If you’re a music artist and you really want to know the reaction you’re going to get off of a new song, there’s no better testing grounds than a nightclub. You don’t even have to show your face, just simply slip the DJ the new track (obviously you’d have to be big enough to pull this sort of stunt) and he’ll pop it into his CDJ. If the crowd goes wild and keeps dancing then you’re good. If not, well then it’s back to the studio.
That’s exactly what Kanye West did this past week at Manhattan nightlife hotspot CV. After showing up with his crew, which included Kid Cudi, West spotted up in a table next to the DJ booth, then after some minutes he took to the booth with a CD in hand, asking DJ Scram Jones to play a few of his new tracks.
“Kanye leaned over the said, ‘Play track three.,’” said Scram Jones. “They all went nuts. Kid Cudi was dancing on the table, and then we cut it off at about a minute-and-a-half. We went to another record, and that got everybody excited, and Kanye said, ‘Play number seven.’ That’s how it kept happening. By the end of the process, we played four records.”
According to the DJ, West’s new work was “real hip-hop,” meaning no voice treatment (auto-tune) or his signature soul samples. No one really knows when West will drop his next album, although there have been rumors about a late-2010 release. Although 808s & Heartbreak was a great album that mostly grows on you after time, it’ll be nice to hear some work from the hip-hop superstar that dates back to his earlier work.