Kanye West & Jay Z - Monster

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Nicki Minaj is one for three, but this is the one

Kanye West
Jay-Z
Monster
Bragging
#99 (Low)
Dec 9, 2010
Kanye West
Shawn Carter
William Roberts
Onika Maraj
Justin Vernon
Kanye West

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I never laid out the rule that a week would be reviewed top-down, so this week I'll start with the Low position, simply because it's the song that's having the most impact on the blog. Exactly like changing to a Stay, Walk, Run strategy, Kanye's “Monster” made me recursively add featured and guest stars into my listings for one reason: Nicki Minaj.

There's been a bit of recurrence in the featured slot before, but Nicki made me reconsider the whole system because, though she hasn't been the main name of any song I've reviewed so far, she keeps popping up and always gets some mention. She was autotuned and blank in the awful “Check It Out,” so much so that you'd never really notice it was her; she was my least favorite part of “Bottom's Up,” but I detected some interesting turns in her voice, changing characters from her normal tone to a dainty little girl to a growling beast.

The neat little turns I noticed in “Bottoms Up” live large in “Monster;” three MCs each get a verse, and they get some time to do what they do (the song runs longer than six minutes), but Nicki Minaj is the real monster of the track, a force of nature and a goddamned rockstar. Her verse starts slow, but she's already playing with character in the song; she employs Rastafarian accent at her convenience, sometimes for a line, sometimes just to hit a word. She writes her verse with smaller crescendos, ramping up with the music, digging in and raising intensity as the builds, and switching to her little girl voice when the beat backs off a bit, and then dropping into her growl to cap off a line. Her part has lots of little arcs that follow the music, but eventually builds to a scream and roaring “I'm a motherfuckin Monster!” I didn't really dig her in the last two songs; I love her in this.

The first two verses pale in comparison. Rick Ross in the first verse is solid and serviceable... since this is a brag track and everyone's declaring their monstrousness, you know someone had to pull out and show us his dick (it was bound to happen), but “Have you ever had sex with a Pharaoh? I put the pussy in a sarcophagus. Now she's claiming that I bruised her esophagus” is sort of amazing: even if it makes absolutely no sense*, that dude just rhymed sarcophagus with esophagus. Jay-Z's verse is done in that style where the rapper just can't seem to keep up with the beat-- he never hits the one, always seems to be lagging, and you can hear him struggling for breath in the gaps; I've heard other rappers use this style, so maybe my palette just isn't developed enough to appreciate it, but I don't like it. Regardless, neither of these guys make as much with the music as the lady who follows them.

Musically, this one's pretty good-- I'm not sure how much we're all supposed to be praising Kanye these days (and again: I'm a hermit, and  outside of Garfunkel & Oates, I have no idea where Kanye West falls on the current cultural barometer), but the beats are well written and dramatic, rising and falling within the song to keep its length from flatlining the whole thing. Bon Iver opens the song with an octave-synthesized voice that could just as easily be introducing Dr. Funkenstein and closes with a coda that might have appeared on an early 80's Prince record; neither of these things occur within the body of the song, but “Monster” begins and ends with stylized vocal melodies, both of which are pretty cool.

I have to admit, I'm sort of on the fence with this one... there are parts of “Monster” so good they're outstanding, but it's only bits and pieces, and I'm not sure how often I'd listen to a six-and-a-half minute song simply because I like the third verse. It's compelling, though; this is as close to Stay as a song I'm not actually keeping can get.
 

Walk

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell:

* the sarcophagus part, I mean-- I'm not so dim as to misunderstand the bruised esophagus.  [back]