Listeners of "popular" music will likely remember the hype surrounding Kanye West's "Stronger" when it was released several summers ago. The song immediately took over the air waves, and in dialing through the available radio stations you were almost guaranteed to hear it's catchy hook - a hook that belonged not to Kanye but instead to the less-heralded, but certainly more talented, Daft Punk.
Those who follow Daft Punk immediately identified the main riff of Kanye's hit single as sourced from Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger."
This song, released first in 2001, had been a staple of my Top-25 most played since almost that time. So it bothered me when Kanye sampled their tune and the public/billboard lauded his musical inspiration - in my opinion, it was a cheap ripoff of a far better song. Even though the Daft Punk version has virtually no more words than compose its title, it's a much stronger song - as a workout/pump-up mix, to hear when you're out, in every situation it's superior. It's altered variations on a common theme are more subtle than Kanye's lyrics (his words, often genius - see "Last Call" from College Dropout, are very weak on this track), and there is much more going on musically.
Plus, they wear these hats:
(which are rumored to cost almost $10,000 each).
I realize, though, that this is one of the beauties of music however - that once an idea is made public, it is public. There is no taking it back. Though Kanye (in my opinion) was wrong to give Daft Punk so little credit for essentially creating his entire hit single, he broke no laws. That is not to say that stealing a song/lyrics is at all legitimate, only to say that one person's creation can serve as the muse for another's.
That's all for now...
- james
