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Revisiting West’s Sunday Service Record on Easter
For years, Kanye West’s Twitter avatar was the George Condo painting of Kanye’s screaming, severed head with a sword shoved through the ear. It was a fitting image for an artist who’s made a tradition of saying exactly what he wants, even when it seems as if he’s been cast outside of the mainstream’s good graces — that, no matter what, he will be heard. Even if West has since traded the severed head avatar for a more peaceful rendering of Earth, he still makes it clear that he refuses to be silenced. He told Zane Lowe last October in his classic prophetic, third-person voice: “’Ye cannot die. ‘Ye cannot be buried.”
Of course, he’s been speaking like this from the beginning, in broad, ego-driven brushstrokes. But maybe this isn’t all braggadocio. For someone who’s made a career out of extracting vocal loops from obscure, sometimes decades old songs, he’s experienced first-hand the way dead musicians can be plucked from time and repurposed. The art of sampling, especially at Kanye’s level, offers a new chance for an old voice to be heard in a new context — no matter how much time has passed. So, maybe what he means by he can’t die, is that perhaps through music…
