Who Will Survive in America
"Who Will Survive in America" is the final track of the standard edition of American rapper Kanye West's album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.[1] The piece, featuring no vocals from West himself, serves as the album's coda and is built on a sample of Gil Scott-Heron's "Comment No. 1",[2] a blunt, surrealist piece delivered by Scott-Heron in spoken word about the African-American experience and the faded idealism of the American dream. Scott-Heron's poem, which criticized the 1960s Revolutionary Youth Movement for failing to recognize the more basic needs of the African-American community, is edited to a reduced version on the track that, according to music writer Greg Kot, "retains its essence, that of an African-American male who feels cut off from his country and culture".[3] By contrast, Sean Fennessey interprets it as "a too-serious denouement for an album that is more about the self’s little nightmares than some aching societal rejection".[4] West had previously sampled Scott-Heron on "My Way Home", a track from his 2005 album Late Registration.
References
- ↑ Denney, Alex (November 19, 2010). "Album Review: Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella)". NME. New York. Retrieved 2012-04-27.
- ↑ Powers, Ann (November 23, 2010). "Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy". Los Angeles. Archived from the original on November 23, 2010. Retrieved 2012-04-27.
- ↑ Kot, Greg (November 17, 2010). "Album review: Kanye West, 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy'". Chicago Tribune. Chicago: Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2012-04-27.
- ↑ Fennessey, Sean (November 17, 2010). "Kanye West, Finally Unraveled". The Village Voice. The Village Voice. Retrieved 2012-04-27.
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