Kanye's Tour & Sample Lawsuit

One of the must-see concerts of the summer is easily Kanye West's "Glow in the Dark Tour" which not only features West, but also R&B singer Rihanna, fellow rapper Lupe Fiasco, and the alt-rock band, N.E.R.D. New York Times recently gave a write up about the stage show by Kanye, praising it as Mr. West’s set was the most daring arena spectacle hip-hop has yet produced, and in some ways the best, even as it jettisoned standard hip-hop expectations. The rhymes, the beats and the narcissism were there; the block-party spirit and sense of community were not. Until the encore Mr. West had no human company on the arena stage. The Chicago Tribune also jumped on the spaceship, with a recent Leisure blog discussing the concert. In the blog's review, they discuss how this seems almost like a one-man play with Kanye singing, dancing and rapping on the Space Odyssey style stage. West rapped, sang and danced himself into a sweat-soaked frenzy, the veins popping from his neck, his arms flailing. He even did a few push-ups. The songwriter-producer portrayed himself as hip-hop’s answer to Jean-Paul Sartre: an existentialist whose narrative was abetted by cosmic video and smoke machines, and salted with references to Samuel Beckett, Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” and David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” The Tribne blog mentions that it would have been better if Kanye left the song "Homecoming" out of his encore tracks, and suggests that with Lupe Fiasco, Pharrell and Kanye all present, they would have done well to perform their collab "Us Placers". Sources: Ego-Fueled Hip-Hop Sci-Fi Space Odyssey @ New York Times Kanye West takes a one-man trip to dark side of the moon @ Chicago Tribune's Leisure blogs In other news, Kanye West is among several rappers being sued for illegal use of samples. "Upon the Rock" by Joe Farrell is the song sample in question, and the lawsuit was brought by the late musician's daughter. The Farrell song was sampled for the following rap songs: Kanye West "Gone" Common "Chi-City" Method Man & Redman "Run 4 Cover". Read more at hiphop-elements.com