Kanye West came striding out across studio 8H during the season premiere of Saturday Night Live like he owned the joint. Tonight he surely did, dominating the proceedings like no other musical act in probably a couple of years now. U2 might have seemed more powerful, but that was at least as much as anything the pure weight of their legend. Kanye West, however, is only emerging, and thus this was a pure function of his musical presence tonight.
For a bonus, they cast his introduction with a fairly short and excellent little sketch as he's making his grand entrance, showing him loaded for bear. Lorne Michaels sends a black member of the cast (Finesse Mitchell) into Kanye's dressing room to talk some sense into him before he goes on, hoping to keep him from talking any crazy radical stuff on the air.
This naturally has him highly steamed, striding through the studio- where he runs into Michael Myers who is trying to forget their last meeting on the infamous Katrina telethon. The FBI is tapping Myers phone, and they've taken away his American citizenship.
OK, that foolishness was all well and good, but Kanye West was here to make music, and that's exactly what he did in a big and impressive manner. He continued striding right on out to the stage, and rolled out the #1 single in the land, "Gold Digger."
Only he did it with some interesting change ups. You might expect for this big SNL show he'd break out Jamie Foxx to do his Ray Charles bit, but no. He played it for music rather than lyrics, reducing the Ray Charles riff to a mere sample, best I can tell. Indeed, he essentially downplayed the lyrics per se, emphasizing it as music and melody.
The real surprise feature was a couple dozen or so piece orchestra that rocked the bells. They were definitely getting me some hardcore jollies. They were playing some sharp runs. I'm not sure how to break it down, exactly. Their arrangements seemed to follow something like classical style, but with the drummer and an exceptionally sharp DJ at the turntables to play against it was something else. This swung like a bitch. Ray Charles himself would have been impressed with them swinging strings.
He cut directly from the hit to a quick "Touch the Sky" in which he sung about being "top of the world." The orhcestration was so rich as to stand up as an interesting musical statement on its own, but the flow of those words seemed almost like a jazz solo.
Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
Al, can you get off the bandwagon, yet? The horses are tired.
2 - Al Barger
No Temple, I'm pretty much on the Kanye West bandwagon at this point. He's having quite a moment. He was most impressive tonight. Them horses seemed to be just hitting full stride.
3 - Joanie
I wasn't all that impressed. Sorry, Al.
4 - Bob A. Booey
SNL still sucks. I taped this because of Steve Carrell and watched it when I got up just now, but the show even made Steve Carrell (one of the funniest men alive) only mildly funny.
Some bits are just such putrid clunkers, like the "TV Land" singing bit.
SNL's political satire never really says anything about the people it spoofs anymore.
They got a couple of cute new, mop-headed young guys trying to be the next Sandler, which is annoying.
Horatio Sanz was pretty rough reading the Teleprompter in Tina Fey's absence. "Weekend Update" usually isn't that great, but I watched it a weekend or two ago during a summer re-run and they were actually on a roll for one night and had some good jokes. Tina's talented, she just has to write the show for 13-year old idiots or something on the show. And without her, the show's writing is non-existent.
Amy Poehler's usually more energy than wit, but her Sharon Stone impersonation was pretty good.
Rachel Dratch was only in one sketch -- I guess she didn't have a good writing week.
Fred Armison is maybe the funniest guy in the show, but he's rarely used, ever.
Oh, and Kanye wasn't bad. I too thought the AIDS line was weird. He's good, but he's not worth the hype and record sales as the next big thing in rap.
Is he one fly Negro, Senator? Did that monkey signify right?
This may be the last time I tape or watch this show all season, because SNL is continuing it's decade-long suckage with purpose. I am mildly interested in seeing Ashley Simpson's stupid jokes about her lip-sync fiasco next week, so I might tape that. But I'm fast-forwarding through all the lame comedy.
That is all.
5 - Sterfish
I enjoyed Kanye's performance and the sketch that preceded it. The use of the strings for "Gold Digger" was interesting and I liked Adam Levine's appearance for "Heard 'Em Say" (Levine sounded the best live I have ever heard him).
As for SNL itself, I enjoyed most of what I saw (I missed the first half-hour, unfortunately). I especially liked Debbie Downer and this week's TV Funhouse. One thing I have to wonder, though...why did they add more guys to the cast? They are already down one woman with Tina on maternity leave and Maya could give birth at any minute. This leaves Amy and Rachel (and Kenan in drag) to play the female roles. I think adding another woman would give the show a bit more of a jolt.
6 - Rodney Welch
I thought it was a pretty good show, all told, although I think I went to pee during Kanye's thing. (Thanks, Al, for explaining why Mike Myers was there at the end.) I agree Horatio Sanz was a little stiff during the news. I think the new guy, the one named Hader, is a superb impressionist -- his Al Pacino during the Katrina relief effort was just dead-on. For me the best sketch of the night was the Lundford Twins Variety Show -- a perfect spoof of that lame 1970s genre, from the boneheaded patter between the hosts, to the supposedly endearing stereotype characters (Amy Poehler's Granny with the ukelele) to the elaborately awful musical numbers (the "Roaring 1920s" being a standard cliche).
7 - bangatank
I was mightily impressed by the energy of West's performance, and sound he made with those funky chicks in the string section. I want a recording of this performance. Anyone know where I can download it, please?
8 - Al Barger
What about that chick what was conducting the strings? Mmm, boy.
I'd bet clips of these performances are or soon will be circulating on the P2P networks. Bangastank, you might ought to try eDonkey and see if you have any luck.
9 - A. Nonymous
I wanna know if that orchestra was put together just for this performance, if they will be touring with Kanye West, or if they are an established group he brought on for a guest appearance. Tell me about the orchestra!
10 - me
They are "his" Orchestra. They will be touring with him. He went to England and performed a concert that was webcast live. I think it is downloadable from the BBC's website. It was a great performance and he had the orchestra with him there too.
If you can not download it from there then here is a link I just found: http://media.kanye-west.org/kanye_bbc_live.wmv
Hope this helped!
11 - Bang Uranus
I know i'm not supposed to comment on what others say, but has anyone heard Eminem's song Mosh? You act like a lyric is changing the world or something.
Kanye is not singing about candy shops and the other "typical" rap. Kanye is a breath of fresh air in this world of cookie cutter rap. The performance was great and so was the show.
12 - susanna
kanye west is a joke. it makes sense that the person who wrote this review likes u2. i'm not sure which one is worse
13 - vincent
Kanye West is an example of all wrapping(excuse the pun)and no gift. He forgot his words-can't call them lyrics-and then started singing lyrics from Yentl..yes Barbara Streisand's Yentl..as far as the use of strings that only covers up his lack of abilty but a generation that listens to music through ipods..probably doesn't know there is difference..why loren michaels persist in bringing on no talents is a mystery...he had ashlee simpson on twice...plus most people who listen to folks like him aren't really smart enough to understand saturday night live....so why pander to that demographic....Ian Hunter has wonderful new album out but we won't see him on SNL
14 - JK
No I am sorry, Kanye messed up on SNL and was horrible, the actors on SNL are trained professionals, even when they mess up they are still funny, Kanye was not funny. He only knows how to cause drama when he drops a new CD. He even sold his mother's death! Low! What a POSER!