Kanye West - Can't Tell Me Nothing
Produced by Kanye West, DJ Toomp

I formally predict that Graduation will be Kanye West’s The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living (?); an artist who won over listeners by walking the tightrope between brash arrogance and endearing insecurity loses touch with what made him such a fascinating personality in the first place. Call it the Jay-Z Syndrome, which infected a majority of Kingdom Come. When an artist attains a certain level of notoriety, they can’t talk about their days huddled over the crack pot or eating condiments because they couldn’t afford groceries; that reality is so far removed from them it would only sound patronizing, not to mention self-important and artificial. But it’s a double-edged sword, because what are these rappers left to rap about?

Can’t Tell Me Nothing is interesting for a number of reasons. Co-produced not by Late Registration collaborator Jon Brion but DJ Toomp, Can’t Tell Me Nothing isn’t so much the brother of What You Know as a distant cousin thrice-removed. Both songs share common DNA though: shimmering to the verge of stuttering, the track’s tempo is off-putting at first —- almost lethargic. And when compared to Brion’s flourishes on Late Registration, the synths feel naked. The drums are Toomp’s as well; in fact, the only aspect of the beat that is distinctively Kanye is the vocal sample that floats above the track’s gleaming surface, almost like an afterthought. But someone has realized the best way to utilize Jeezy: cut out all his actual rapping and you’ll get the same effect without the superfluity.

The question that begs asking is: why is Kanye outsourcing beats? Can’t Tell Me Nothing is an arrogant statement in that Kanye thinks he’s a good enough rapper that we want to hear him over other producers' beats. He addresses his liberal use of slant rhymes (“They say I talk with so much emphasis / Ooh, they so sensitive”), which is only highlighted here as ’Ye has to rely on a delivery-heavy flow in order to match the beat’s introspective pace. And introspective Kanye is on Can’t Tell Me Nothing: every line is calculated and there aren’t any throw-away lines. It’s all very typical Kanye West, and there are even some gems strewn about the "feel bad for me because I keep fucking up" overture, including the Meryl Streep-referencing: “So if The Devil Wears Prada, Adam Eve wear nada / I’m in between, but way more fresher, with way less effort...”

As a single Can’t Tell Me Nothing is a questionable choice; as a deep album cut it makes more sense but its logic still doesn’t convince. For all intents and purposes, it’s a southern rap song, but so was Drive Slow. But Drive Slow was interesting because it was a southern rap song as envisioned by a Chicago native who makes New York rap. Can’t Tell Me Nothing is just a southern track, with none of the nuanced region-blurring and artistic interpretation that Kanye is capable of. It’s a case of Kanye “talking his shit again,” and luckily for Kanye he’s not just shit-talking. I just hope there’s no songs on Graduation about trashing hotels. Kanye doesn’t possess the satirical ability to pull that one off.

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