Welcome back to my music blog, The Music Man. I know you missed me a ton over the summer, and I’m so excited to get back into writing blog posts about whatever’s going through my musical mind for the week. A few things are changing with my blog this year, though, so I’ll give you a quick rundown of them here:

1. If you haven’t noticed, this blog was posted on a Monday. From now on, my weekly blogs (discounting concert reviews) will be posted on Mondays. Over the summer, record labels started releasing their new music on Fridays throughout the entire world in an event known as New Music Fridays. Posting my blogs on Mondays makes it easier for me to write about new music when it comes out, instead of a week or two afterward.

2. Last year, I tried to review a few concerts on my blog, and I think it worked pretty well. I was new to concert reviewing, though, so I basically just reviewed whichever shows I could. This year, I’m going to try (no promises) to post at least one concert review per month. (In fact, I’ll be seeing Modest Mouse tomorrow night at Liberty Hall in Lawrence, and I’ll post a review and some photos on Wednesday.) So, you can expect a bit more regularity from me in regards to live reviews.

3. In case you don’t get enough of my awkward humor here, I’ll also be writing another blog, Letters From The Mill Valley News Editors. There, senior Jena Smith and I will muse about overseeing this website and give you some insight into what we do as editors-in-chief. Those blogs will go up on Fridays, so you can now start and end your school week with me. Isn’t that exciting?

That’s all for now. There may be a few other surprises in store for this year, but I’ll let you know about those as they come about. Now onto my “actual” blog for the week.

I was originally planning on writing about Justin Bieber’s return to stardom this week, but I had a last minute change of heart — a moment of divine inspiration, you could say. Who from? None other than Yeezus himself.

Unless you literally live under a rock, you probably heard something about Kanye West’s acceptance speech for the Michael Jackson video vanguard award at the MTV Video Music Awards Sunday night. After Taylor Swift, who he famously upstaged at the 2009 VMAs, presented him with the VMAs’ equivalent of a lifetime achievement award, the rapper/singer/songwriter/producer/designer/icon spoke for over 10 minutes about standing up for art. And, to top it all off, he announced plans for a 2020 presidential run.

At school today, to much surprise, I heard a lot of people hating on West. I understood some of the qualms with his oddly-timed presidential announcement, but past that, I didn’t get it. So, as an ardent Kanye fan, I decided to just write a bit about him and why I revere him so highly as an artist. Without further ado, my ode to Kanye West.

Honestly, it took me a while to start listening to Kanye. I guess you could say the first time I heard a Kanye song was when The Fray covered “Heartless.” After that, it would take over five years and a hip-hop awakening of sorts to make me a Kanye West fan.

The first album of Kanye’s I listened to (and, admittedly, the only one I’ve listened to in full) was “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.” After seeing it at the top of many year-end and decade-end album lists, I decided it had to be worth an hour of my time. I was wrong — it ended up being worth way more. Once I made it halfway through “Dark Fantasy,” the album’s opening track, I was completely dumbfounded. For the first time, I was experiencing hip-hop as art.

Now, I’ve listened to “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” in full more times than I can remember. When asked to pick a favorite song from the album, I struggle — how can I pull one piece from the artistic puzzle that is “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”? When asked to pick the best album I’ve ever listened to, though, “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” is my go-to response. To me, no album from at least the past 25 years has been more inventive or had more influence on the music industry, so it’s basically a no-brainer.

My admiration for Kanye goes past one album, though. Even before I heard “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” I knew Kanye was a risk taker. The son of Chicago State University’s English department chair, he dropped out of college as a 20-year-old to pursue hip-hop (before ultimately receiving an honorary doctorate 17 years later from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago). He sacrificed public opinion for art with 2008’s “808s & Heartbreak,” where he replaced his usual rapping with singing. Recently, he headlined Glastonbury Festival, despite nearly 136,000 people petitioning for the festival to have a rock band headline instead. And, most notably, he spoke up for what he viewed as true art at the 2009 VMAs when Beyonce lost best female video to Taylor Swift.

Kanye doesn’t only speak up for art, though — he is an artist. Of course, he’s one of the best rappers of our time, with genre-defining releases like “The College Dropout,” but he’s much more. As a producer, he has hundreds of credits, having produced for icons like Nas and Britney Spears. He’s even designed clothing lines and shoes that premiered at Paris Fashion Week — including a shoe line for Louis Vuitton.

Point being, Kanye West is iconic. Even though people may not like his outspokenness or self-confidence (dubbed arrogance by others), no one can deny that he’s an influential and artistic force in this generation. There’s something to be said about what he does — whether it’s creating a musical masterpiece or upstaging a pop star. If nothing else, it’s Kanye doing Kanye, and I definitely admire that.

Senior Justin Curto is an avid music lover whose tastes range from alternative rock to dance pop. He enjoys supporting the Kansas City music scene by listening longer to 96.5 The Buzz, rocking out to local music and seeing artists live at his favorite venues in the area.