<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Kanye West produced his most interesting work after his Taylor Swift shaming. Instead of apologizing for being the asshole he is and saying something about changing his ways, he went to Hawaii and made his epic My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which is all about owning up to being the asshole he is. Kanye doesn&amp;#039;t ask for forgiveness or even suggest he&amp;#039;s going to get better. He also doesn&amp;#039;t pretend he exists in some rock-star fantasy vacuum. On &amp;quot;Power,&amp;quot; he says, &amp;quot;The system broke, the school&amp;#039;s closed, the prison&amp;#039;s open.&amp;quot; Meanwhile, he&amp;#039;s busy &amp;quot;with some light-skinned girls and some Kelly Rowlands.&amp;quot; He knows how all this looks. Like the artists of television&amp;#039;s new narcissism, including Louis C.K. and Lena Dunham, Kanye makes his own narcissism his subject, and in doing so, he tells us something about our own. It would be premature to say Kanye West is cleaning up his act. But he&amp;#039;s going to be a father now, and whatever this means for his personal life, it could mean at least as much for his music. An angry, reckless, partying narcissist is one thing, but who wants to hear a narcissist rap about love? That&amp;#039;s boring. It&amp;#039;s foolish to think family or marriage automatically inhibits an artist, but there are plenty of examples of it. Jay-Z is affected by the old narcissism that gave us music videos with giant explosions, Sex and the City, and his wife&amp;#039;s clothing line. He&amp;#039;s at his best when he&amp;#039;s rapping about the difficult past (see: everything on The Black Album) and at his worst when he&amp;#039;s relaxing. After Beyonc\u00E9 gave birth to their child Blue Ivy last year, Jay-Z released a sentimental tribute song for his new daughter, &amp;quot;Glory.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;My greatest creation was you,&amp;quot; he says on it, sounding a bit like God.      But happiness doesn&amp;#039;t look so untroubled for Kanye West. As he said himself: &amp;quot;I always find something wrong.&amp;quot; After he started dating Kim Kardashian, a narcissist who has no idea of her affliction, he recorded and then scrapped a song referring to her as his &amp;quot;perfect bitch,&amp;quot; a compliment couched in Kanye-shock. Later, he released &amp;quot;White Dress,&amp;quot; which, as Kanye writes it, is nowhere near as pleasant as it sounds. It&amp;#039;s all about the problems in a relationship&amp;#039;s past, the reasons it almost didn&amp;#039;t work out, not the bliss that comes when it does. The song has more in common with the druggy, self-loathing music of Drake than Jay-Z&amp;#039;s love note. Kanye&amp;#039;s words to his bride-to-be are &amp;quot;Even though I met you in a club in a tight dress/At first sight I could picture you in a white dress.&amp;quot; Maybe family won&amp;#039;t change him much, after all. PREVIOUSLY: The Baby Names Kanye West and Kim Kardashian Should Avoid &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; Follow The Culture Blog on RSS and on Twitter at @ESQCulture. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a17786/kanye-west-kim-kardashian-music-14938842/?click=news>