For at least the third time, Sir Paul McCartney has teamed up with a young African American man for a hit. McCartney and Kanye West just released Only One, a tribute to Wests deceased mother, on iTunes and Wests Web site.
Hello my only one, just like the morning sun, West sings over the former Beatles keyboard vamping. Youll keep on rising til the skyknows your name. The ballad runs 4:42 and ends with abouta minute of McCartney tickling the ivories solo in Lady Madonna mode.
A somewhat mystical statement issued with the song described what happened when the Walrus and Yeezus teamed up.
Kanye sat there with his family, holding his daughter North on his lap, and listened to his vocals, singing, Hello, my only one, a statement reported by Rolling Stone read. And in that moment, not only could he not recall having sung those words, but he realized that perhaps the words had never really come from him.The process of artistic creation is one that does not involve thinking, but often channeling. And he understood in that moment that his late mother, Dr. Donda West, who was also his mentor, confidante, and best friend, had spoken through him that day.
This is arguably the first of McCartneys duets with young black men not infused with racial baggage, overt or encoded. First, there was Ebony and Ivory with Stevie Wonder, released in 1982. Key question: Ebony and ivory live together in perfect harmony side by side on my piano keyboard oh lord, why dont we?
The following year saw the release of Say, Say, Say, McCartneys duet with Michael Jackson the video for which, some say, referenced minstrel shows.
One academic thought McCartney and Jackson toyed with blackface without taking it on.
The sequences of Say, Say, Say will initially dismay anyone concerned with the fate of peoples culture, wrote Smith professor W.T. Lhamon in Raising Cain: Blackface Performance from Jim Crow to Hip Hop. What a loss that the whole cycle of blackface performance should funnel down to these capers in a cross-racial attraction played out among stars ashamed to utter its name aloud in public?
Lhamon also found fault with the video becauseMcCartney as Mac helps Jackson as Jac into a wagon.
In a just world, Jackson should be pulling McCartney onto the wagon, not the other way round, Lhamon wrote.
Though Only One is not about race, McCartneys alliance with West theauthorof New Slaves who said George Bush doesnt care about black people puts him in the studio with a performer whose provocative take on racial politics seems part of a different universe than those of previous collaborators Wonder and Jackson. McCartney, 72, cant beaccused of using young black performers to stay relevant. Even more than Elvis Presley or bandmate John Lennon, the man is arguably the most influential performer in the history of pop music, and need not polish his legacy.
However, McCartney has had to respond to accusations of racism in the past. In 1969, a version of the Beatles song Get Back known as No Pakistanis surfaced.Dont dig no Pakistanis taking all the peoples jobs, McCartney said on the recording.
In 1986, McCartney said the comment was not meant as a slight.
There were a lot of stories in the newspapers then about Pakistanis crowding out flats you know, living 16 to a room or whatever, McCartneysaid, as Salon reported in an exhaustive piece about No Pakistanis.
He added: If there was any group that was not racist, it was the Beatles. I mean, all our favorite people were always black.
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Justin Moyer is the deputy editor of the Morning Mix.
Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/02/paul-mccartney-plus-kanye-west-on-only-one/
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