Tynan's Anger

Arts & Culture Commentary from a Loving Digital Skeptic

[SONGS OF THE DECADE] #26 Kanye West – We Don’t Care

Posted on | December 5, 2009 | No Comments

SONGS OF THE DECADE #26

[For more info, read the Ground Rules of The Song of The Decade List]

Kanye West – We Don’t Care (2004)

Kanye West at the Vanity Fair kickoff part for...Image via Wikipedia


In 2009, it’s easy to forget whatever endeared people to Kanye West in the first place. For the unenlightened, I’d like to turn your attention back to 2004, when Kanye West, the under-appreciated producer of just about every hip-hop album of note for the first half of the decade came out with his first masterpiece The College Dropout, a landmark both in hip-hop production, style, and most notably, attitude.

“We Don’t Care” is what united those who were raised with hip-hop on the radio and the social conscious that made drove people to love hip-hop’s fresh take on the world and consider hip-hop dangerous 20 years ago. The song goes through all the social mores that had been ignored in major-label hip-hop for a good 15 years, but rather than sound like an angry Chuck D. clone, Kanye was smart enough to ignore just about every convention, using joyous music with smart-ass lyrics to introduce something that hip-hop had always been lacking—nuance and heart side by side. The first three tracks of The College Dropout, with “We Don’t Care” at the center, may have been the first time a hip-hop album skit actually mattered since 3 Feet High and Rising.

What made The College Dropout such a joy was that it was the commercial breakthrough of an artistic personality in spite of industry conventions. What made it portentously maddening was its need to pander to hip-hop bling obsessions. Whatever you can say about Kanye, his skills as an artist are never in question. On “We Don’t Care,” there was still nothing else to question.

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