[0:00]It's amazing to me how you can hear one second of a song and it can bring up so many emotions and memories. The ninth track off of Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy may not be his most famous song. I think there'd be a war in the comment section if I called it his best, but I think it's a perfect representation of him. It's beautiful, it's a technical marvel, but it's an absolute mess, just like Kanye. To clarify, I'm not saying that the track is messy, I'm saying the topics at hand, the themes, the context of what makes Runaway Runaway, it all combines for something that is Kanye through and through. His whole career has been like a car crash that you can't look away from because it's the most impressive, thought-provoking, empowering, relatable car crash that you'll ever see. Today I'm going to ramble on for a little bit about this masterpiece, what makes it so special within his legendary career, and why it's my favorite song of all time. I feel like I've done this part a million times on the channel already, but for the uninitiated, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a special project. It came to Kanye after a period of self-sabotage in the public eye. He flew out a ton of the best producers and musicians in the world to these very secretive recording sessions in Hawaii. There was a set of rules, all the egos combined perfectly, nobody was clashing together, and this was Kanye's return to aggressive dominance in the music world. This was him getting his power back. The music itself is extremely maximalist. It's one of the more grandiose albums that you'll ever come across. The tracks are long, we're getting influences from all across the board, lyrical themes of celebrity, wealth, romance, ego, and more than anything, excess. To truly get the context of what I'm going to tell you in this video, just remember that this album begins with Nicki Minaj reading Roald Dahl in an English accent. We've got a few of the most iconic hip-hop samples of the century. There's a single song on here that features all of these people. There's a ridiculous, very explicit skit by Chris Rock, a spoken word piece from Gil Scott Heron about, quote, the African-American experience and the fated idealism of the American dream, and I could go on and on. This album has so much going on at all times. It is rooted in grandeur and indulgence. So that just makes it all the more fascinating when on track number nine, we get one of the most vulnerable, authentic, self-aware, revealing pieces of art from one of the most complicated individuals in the history of music. At the beginning of this nine-minute epic, we hear a very cold, lonely E struck on the piano precisely 15 times. It happens just long enough where the split second you start wondering, what is this? I'm uncomfortable, this is awkward. We go down an octave, then up an octave a few times. During this part of Runaway, we're basically getting a prologue or an epitaph. It's an introduction to set the stage for what you're about to hear, but within these first 37 seconds of isolated piano keys, we do get an entire story. There's a beginning, middle, and end, a rising action, conflict, and resolution. As that story finishes, the main event begins when the beat drops. There's this dark and haunting synthetic bass that comes into play, and it's a really enticing foil to those high-pitched piano keys that have continued on.
[3:20]It almost sounds like a representation of good versus evil or some other kind of internal struggle.
[3:28]Coinciding with the piano keys, drum machine and bass, we get these chopped-up vocal samples that Kanye used a lot during this time. The first is from a 1981 live performance of Rick James doing Mary Jane and saying, look at you. I think this one adds to the eeriness of this track, with the line going back and forth between your headphones, it makes you feel claustrophobic, like you're just as alone as those piano keys from before, and someone's yelling at you and trapping you in a corner. The other vocal sample is from James Brown's introduction to Live at the Apollo Theater 1967, where we hear, Ladies and Gentlemen. This one circles us back to the grandiose themes of celebrity that we've been hearing throughout the album thus far. Yes, on this track we feel completely isolated, but guess what? We're also simultaneously the center of attention. Just like how Kanye and other big names must feel every single day, not only is it very lonely at the top, but they're constantly being put on show, like an exhibit in a museum or animals in the zoo, plenty of people pointing at him like he's some other worldly being, but few real human connections. The, is what makes you feel surrounded, with people coming at you from all sides, and the, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the reminder that this is all some sick game to those surrounding you. You don't really matter, you're just a tool to entertain them. In the pre-chorus, we get some of the best emotion-packed vocals of Yay's career, and he gives you his uniquely Kanye response to the desolation he's faced in the intro. And I always find, yeah, I always find something wrong. You've been puttin' up with my shit just way too long. I'm so gifted at finding what I don't like the most, so I think it's time for us to have a toast. He is agreeing that he's wronged many people, he's made a fool of himself in the public eye, and he's messed up time and time again. He's doing what few egomaniacs ever do, he's accepting it. While he likes to hype himself up as some kind of God, we're hearing this dude owning up to his faults, and this is a groundbreaking moment for him in his rollercoaster of a career. But as you'll see in the very last line and then the contents of the chorus, Runaway is this disastrous celebration of Kanye accepting his faults. For a second, you might have thought that he was going to apologize for his mistakes, but no. The main point is that he is who he is, and he knows he can't change that. But what makes him such a good anti-hero is that he's not exactly gloating about his inability to change. The fact that he's making this song referencing that he's a menace to society and that he often put work above his loved ones, with that stuff, there's clearly some sort of empathy and sympathy there. What the song is all about is that for better or for worse, he is testifying, perhaps regretfully, that he is proud of himself. People might take one glance at the lyrics in verse one and think that they're cringeworthy, and I don't totally disagree with them, but I don't think that these bars are bad. I'm sitting there listening in shock that Kanye is so transparent and he's really letting it all hang out. He's describing his mistreatment of women in a way that is so open, so conversational that you know it's coming straight from the heart. Again, I need to emphasize just how brutal it is seeing this monumental, self-obsessed figure admitting to his guilt and clearly feeling a lot of insecurity as well. But like I said, this song is a beautiful disaster, for every second of vulnerable honesty, we get glimpses of that braggadocious monster coming back to center stage. After a verse about him constantly mishandling relationships over the years, we get, and I just blame everything on you, at least you know that's what I'm good at, in this twisted, uncomfortable way, his empathy is followed by him talking in definitives, saying that putting the blame on you is what I'm good at, and you've known that from the jump. And then the reaffirmation of his negative traits in the pre-chorus with, yeah, I always find something wrong. I'm so gifted at finding what I don't like the most. This is a dramatic Greek tragedy. Kanye is in a vicious cycle of doing the wrong thing. Caught up in the materialism of his life, trying to find himself and understand the pros and cons of having a distorted self-esteem, he's grasping at straws here. Trying to pat himself on the back, even when he's the reason he's at his lowest point. During the bridge, we get his heartbreaking plea in the most direct way possible over and over and over again. It's hard to say exactly who Kanye's directing this at. It could be whatever love interest he's currently failing, it could be towards himself, saying to run away from the shallowness of fame and try to find peace somewhere else. But the fact that this part of the song is so open, really starts to show you the bigger picture. No matter who he's talking to or what he's specifically talking about, Kanye is scared. Being in the public eye has brought him so many mixed emotions. The highs are amplified but so are the lows. Being famous starts to take away your innermost human traits, whether it be your personality, your character, your morals, and so on. When you're under the microscope of stardom, you start to really lose yourself. And as we all know, Kanye really loves himself. So on Runaway, after eight tracks of questioning and reveling in excess, when the insecurity, guilt, and fear begin to set in, Kanye thinks the only option is to fight back with the thing he knows best, arrogance. And can you really blame him? In verse two, we get the personification of arrogance with Pusha T. It's been three and a half minutes of Kanye battling his inner demons and trying to convince himself that no matter what, being himself is the only way out. So in that moment, Pusha T flies in and comes to the rescue with one of the most audacious, vain, smug verses you'll ever hear, and this is music to Kanye's ears. This is the reassurance that he wanted to hear before. When I talked about the internal struggles and accepting his faults, those ideas were the angel on his shoulder.
[9:19]Seeing if they could push Kanye in the direction of compassion for those around him. But as the binds of celebrity and fame hold him tight, Pusha T is the other end of the spectrum. Convincing him that power, sex, and money are the keys to moving forward. All that other stuff will just hold him back. In verse three, Kanye cements his role as a tragic hero. He's fully aware of the worst parts of himself, but his pride stands above everything else. No matter what he does going forward, trying to fix the past or himself is only going to make things worse. As he sings these lyrics, you can hear the pain and anguish in his voice, knowing that his path is a lonely one. Any resistance is futile. He is a genius, he's made some of the most important music of the 21st century, but no matter what he does, inner peace may never come. The pre-chorus and chorus come back one last time as Kanye fully sacrifices himself to this life of maximalism and opulence. This story of hardship and humiliation ends with this very elegant, serene outro, symbolizing Kanye's departure from any real tranquility. This is his last taste of the life that he gave up. He sings through a vocoder, which is programmed to sound like a distorted electric guitar, and there's something so perfect about how you can't really make out what he's saying. I guess the idea is that no matter what he says, even if he was finally apologizing, nobody would take it to heart anyway. People make their own perceptions of the celebrities that we will truly never know. So as Kanye makes his final descent into this grimy, decadent world of fame, it's only fitting that we can't even hear his words.
[10:52]Only he knows what he's saying because that's what's most important. During this moment of catharsis, at least he's not scared of the isolation anymore. He's going to embrace the role that we put him in. He's taking the labels that the media gives him, and he's wearing them like badges of honor. He may be completely alone, but at least he's proud of himself. Listen, I love this song because of what it represents. It's this relentlessly truthful perspective on being comfortable in your own skin. While many other songs would dismiss one's problems with some meaningless apology, Runaway takes your struggles head on and learns to live with them. As a guy that makes videos on YouTube, of course, there's a part of me that feels delusions of grandeur. If I'm writing thoughts down and putting them into the world, I obviously think they're worth hearing a little bit, but even if I had an ego the size of Kanye's, I still have constant moments of insecurity, feeling like a failure and not believing in anything I do. Runaway makes me feel some kind of strange, messy comfort during those paradoxical feelings of cockiness mixed with absolutely hating myself. If you a Kanye West fan, you're not a fan of me, you're a fan of yourself. Hey everybody. Uh, thank you for watching that video. It means a lot to me. This is something that I've been wanting to do for a long time, and I've been talking about Kanye and this general topic for about as long as I've been making videos, so this is cool. If you want to support the channel, feel free to like, comment, and subscribe. You can follow me on social media at RenshawHS. You can buy my merch on outloudmerch.com/collections/alfo-hyphen-media. You can support my Patreon, and thank you again. I'll see you soon.
