital doodle that gestured towards “Kanye as Good Dad” and “Kanye as Devoted Son”, and the spit-smoothed “FourFive Seconds”, which offered a hearty handshake to the Grammy committee--felt like the cessation of a spirit, an animating discontent that has been driving Kanye through the middle of the cultural zeitgeist for the better part of the last decade. “All Day” marks the return of that energy, and it makes you wonder what will become of his first two songs, which feel like unsigned greeting cards by comparison. It’s impossible to imagine, from here, what an new Kanye album will feel or look like, and you get the sense, from his stabs in various directions, that maybe he doesn’t either. But he’s also discovered a way to make his indecisive thrashing fascinating, and watchable, in part by allowing to leak onto awards show stages. “All Day”, which has been lurking as a rumor since at least summer, exploded into reality yesterday.