Dropout Kanye

[Stephani Kapnick]

Followingsuccess producing for numerous contemporaries including Talib Kweli, Beanie Sigel and most notably Jay-Z, Kanye West released his debut studio album, The College Dropout, on February 10, 2004.

The album features string arrangements, choirs and his signature soul sampling, frequently branded as chipmunk-esque for its sped-up and high pitched nature. Contrary to the popular gangster-persona lyrics that were so popular in hip-hop at the time, his lyrics mostly revolved around themes of family, materialism, religion and racism. Kanye explained the title in an interview with MTV:

Kanye himself happens to be a college dropout: he initially attended the American Academy of Art in Chicago and then transferred to Chicago State University, where his mother was a professor. He dropped out of Chicago State at age 20, as he already had a production deal on the table from Columbia Records. His mother later commented on him dropping out, saying:

There may be no better subject to discuss architecture being extra than Kanye West visiting SCI-Arc in April of 2018. The pairing of the two was news to our community yet not altogether surprising. (Kanye visited the GSD by invitation in 2013) What really grabbed headlines was who he met with: young conservative personalities Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens. The group chose to meet at SCI-Arc to check out the Spring Show, a publically-accessible showcase of outstanding student work. The trio received a short tour from some students, walked around for a little bit and then left. Not a big deal, yet, the media coverage of this event sparked widespread interest since it was such an interesting cast of characters to the general public and an esoteric institutional choice to the architecture community.

Question: when was there ever a single "architecture culture"? The activities and participants in architectural practice, education, criticism, and preservation (to name a few) each have a particular and defined sub-culture-- and have for at least a few generations. Is there some convergence? Of course. But spend ten minutes with some folks in any of these groups and you'll quickly discover many differences.

In general, the only people that even know what sciarc is are other architects, so I don't really see how this so called PR stunt could have any reach. Maybe it was a success to create buzz within this community...but unfortunately that isn't where the money for development comes from, which I assume is the end goal of any successful marketing effort.

It should also be said that a hack is a hack (not that kanye is even designing anything)...and internally people know. Brad Pitt is a classic dilettante...rich hobbyist which cultivates no respect or hold any real knowledge.

Insulating a school from people with different ideas...sounds like they have more to lose from that kind of anti-intellectual attitude than from engaging in meaningful debate. This is what happens when politics becomes a religion I guess.

charley kirk and candace owens care about hot takes and generating outrage, not about ideas or intellectual practices. i would expect a screaming toddler to be kept out of a gallery space, so keeping those two out isn't a deviation from the norm. logic and reason are nowhere to be found in the alt right crowd, so yes, take out the garbage (or just don't let it in to begin with)

kids kids.. I like this...you've funneled emotional discontents into politics and imagined it applied to architecture. What I see here is jla-x works in the "real world" and Dangermouse is either a totally stoic Plato-nium dude in the "real world" (you work like UPS delivery packages but have an education of an engineer or senator) or Dangermouse has been fully subsumed by the religious cult of academia, the Lefts Oasis cult....kids what the fuck you arguing about? Architecture is static? I don't get it. Scav is eating you for breakfast.

'they do it too' is what a child says when they get caught, and like with children, that excuse won't work here, either.. Actually, when you isolate ideologies from outside influences they tend towards the extremes. See North Korea. This is because debate often exposes inconsistencies, lack of understanding, etc. Both sides get checked. Very simple.

turning point usa and campus watch, which charlie kirk runs, exist solely to ban speakers and fire / deny tenure to professors. it's literally a conservative safe space for white identity politics with 'thinkers' who are obsessed about gender and micro aggressions against poor, oppressed white conservative men.

you're trotting out all these straw men to defend a guy who does exactly what you are pretending to be against. the fact that you are unable or unwilling to see the obvious and naked contradiction is highly amusing.

When you take a "fringe" position you stand to lose something, which is the respect of the main stream society. If you have integrity when taking a "fringe" position you really don't care...Technically. Of course you might be promoting something, like an album (Scav at least you understand that).

2.1) Any good rich urban developer knows to follow the artists who live on the "fringes" - starving artists outside of mainstream affording only the basic warehouse in middle of nowhere doing their "fringe" art. So like at one point dude, some like architects made Sci-Arc, a cool edgy sounding acronym/abbreviation for an architecture school. So just like Soho in NYC at some point it was raw and legit. But eventually Sci-Arc "trended" out of the "fringe" and into what I would call "main stream fringe" and like Soho in NYC is now upper class playground for the elite (essentially).

As Chigurh writes "Students were disappointed they even let him in the building? Laughable...that is why you are paying 200k to go there...spectacle, fame, eccentric weirdos, drama, and the like. " If you're rich and pretend to be into socialism and say "its not about the money", you are only in this position because of capitalism and money, so in short its called "repentance". So the students that were disappointed probably felt like their "repentance" for being elite was being destroyed and this is what they would lose by such "fringe" conservatives hanging out looking at their "main stream fringe" work...or they were just hanging out using Sci-Arc as a conversation piece. Scav you are very rational.

Mussolini was famously "not interested in art" and would continuously split official party support between multiple groups in order to keep artists on their toes, always trying to score a win with the Duce.

It has even been argued that "Fascist architecture" is not a useful label, as it encompasses too many different and sometimes opposing movements. Italian modernists tend to fall into two main factions, defined by either a progressive or a reactionary attitude toward history. However, most of them seemed to agree that it is important to somehow address history, especially in the context of Italian society and culture.

"Margherita Sarfatti-endorsed architecture" could possibly be more accurate description for the architecture sponsored by the Italian Fascist state in the 20s, though if we can agree to call a spade a spade we should call it by their chosen moniker - Novocento. It was essentially a neo-classical approach, in contrast to the industrial romanticism of the Futurists or the abstraction of the Rationalists.

Later Mussolini had to distance himself from Sarfatti on account of her Jewish roots being a bit of an issue for the Nazis, and as her influence on 'party style' waned tastes generally shifted toward a conservative modernism, exemplified and promoted by Marcello Piacentini.

Piacentini was very active as a planner and architect in Rome in the 30s, and was at the head of the EUR district development. Guiseppe Pagano was also on the planning team to represent 'the progressives'.

The Palazzo della Civilt Italiana (aka the Square Colloseum) was designed as a centerpiece for the district, and specifically intended to reference the Colloseum. What do you find confusing about the idea that Fascists wanted to associate their achievements with the 'glory days' of Ancient Rome in order to legitimize their power? Are you confused about how this task is achieved in this building's design?

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