There are some days that are just made to be shitty. I was late to work for my afternoon shift of personal training, and like all days in which a person runs late, the world was going to make sure I couldn't possibly arrive on time. Why was I late in the first place, you ask? Well, as most of us will admit, bad days are usually self-fulfilling prophecies of small choices and poor decision-making culminated into a series of ironic consequences. I was late because I was trying to find a workable link of the live stream feed of Kanye West's listening party/Yeezy Season 3 Fashion show at Madison Square Garden.
Kanye was releasing his very first material from "The Life of Pablo" album that would rollout in most of its entirety by the end of the weekend. I couldn't possibly tell you why I needed to hear this live stream before work, other than this was music, as a Kanye West fan and apologist, I was more anxious to hear than almost anything in the past 18 months. At every red light, I continued to refresh the bootleg links I had found using social media, and I was growing weary in my attempts. At that point, irrationality had clearly taken over, and the idea of listening to the music after my shift at work seemed a fate too painful to bear. I needed it now, at any cost.
I pulled into the parking lot at my gym with eight minutes to spare before clocking in, by the sheer grace of God, and as the heavens apparently opened up, so did the video for the live stream. It was quite blurry, heavily pixelated, and the audio so unmastered that I had the volume in my car almost at full capacity just to hear what was happening at a normal level. You could hear the faint cheers from the crowd at MSG in the background and almost nothing else. There wasn't any sort of typical Kanye rant that has become so familiar with fans who experience him in person, nor was there any sort of over-the-top design to the whole event. From what I could see, it was nothing more than Kanye, a DJ table with an MPC on top, and some of the familiar faces we have grown accustomed to seeing within the G.O.O.D. Music family such as Pusha T, Kid Cudi, Travis Scott, and 2 Chainz.
The initial sounds to "Ultralight Beam" almost surprised me at first, because I had begun to zone out as to how I was going to tell my boss and my client why I was late. The voice of a young child praising Jesus himself was the only sound you could hear. Finally, a series of elongated, disjointed synths faded in from the background over the audio, and my entire perception of music seemed to melt in my driver's seat. Heavy autotuned singing from The Dream and Kanye followed, and as the first 808s finally dropped, a moment of pure joy washed over me in a way I can barely describe. My job didn't matter anymore, and neither did my day. I was lost in the sound, lost in the words, yet with a clearer mind than before. This wasn't just music, this was a beautiful mural painted with lyrical pastels that had turned Madison Square Garden into a church for us to bear witness in.
Say what you must about Kanye West, the man, the father, and even, at times, the musician. To describe him as a flawed indvidiual is an insult to the imperfect. He has always been as unflinching in his self-importance as he is unaware of his self-consciousness. He bleeds anxiety and fear, yet has always channeled it through rage and impulse. Prior to this listening party, Kanye had exploded on Twitter regarding a harmless Wiz Khalifa tweet just because he signed the tweet with the same initials that Kim Kardashian just happened to have. His entire being reeks of instability and volatility, yet his music has always been the one benefactor of all his pain.
We, as a culture, have taken a lot from Kanye West. I don't mean that we have learned, necessarily, from him either. Rather, we have stolen pieces of him from the most earnest and naked aspects of his music, and used them for our own comfort. He was the muse we needed to articulate our suffering, but never the person we cared enough about to help him with his own. Albums like 808s and Heartbreak resonate so well with those of us who have gone through the ends of long relationships, or who have lost loved ones, yet we treat the pain that he feels from those same struggles as evidence that he is less than us. Every tweet dissected by a peanut gallery of viewers unwilling to admit that, for all his numerous flaws, Kanye represents the best and worst of human behavior. No matter how his music is perceived, or how it influences us, negatively or positively, he has always provided those moments of clarity to capture the right emotions at the right moment. Sometimes, even the people we hate or grow tired of the most give us exactly what we need to get by, even if they sacrifice themselves in the process.
I am sure we all know how the rest of "Ultralight Beam" played out; Kelly Price gave us gospel singing at its finest, Chance the Rapper provided the arguable verse of the year for 2016, and Kirk Franklin lifted us up to heaven after we had been put to rest. The experience of that song, from start to finish, was nothing short of entrancing. I honestly couldn't tell you what happened at work the rest of that day. I don't even know if I ever left that car, and maybe I'm writing this article from heaven. All I can really tell you is what Kanye's music has done for me in those small moments; those moments of confusion, anger, pain, frustration, and hopelessness. His music has always been a mirror of the human psyche in its most tragic states, yet it always gives glimpses of a peace to come. "Ultralight Beam" is peace from the world's least peaceful person. It is a moment of clarity from one of the world's most opaque human beings, and even if it wasn't enough to save Kanye from himself, sometimes it's just enough to save someone else.
