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Kanye West: Blood on the Leaves

Written by Christopher Cerrone

Composer

In category: Song of the Day

Published November 8, 2016

I love Kanye. I also love “I love Kanye“. Lots of folks can’t stand him but something I fundamentally love about him is his blatant appropriation/re-adaptation of older materials. In “Blood on the Leaves” he pulls one of the most audacious moves I can think of — sampling the very famous recording of Nina Simone singing Billie Holiday’s “Strange fruit” and combines it with TNGHT’s “R U Ready“.

It’s a a miracle it works. God knows how, but Kanye’s voracious curiosity and blending is something I really love about a lot of the music on the show. It’s also Ted Hearne’s favorite Kanye song.

Kanye West – Blood on the Leaves

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPhsSzfAoBA
author: Christopher Cerrone

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Winner of a 2015 Rome Prize and a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize, the Brooklyn-based composer Christopher Cerrone is internationally acclaimed for compositions characterized by a subtle handling of timbre and resonance, a deep literary fluency, and a flair for multimedia collaborations. Hailed as “a rising star” by The New Yorker, his opera Invisible Cities, based on Italo Calvino’s classic novel was praised by The Los Angeles Times as “a delicate and beautiful opera…[which] could be, and should be, done anywhere.”

Join NYFOS and Cerrone for NYFOS Next: Christopher Cerrone & Friends on December 8 at National Sawdust.

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