Still Pushing Creativity Too Far…
Ed Easton Jr.

It’s been a little over a week since I wrote part one of my Pushing “Creativity” Too Far series and the response from everyone has been very informative and helpful to this topic – even though most comments were for the Trey Songz “Invented Sex” video – we did get one person’s take on Rihanna‘s “Russian Roulette”.

A comment from one reader, “tiphanie”, discredits any thoughts of the Rihanna song promoting suicide as she wrote “i did not first interpret it as a suicidal song at all. i considered it to mean that love is a risk and falling into it is like pulling the trigger”. The comment, for the most part, validates to an extent Ne-Yo’s thoughts on the song – how it’s just a topic over a good beat that helps to put the listeners imagination to work. I do agree now, realizing that emotion and imagery are important in music and with the recent issues involving Rihanna, it’s easy to jump quickly to the extreme.

The Trey Songz responses have been heavy and the one that stood out to me was the comment by reader “Selena Hill” who was very passionate about the topic, stating: “music artists are some of the biggest perpetrators of our hyper-sexualized culture, along with Hollywood movies and the booming porn industry. Thus everybody is, and has been using sex and sexual exploitation (big difference there) to promote and drive corporate sales. This is evident by Walt Disney Recording star Hilary Duff who in a recent episode of the primetime sitcom “Gossip Girl” had a threesome, while Disney Channel star Miley Cyrus performed her single “Party in the USA” at this year’s Teen Choice awards dancing on a stripper pole. So here’s my point: Where exaclty [sic] is the creativity?”

I do agree that there is heavy sexuality in entertainment – there has been for years and it certainly will continue.

As far as the “Gossip Girl” statement goes – Hilary Duff, who was just acting in a role on a mature drama series that is known for scandalous behavior and twisting plots – I don’t consider that as an example of lacking creativity whereas Trey Songz’s video only gave us a sex scene with a soundtrack in the background. Big difference.

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This brings us to our newest members of the discussion…

The first on the stand is the rap phenomenon from Toronto, Drake. It’s been almost a year since the release of his critically acclaimed mixtape So Far Gone and we have heard plenty of new tracks that have expressed his feelings on being an unsigned hype, dealing with doubt, being an unsigned hype and dealing with doubt… do you notice a trend here? It just seems like on every song, whether a feature or one of his own, there will be a verse or two explaining how people doubted him and slept on his abilities. What I’m saying is, how about something more, now that you’re on top now, Drizzy?

Don’t get me wrong, I am without a doubt a fan of Drake but his creativity, in my opinion, is his variety of different ways to say the same thing on different beats. I think he’s a breath of fresh air from the usual “money, power and women” topics that plague hip hop – but what about some more concepts? Perhaps something about your life as an actor turned musician? Remember, he WAS once known for being on the show “Degrassi”.

Drake is pushing creativity too far in finding different ways to package the same concept on new songs such as his recent track, “Say Somethin” with Timbaland, which sounds like just like his past songs.

Timbaland – “Say Something” feat Drake

Would it be better for his future to develop new stories before people become tired and lose interest? Because, honestly, right now we know “Jimmy Brooks” on a deeper level then Drake.

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The next star on this list, is the always troubled Kanye West who has taken the word “creativity” and exhausted it to the fullest degree. West’s antics will be put to the backburner for this discussion, as I would like to examine his over-creative imagination in his music and videos. The videos for “Love Lockdown” and “Heartless” gave great eye candy to his songs, giving us surprising visuals to actually put thought into and be impressed by. I wish I could say the same thing for his latest fiasco, directed by Spike Jonze, where a drunk Kanye is portrayed stumbling around for ten minutes until he finds a bathroom to throw up in. If that wasn’t bad enough we find out that Kanye, in the video, is suicidal and releases a random demon-monkey that does a little dance and, inevitably, kills itself.

“We Were Once a Fairytale” – Kanye West & Spike Jonze

I’ve seen many videos by artists pushing creative thought, but this was not entertaining or informative – it was seriously disturbing. I can think of a million reasons for why this video was made in this way but each one agrees that it was a dumb idea that only perpetuates people’s thoughts of him being insane.

Another video that was directed by Kanye was for the Drake song “Best I Ever Had”, where the lyrics would make you believe it is going to show Drake rapping to a special girl instead shows large breasted women in short, tight basketball uniforms stretching and playing horribly. Besides the unhappiness of the WNBA, many women were against the video and very offended by the depictions. The power of the actual song is what kept the video on MTV as Kanye’s “creativity” could’ve finished Drake’s climb to the top before it even started.

Drake – “Best I Ever Had”

Kanye is a well respected musician and entertainer, but I feel he tries too hard to amaze us instead of keeping it on a level for us all to understand. Instead of pushing random themes down our throats and becoming angry because we don’t get them right away – how about explaining them and becoming more aware of your audience? That’s the difference between a genius and a jerk.

That’s all I have to say for this topic right now but I encourage more comments on this editorial and a special thank you to everyone who commented last time.

Read Part One NOW >