Crowdsourcing, hip pop and schizophrenia

Art reviews of the end of the year will focus on two somewhat schizophrenic pieces of work.

One reflect a 5 year long art path of a man crossing the musical bridges.
The other is a bipolar art broadcast, the two works being displayed in a month.

Kanye West new joint "808s & heartbreak" features no rapping at all, autotuned torn sinister singing, sonic pulses, tribal drums and kid A-like fading bass synths. All that is far from warm and soulful preaches of his 2004 debut, the college dropout. In his early career, West first introduced a cinematic approach to the hip hop song, emotional evocations, songwriting and pyramidal instrumentations that are more folk music inspired than Jay Z influenced. Now, bridging the musical gap is complete : as Kanye himself affirms, 808s' single "Love Lockdown is just a great accomplishment in the idea of, like, Thom Yorke in the strip club."
M.West has exploited the current vogue of electro pop, but he has built something far greater in the process for two reasons.
First, the death of his mother and break-up with fiancée Alexis Phifer has unleashed dramatic emotions, which seemed contrary to the current identity of "electro hip pop".


Second, he may have created the first crowdsourcing album of music history. West posted a few songs on his blog during the week preceding 808s' released. A few days later, he re-upped new versions with changes in line with the comments that had been made on his blog. He tooked a similar networking approach in the studio, writing and confronting his stuff with the views of associates -singer esthero, rapper consequence, dj A-Trak and others - and using his travels wisely, making listening sessions with strangers, in airports or planes. How can we not raise the parallel with our new web-social dependant way of life ?


I'm still startled reading the "what are you doing right now" tag of some of my friends on facebook...(on this social website people use to describe shortly what they are doing, anyone being able to access the information) It seems like daily life and decisions are to be audited by the judgement of the community. Website Twitter is devoted exclusively to this way of social communication. One can doubt the legitimacy of this approach. There can be two risks : it jeopardizes the intellectual independency, freedom and roughness, passing thoughts and willings through the filter of common wisdom, it pollutes the factual and somewhat cynical european school of thought with cheerfulness and happiness, forced by the willing to please the reader (i.e. the friend).
About M.West creation process, both risks are minimized. The musician takes the best of the social approach, mining the tastes to create the breakthrough. Entourage input is not a constraint on creation, but a precious and fresh cultural background insight.

Will our web-social dependant way of life bring us the same successfull insight, or be limited to intrusive and friendly "pokes" and "what are you doing right now" tags ?