Reading culture through Roland Barthes' body
of work: Kanye West's Yeezus
by Elia Alovisi
I. Introduction 2
II. La mort de l'auteur 3
III. Musica practica 6
IV. Mythologies 8
V. Blood on the Leaves: a mythological reading 10
VI. Conclusions 14
1
I. Introduction
In this essay I will relate part of Roland Barthes' theories to a quite unique
contemporary cultural artifact - a music album which is in itself a criticism of the
album format, by a controversial artist who is arguably one of the most
polarizing figures in today's music business. I am talking about the American
rapper Kanye West and his latest album Yeezus. This will not be an all-
encompassing analysis of Barthes' work, since such a task would entail an in-
depth critical discussion which would take more space than what I'm allowed to
take with my writing. I will describe some of his essays and books which I find
still highly relevant, and demonstrate how, five decades after his death, they can
still be effectively used to make sense of the world we live in and the culture we
share.
Roland Barthes' Mythologies is a poignant book about the way we
I find Yeezus a great album. As several articles reported, the album was finished
in a short time span: West enrolled the famous producer Rick Rubin when only
two weeks' worth of work were left (Blistein, 2013). The result? A willingly
unfinished, raw album, whose songs are abruptly interrupted by samples, with
the perfect anti-artwork: a plain, transparent CD case with a red sticker on it.
The only information about the artist, the title of the album and the label are
printed along the side of the CD. There was no LP release. Strangely, for an artist
West's size, the album spurred no singles: but that was the point he was trying
to make all along. Does he need to be played on the radio to make a statement?
Of course he doesn't. Does he need catchy hooks to get people to sing along to
his music? Again, he doesn't. And he managed to prove his point through a
powerful narrative which revolves around the way black people are perceived in
today's America, the loss of one's identity, rap's innate grandeur, and the
(successful) search for a loved one.
2
II. La mort de l'auteur
In 1968 Roland Barthes published one of his most famous essays, La mort de
l'auteur ("The Death of the Author"). At the beginning is an excerpt from
Sarrasine, a short story by Honoré de Balzac, in which he describes a castrato
disguised as a woman:
'This was woman herself, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims, her
instinctive worries, her impetuous boldness, her fussings, and her delicious
sensibility.'
The first thing Barthes notices is how the sentences aren't coming from a clear
source. The statement above could come from Balzac the man, talking about his
own experience with women. It could come from Balzac the author, relating a
literary view of the role of women in society. It could come from the protagonist
of the story, deliberately choosing to ignore the true nature of the person in
front of him - or being fooled by the castrato's disguise. The consequence is
simple enough: "...writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of
origin [...] that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away,
the negative where all identity is lost..."
Barthes (1968) deems the author-centric view of 1960s literary criticism a
"tyranny", since he states that the author and his biography haven't always been
considered as the only true key that can unlock the doors to the meaning behind
a text. While Van Gogh's madness can indeed be used to make sense of his
paintings - his life slowly seeping into his pictures, such as his self-portraits with
a mutilated ear, or the room he prepared for his friend Gauguin - his passions
and his psyche aren't the only depositaries of meaning in his body of work. A
widely accepted explanation of his pictures does exist, but it does not mean that
it is automatically right. According to Barthes, when reading a text it's language
itself that speaks to us. Writing becomes a process of depersonalization, pure
enunciation, language based on a subject and not on a person. He also outlines a
shift in the way time is perceived: while the author has conventionally been
considered as something preceding the book (nurturing it, putting his life into it
and describing events after they have taken place), Barthes postulates that
"there is no other time than that of the enunciation and every text is eternally
written here and now." And again: "something like the I declare of kings or the I
sing of very ancient poets."
3
Switching our focus to Kanye West, we can argue that Yeezus represents the
death of the album. First and foremost, let's take a look at the album artwork,
depicted below.
Just a plain CD case, featuring no tracklist or credits, without West's name on it -
a bright red sticker the only focus. Just like the author, the album format
becomes emptied of meaning, a vessel through which the text is passed to the
reader in order for him to make sense of it. "To give a text an Author is to impose
a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing",
Barthes (1968) wrote - and to give an album an artwork, a lyric booklet and a
tracklist is exactly the same thing. West decided not to feature any of them,
allowing the listeners to create their own sense to the album's narrative.
Barthes also asserts that a text is not an individual entity, "a line of words
releasing a single 'theological' meaning (the 'message' of the Author-God)" but
rather "a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them
original, blend and clash". This shifts the focus to the reader, who is "born"
through his or her reassembling of the pieces of culture which make up the text,
thus creating a new sense for it. I think the fourth song on the album, I Am a God,
is a good example of how all of this translates into Yeezus. First of all, let me
clarify the title of the album: "Yeezy" is a surname by which West is widely
known. Thus, he created a portmanteau of "Yeezy" and "Jesus" in order to create
a new identity for himself inside the album.
4
While rap has always been about the affirmation of the self through a struggle,
West has tried to take the theme to a new level. By stating "I am a God", he does
not mean that he is a superior being, a creator, an all-encompassing deity
shining light or darkness on his listeners - he is trapped inside of his role as an
Author-God, and wishes to distance himself from it.
Let's take a look at the lyrics:
I just talked to Jesus
He said, "What up, Yeezus?"
I said, "Shit I'm chillin'
Tryna stack these millions"
I know he the Most High
But I am a close high
We could speculate the above is based on two verses from the Bible, Psalm 82:6-
7:
I said, “Ye are gods,
sons of the Most High, all of you;
nevertheless, like men ye shall die,
and fall like any prince.”
The most widely accepted interpretation of those verses (Henry, Scott 1836)
states that the word "gods" is a reference to "fake gods", and is hence a criticism
of polytheism. In this sense, the author - West himself - is just a catalyst for
attention who is forced to act like "a God" because of his status inside of the hip-
hop scene, but will still eventually die like the man he is. He addresses Jesus
personally, and recognizes the fact that he is "the most high", and describes
himself as "a close high", trying to "stack millions" as he is supposed to do
because of his wealth and fame: not because it's what he wants to do.
Piercing screams interrupt the song, breaking the illusion of a normal beat and
creating a sense of unease inside the listener. This is because the massages,
ménages and expensive cars he mentions in the lyrics are only a byproduct of his
celebrity status - they won't make him better, they're only trapping him inside
the role of a God who is completely aware of his mortality, and is at the same
time struggling with his identity as a black man in contemporary America. The
screams can be those of an animal in a cage, or of a man dying and
understanding that the one dreadful certainty we have in life is our own demise.
"The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author", states
Barthes at the end of his essay, and I Am a God is Kanye West spawning the
listener/reader through his own death.
5
III. Musica practica
Barthes wrote about all kinds of art throughout his body of work, focusing
mostly on the written word and images, but he chose music as the subject for his
1970 essay Musica practica, which was originally published in the 40th issue of
the French magazine L'arc. Its subjects are the legendary composer Ludwig van
Beethoven and the way we experience music - whether we are listening to it or
playing it. Barthes focuses on classical music, which is understandable: popular
music was still widely seen as something "unworthy" of criticism, while today
we can safely state that it is the depositary of a huge chunk of the culture that
surrounds us and helps us make sense of the world we live in.
We can draw a link between the second part of Barthes' essay and Kanye West
the man. Musica practica studies the figure of Ludwig van Beethoven, whose
work is described as "the powerful germ of a disturbance of civilization". This is
because of two roles he has come to impersonate in contemporary culture: a
mythical one and a modern one. The mythical role is clearly explained in these
lines:
Beethoven was the first man of music to be free. Now for the first time the fact
of having several successive manners was held to the glory of an artist; he was
acknowledged the right of metamorphosis, he could be dissatisfied with
himself or, more profoundly, with his language, he could change his codes as
he went through life.
And what a life he had: loves, anecdotes, iconographies, fame and a fatal disease
- a deafness which couldn't stop his writing but only made it more abstract and
transcendental. And while he lived, he changed the way music was perceived
and created. Most importantly, quoting Barthes, he had a fundamental role in
"the shattering of the melody, taken as the symbol of restlessness and the
seething agitation of creativeness".
While I will not compare Kanye West to Ludwig van Beethoven for obvious
reasons - Beethoven is arguably one of the most important musicians in the
history of the world - I will say that there are similarities between what
Beethoven did and what West is doing right now. Yeezus is a raw album, in
which melodies are abruptly interrupted by samples of other songs and artists.
It is an album whose lyrics were mostly written in a short time span, and have at
times a stream-of-consciousness feel to them. West can't sing, and he either
deliberately uses auto-tune to insert sung vocals in the album instead of hiding it
from his audience or enrolls guest vocalists to sing parts of his songs.
6
Beethoven's "modern" role is thus explained by Barthes:
Just as the reading of the modern text (such at least as it may be postulated)
consists not in receiving, in knowing or in feeling that text, but in writing it
anew, in crossing its writing with a fresh inscription.
Again, Yeezus plays with the idea of structure and gives the listener the means to
decode its sense in the way he/she wants. There are no statements but invites,
there are no "songs" but pastiches. The listener is God, a king, a poet. "The
closing trackm Bound 2, expresses a feeling of tiredness with one's self, and
speaks of the unending search for a soulmate which is enclosed in our human
essence. But West's own solution to the problem is only a proposal: "Close your
eyes and let the word paint a thousand pictures" he sings. The "word", here, is
not a correct entity, it's just the source of "a thousand pictures" which we can
compose, analyze and empathize with. At the end of Musica practica, Barthes
states: "What is the use of composing if it is to confine the product within the
precinct of the concert or the solitude of listening to the radio? To compose, at
least by propensity, is to give to do, not to give to hear but to give to write". This
is exactly what Yeezus does: it inspires and urges the listener to express himself
through its eight songs.
7
IV. Mythologies
Roland Barthes' first book, Mythologies, was published in 1957. It is a collection
of essays from Les litres nouvelles The new letters , a French literary magazine
which was founded in 1953. The short pieces analyze the way the value systems
in contemporary society work towards the creation of modern myths – as in a
new level in the process of signification which adds an arbitrary layer of
meaning to an already given sign-and-signifier structure (which was first
theorised by Saussure). The pre-existing structure is language, the new level of
meaning is myth.
Phenomena concerning all areas of culture and society are dealt with and
explained through Barthes' theory in the first, self-titled part of the book.
Examples include wrestling ("The virtue of all-in wrestling is that it is the
spectacle of excess. Here we find a grandiloquence which must have been that of
ancient theatres"), wine ("[It] is a part of society because it provides a basis not
only for a morality but also for an environment"), toys ("One could not find a
better illustration of the fact that the adult Frenchman sees the child as another
self") and steak ("It is meat in its pure state; and whoever partakes of it
assimilates a bull-like strength").
I feel that a particularly poignant example is the essay Operation Margarine,
even though it is not the most famous and quoted example from Mythologies. In
it, Barthes explains how systems which are, in his opinion, dangerous and/or
detrimental to society are white-washed by a faulty line of reasoning and then
exalted in spite of their blemishes, and not criticized because of them.
Barthes structures three examples of this phenomenon. First of all the army,
whose narrow-mindedness, tyrannical practices and corruption are forgotten as
soon as national pride is mentioned in the discourse. Then comes the church,
earthly depositary of an ever weak faith, house of bigots and self-righteous
zealots, a potential danger to peace - but a way to salvation for "those whom it
crushes". The last example is an advertisement for a French margarine brand,
Astra, a "cry of indignation" against the product which vanishes as soon as it is
described as economical, digestible and tasty. "What does it matter, after all, if
margarine is just fat, when it goes further than butter, and costs less?", asks
Barthes. And again, "What does it matter, after all, if Order is a little brutal or a
little blind, when it allows us to live cheaply?" It is a poignant commentary on
the way the Order establishes, defends and reaffirms itself.
8
In the second part of the book, called Myth Today, Barthes explains the
theoretical process behind the examples he made in the first part of the book. He
starts out defining myth as "a type of speech", and states that " everything can be
a myth provided it is conveyed by a discourse". It does not have a material and
can thus be found in writing, photography, music, reporting, shows, sports. All of
these can be endowed with meaning - and, according to Barthes, meaning is the
field of semiotics, the only discipline which can analyze it independently of its
material.
Barthes then maps out Saussure's semiological model, which originally focused
on the study of language. According to Saussure (1916), every "sign" stems from
a signifier (the acoustic, mental image) and a signified (the concept). Barthes
applies the same structure to everyday objects and phenomena: a bunch of roses
(a signifier) signifies passion, love (a signified). Together, they form a sign,
which is simply the one thing that allows them to be deconstructed into their
original state of signifier and signified. It is meaning itself. Barthes then states
that "myth is a peculiar system, in that it is constructed from a semiological
chain which existed before it: it is a second-order semiological system". See the
diagram below:
I think Barthes' model can still be effectively used to analyze how contemporary
culture works. Even though in Mythologies he uses it to study the French society
of the late 50s and gives out a negative outlook on its myth-making practices, I
feel like his model can be used in an uncritical way. In my opinion, myth is not
only a technique the general Order uses to perorate itself, it is a way through
which we can understand how meaning is created, what hidden overarching
themes contemporary cultural artifacts possess, the impact they can make on
the way we think and act in our everyday lives.
9
V. Blood on the Leaves: a mythological reading
I will use Barthes' model to analyze a song from Yeezus, Blood on the Leaves. In a
way, it is the beating heart of the album in which all of its threads are entangled.
Yeezus is an album about identity, racism, addiction and the finding of true love.
Songs such as Black Skinhead and New Slaves are ruminations on the way the
way African-Americans are perceived in contemporary American society. The
former is an aggressive song, a war cry against racism, its thumping beat the
tentative soundtrack to an oncoming (cultural) revolution. It has a tribal feel to
it, which is reminiscing of the argument Marshall MacLuhan and Quentin Fiore
(1967) made about the existence of four "media epochs": the Electronic Era we
live in is a return to the tribalization of the Pre-Literate Era, to an acoustic space
that allows us to be freed from the shackles of sight which were predominant in
the Print Era. The latter shifts the focus to the relationship between wealth and
race: "What you want, a Bentley? Fur coat? A diamond chain? All you blacks
want all the same things", sings West, while reminiscing about his
grandmother's struggles to be considered equal to her white peers, enumerating
government agencies that are capitalizating on the black and outlining the
difficult relationship between famous black people and the media.
Hold My Liquor is a song about alcohol and marijuana addiction, in which two
personas of West - one bold and careless, the other remissive and filled with
guilt - sing about their relationship with those substances. On Sight, I'm in It and
Send It Up are all about sex, which is seen as a rough, primal, polygamous animal
activity that blinds our consciousness and scares us out of a normal lifestyle.
"Got the kids-and-the-wife-life but can't wake up from the nightlife / I'm so
scared of my demons I go to sleep with a nightlight", states I'm in It; Guilt Trip
ruminates about a failed romantic relationship, a haunted West looking back on
his adultery: "Peeking through the keyhole, the door locked by myself".
Bound 2, the closing track on the album, is a moment of liberation: in order to
free himself from his demons, West finds peace and a new self in his girlfriend
(and now wife) Kim Kardashian. "I know you're tired of loving with nobody to
love" sings guest vocalist Charlie Wilson, and West answers, finally free: "Close
your eyes and let the word paint a thousand pictures / One good girl is worth a
thousand bi***es". So, there's light at the end of the tunnel: but in order to reach
for the skies, one must first hit rock bottom. And in the context of Yeezus, that
punctum lies in Blood on the Leaves, a sprawling six-minutes opus about a failed
marriage, MDMA and race the way these crack our identity, rooting themselves
into our consciousness.
10
Blood on the Leaves takes its title - and the sample that drives the song - from
Strange Fruit (1965), a song by the legendary soul singer Nina Simone which
was first published in her album Pastel Blues. That piece of music was originally
sang by Billie Holiday in 1939, and is in turn based on Bitter Fruit (1937), a
poem by the American teacher Abel Meeropol (Moore, 2010). The "strange fruit"
referenced in the title are actually a metaphor to represent the bodies of slaves,
hung to poplar trees and killed by lynching:
Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.
By using that sample, West shows how African Americans are still burdened
with the same issues they had in the first half of the 20th century - except
nowadays they are strangled by poverty or wealth, prejudice and drugs. The
aforementioned structure is a beautiful example of the scenery David Gauntlett
(2011) paints in his book Making Is Connecting, as well as the point director
Brett Gaylor (2008) makes with his documentary RiP!: A Remix Manifesto. As
Gauntlett writes, "You have to connect things together (materials, ideas,or both)
to make something new"; and, " through making things and sharing them in the
world, we increase our engagement and connection with our social and physical
environments". Gaylor's manifesto reads as such:
1. Culture always builds on the past;
2. The past always tries to control the future;
3. Our future is becoming less free; and
4. To build free societies, you must limit the control of the past.
Yeezus relies heavily on the use of samples, and both Gauntlett and Gaylor's
points resonate effectively throughout its songs. Going back to Barthes' Death of
the Author essay (1968), this song is a great example of how "the text is a tissue
of citations, resulting from the thousand sources of culture" The narrative
continues with a statement of confusion. West is heartbroken, and sings: "I just
need to clear my mind now / It's been racing since the summertime / Now I'm
holding down the summer now / And all I want is what I can't buy now".
Obviously, money can't buy love - most of all, it can't buy back lost love. The
summer, being a hot, carefree season, represents lost happiness.
11
West proceeds to address the recipient of the song: "I told you to wait / So
I'mma need a little more time now / 'Cause I haven't got the money on me right
now / I thought you could wait", he states . He could either be referencing a time
when he didn't feel comfortable with the relationship, which caused the girl to
leave him, or to a time when he wasn't wealthy enough to provide for himself. In
this case, the recipient of the lines would be an imaginary creditor. In both cases,
money and lost love are a knot in his gut, a source of personal struggle.
The first stanza climaxes in a partial realization: "We could've been somebody /
Thought you'd be different 'bout it / Now I know you not it / So let's get on with
it". Becoming "somebody" is an obsession in our contemporary media-driven
society, but this also implies that not achieving financial and/or personal success
equals to being useless, unworthy - thus, lacking an identity. West has realized
that this girl was not "it", as in his "The One", his true love . He then proceeds to
pour out his worries and regrets.
"We could've been somebody / 'Stead you had to tell somebody", begins the next
verse. The relationship was obviously working well until the girl revealed the
affair to somebody, which in turn caused the media to put the couple in the
spotlight, provoking thoughts of infidelity and a general sense of unease. This is
supported by another couplet: "Before the limelight tore you / Before the
limelight stole you". At this point, West introduces another narrative thread:
drugs, more specifically the use of MDMA, or "molly". "Let's take it back to the
first party / When you tried your first molly / And came out of your body", West
raps.
Here, the use of drugs is compared to an out-of-body experience, a passing
catalyst for release whose underlying negative effects troubled a relationship
from the start. Again, in certain social contexts the use of drugs can be
considered a great part of one's identity. West states that taking drugs de-
identifies an individual, the body and the mind become disconnected and start
acting independently. West actually re-sings the "molly" lines, substituting the
"you" with a "we", thus acknowledging his faults and making himself part of the
picture.
Then, notions of a divorce start to creep through the narrative. West references
"lawyers", the fact that the girl "tried to destroy" them, ending the stanza with
the words "I gotta bring it back to the [mag]nolia". This is a reference to the Nina
Simone version of Strange Fruit, whose lyrics contain the line "Scent of
magnolia" - a typical tree of the Southern United States. But it is also a reference
to the Magnolia Projects, a housing project in New Orleans with high crime and
murder rates from which rapper C-Murder hailed.
12
C-Murder is most famous for his song Down 4 My Niggas, whose chorus is
repeated by West in Blood on the Leaves: "F**k them other niggas 'cause I'm
down for my niggas". That line is one of the most-referenced in contemporary
rap, with artists such as Kendrick Lamar, A$AP Rocky, Kid Cudi, Future and Lil
Wayne referencing it in their lyrics. Despite its crude formulation, the line has
then acquired a positive feeling, one of banding together and being there for
your peers when they are in need. West using it as the climax to the song - the
beat has been steadily becoming more and more intense until this point - is a
sign of hope, a statement of community. Even during a divorce, or an addiction,
there will be someone who cares about you and will be there for you.
The last verse doesn't feature the use of auto-tune, which could be seen as a sign
of West newly found clarity: a new persona, who has understood his flaws and is
ready to move on. He proceeds to rap about the typical "gold digger", a girl who
only want to sleep with him because of his money ("2000 dollar bag with no
cash in your purse"). In spite of these remarks, the girl actually has an affair with
the narrator and then claims to carry his son: this is the last straw that leads to a
divorce ("Then she said she impregnated, that's the night your heart died / Then
you gotta go and tell your girl and report that") and an economical settlement in
court ("All in on that alimony / She got you homie / 'til death but do your part,
unholy matrimony"). In the outro, West becomes conscious of his flaws and
accepts them, and is thus ready to be "saved" by his now wife Kim Kardashian in
Bound 2: "And breathe, and live, and learn, and living like I'm lonely, and living
all I have, and living all, and live", he sings.
Wrapping up the structure of the song, we can think of the title "Blood on the
Leaves" as the signified and the themes it carries along as a signifier, as in
racism, the condemnation of violence and personal struggles. Together, these
create the sign "Fractured identity" - as a black man, as a lover, as an individual.
On a mythical level, though, acknowledging your struggles creates a second-level
signified, which in turn creates a myth: finding peace, in spite of everything the
world throws at us. See diagram below:
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VI. Conclusions
Barthes' semiotic model could be applied to any song in the same way I used it
to describe Blood on the Leaves. This is because his whole body of work can be
considered timeless. Since the starting point he chose was language, the one
thing humanity has always shared and will most likely always share, he
managed not to become entangled in a well-defined timeframe. Also, the fact
that his theories can be used in an uncritical way prevent any critique from
demonstrating their ineffectiveness.
I believe that the main struggle media and culture theorists have to fight is the
one against the subject they choose to study and analyze. Let's take Henry
Jenkins' Convergence Culture (2006), a passionate account of the way we relate
to the media we love - be it a videogame, a movie or a book - and create
universes surrounding them, finding meaning together through the means given
to us by the Internet. While Jenkins' ideas are still widely accepted and studied, I
find that reading his book may feel weird for a person born less than two
decades ago. It widely mentions Second Life, an online virtual world whose
success reached its apex in 2008 - the company has laid off part of its workforce
since then, and is not releasing any public figures about long-term consistent
usage. Another chapter is based on the Matrix series, which has not become the
phenomenon many thought it would become after the first movie in the trilogy
came out. I also believe there is no way to predict the way the Internet will
shape in the coming years - for instance, Jenkins wrote extensively about
forums, but couldn't possibly envision the way social networks have become an
important part of our daily life in the past decade. It's a fate every media theory
will eventually suffer unless it extends its roots inside the earth of the human
experience, basing all of its speculations on the core of the human experience -
and language is a huge part of it.
I think Roland Barthes will always be studied and remembered, and his works
will always help us make sense of the world we live in. We will always be able to
find out the myth behind a cultural phenomenon. There will always be artists
who push their field towards new territories, as Beethoven did. There will
always be lovers who find refuge and comfort by reading his Fragments d'un
discours amoureux. His thoughts on the way we see images in Camera lucida will
always be valid, and we will always feel a "punctum" when looking at an image
that says something about us. It is a precious legacy he left us, one we must
always cherish and be thankful for.
14
References:
Barthes, R. (1977) Image-Music-Text, translated by Stephen Heath,
London: Fontana.
Barthes, R. (1957/1972) Mythologies, translated by Annette Lavers,
New York: Hill and Wang.
Blistein, J. (2013) 'Rick Rubin: Finishing Kanye West's 'Yeezus' Seemed
Impossible', Rolling Stone, 27 June [Online] available at
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/rick-rubin-finishing-kanye-
wests-yeezus-seemed-impossible-20130627 (Accessed 10 January
2015)
Gauntlett, D. (2011) Making is Connecting. London: Polity Press.
Henry, M.; Scott, T. (1863) The Holy Bible: With the Text According to the
Authorized Version, Vol. 2, London: Religious Tract Society.
Holiday, B. (1939) Strange Fruit [LP]. New York: Vocalion Records.
Jenkins, Henry (2006) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media
Collide. New York: New York University Press.
McLuhan, M.; Fiore Q.; Agel J. (1967/1996). The medium is the message:
an inventory of effects. San Francisco: HardWired.
Moore, E. (2010) 'Strange Fruit is still a song for today', The Guardian,
18 September [Online] available at
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/sep/1
8/strange-fruit-song-today (Accessed 12 January 2015).
RiP!: A Remix Manifesto (2008) Directed by Brett Gaylor [Film]
Documentary/Canal D/B-Side Entertainment.
Saussure, F. de. (1916/1983) Course in General Linguistics, translated
by Roy Harris, La Salle (IL): Open Court.
Simone, N. (1965) Pastel Blues [LP]. New York: Philips.
West, K. (2013) Yeezus [CD]. New York: Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam.
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Elia Alovisi