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First, polls don't give odds that a candidate will win. They represent the views of those polled. Pollsters attempt to make their sample polled as representative of the electorate as possible. They will usually give a margin of error. So if a given poll reported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump 49-45 with a margin of error of 3 points, that means that Clinton could actually be favored by as much as 52–42 or as little as behind 46–48.Statistical modelers such as Nate Silver (from FiveThirtyEight) or Quora's very own Mac Tan build models to try to determine the outcome of an election based on a number of polls. If the president were elected by compulsory popular vote, this would be an easier excercise. There are roughly 250 million eligible voters in the US. You'd contact a large enough, reasonably random sample and that would be that.But it isn't so easy.First, pollsters have to contact only likely voters. They usually contact people who've voted in the last election (or last several), but every election inspires turnout differently. The candidates, weather, and transportation all play a role. Statistical modelers must asses the reliabilities of each poll.But wait. It gets harder.The U.S. presidential election uses the electoral college. Most states elect their voters on a winner take all basis. This makes the models much less stable. Trump won Michigan by 0.23% of the vote. Small changes make a big difference. Even worse, there aren't a ton of reliable polls for every state. Polls also have a “lag". For example, if a poll were released March 28th, the calls may have been made from March 24-26th. If something happened in on March 26th to change voters' opinions, that would not be incorporated in the poll.The 2016 presidential election was close. Hillary Clinton had a lead throughout in the national polls of between 2–6%. That's a pretty safe lead if you are only trying to predict the popular vote.She had her scandals, email-gate, Benghazi. Trump had his, multiple bankruptcies, bragging about pussy-grabing, sexual assault accusations, openly asking foreign governments for help, refusing to pay contractors (and many many more).But the election broke late.On October 28th, 2016, FBI Director James Comey reopened the Clinton email investigation. The FBI had received notice from its New York field office that relevant emails existed on former representative Anthony Weiner's laptop.On November 6th, Comey announced that the search uncovered no new information and the case would be closed again. But the damage was done. The email investigation was the last thing on voters' minds before they went to the polls. Donald Trump was elected November 8th.(Trump must have had some help from the NYC FBI office-Chris Chrstie announced October 26th that Donald Trump had "a surprise or two that you're going to hear about in the next two days.")The lag of plenty of state polls almost certainly failed to take into account the reopening of the email investigation. Thus the models based on those polls failed to take into account the shift in voter sentiment.Whenever I've heard Nate Silver discuss his models, he always gives the disclaimer that it does not fully take into account the most recent developments (and how could it).I'm not sure which model gave Clinton a 90% chance of winning (sounds way too high to me) or if the appropriate disclaimer was in the fine print, but plenty of models suffered in this late breaking election.

Here is my plotlineThe Movie is set 3 years after Drishyam 2 and around 6 years after Drishyam 1The Eldest Daughter of Georgekutty is going to get married on 20th October to a man named Simon Kuriakose. Georgekuttys younger daughter will be going to the United States to College and live with her uncle.Georgekutty is now friends with an MLA called Trissur Rajamony who is influential in the Kerala Government with the ruling party.The Movie begins with Prabhakar dying of a heart attack. Geetha sees a lot of questions over who will perform his last rites and watches a couple of cousins fighting over the fact that they would have to do last rites every year for Prabhakar which hurts and annoys Geetha and she abandons all the relatives right there and decides to cremate Prabhakar without any last rites.Geetha gets rid of all of Prabhakars artefacts and comes across a diary where Prabhakar declares his disgust for the Indian system of Justice and his horror at the sight of his own wife terrorizing the family of Georgekutty. Geetha is surprised but also angry at her husband and decides to give away all his possessions to a Waste Seller including his laptop and mobile phone.Geetha now wants revenge against Georgekutty at any cost so she contacts Murali Gopy now Additional Director of CBI but he tells herThe Cops interrogated the Security Guard, had him brutally beaten up, subjected to third degree etc but the Security guard confirmed that Georgekutty never came to the place. The Cops now believe the Security Guard was telling the truth.The Cops ran 5 DNA Tests on the Bones of the Boy with the Samples of Geetha and Prabhakar in Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad but the same results - The DNA Samples did not matchThe Cops wanted to search for all boys of 14–20 who died of head wounds to match the skeleton remains of what they had in evidence but the DGP would not hear of it and the Kerala HM ordered the case closed. Subsequently the Skeletal Remains were released to the Mortuary for burial.Murali Gopy says - Georgekutty has a very powerful protector in Tirusur Rajamony who is deemed to be a man known to appreciate loyalty and be good to his friends. He advises Geetha that if she wants to pursue this further - she has to employ a Private Detective and gives her the name of Raj. Raj works to catch Insurance Frauds and is an expert in Logic and Computer Skills.Raj initially refuses but later agrees to work because he finds georgekutty interesting and says NOBODY HAS ESCAPED MY NET. GEORGEKUTTY ALSO WONT.Meanwhile Georgekutty wants his wife Rani to move with his daughter and spend 6 - 12 months in USA free from any tensions. He is selling all his properties including his Theatre and all the land saying its for his daughters marriage and for his younger daughters future.Thanks to the MLA, he has contacts inside the department who advise him on the goings on of his case which was re-investigated in 2021 and closed again in 2023 due to lack of evidence. His Lawyer - Renuka tells him that the case can be reopened again and again and the only way this will be over is with his death or with a verdict by a judge.Raj arrives and begins asking around. He talks to a lot of people including Jose who is now a prosperous eatery owner and has reconciled with his wife.He subsequently begins to ask around and talks to the the cops who handled the DNA evidence who tell Raj that :-The Original Plan was to keep the Bones in 3 different places - One in the main Place in Trivandrum and the other 2 Pieces as backup. Unfortunately due to Coronavirus, those 2 places were shut just 2 days ago and they were forced to take the entire skeleton they discovered in the police station to Trivandrum. They made this decision at 9:45 PM.Thus Raj believes - until 9:45 Georgekutty could not have known that the entire skeleton was brought to Trivandrum.Raj believes Georgekutty is a man of cautious planning and would not depend on luck so he claims - there is NO WAY that Georgekuttys story is true. He says there is no way that Georgekutty swapped the skeletal remains of Varun for some other skeleton and relied on pure luck.Thus Raj believes that the Skeleton which was tested for DNA was indeed Varuns and that the entire story of the Writer Saikumar was a Drishyam intended to confuse the police.But how did the DNA report claim that the remains were not Varuns?George could not have bribed all 5 Testing doctors!!!This Puzzles RajMeanwhile Geetha finds out Varuns Friend (From the original movie who had a copy of the video of Georgekuttys daughter) has been arrested for a Rape Case. She decides to meet him and to her shock she sees how arrogant he has become calling the girl by foul names and watches the girls parents being intimidated by the cops and the girl being asked demeaning questions (like where did he touch you etc). A Furious Geetha defends the girl only to be told that she is no longer a cop and to get out of the station!!!Geetha sees the Girls Father become Georgekutty in the vision and the Girl who was raped become Georgekuttys Daughter and the Rapist (Varuns friend) become Varun. She then sees herself in IG Uniform taunting the girls family and asking demeaning questions.Geetha slowly becomes horrified at the ‘Drishyam’ that she sees (Vision) and walks away in disgust.Raj concludes that the Doctors who tested the DNA have been corrupted somehowHowever he finds that all the Doctors are honorable people in 5 different cities.Subsequently he talks to the DNA Experts about the Procedure and as he talks HIS EYES POP UP AND HE IS SHOCKED. He then calls all the DNA Experts on the mobile phone in Puna, Hyderabad etc and each phone call Shocks him.On the day of Georgekuttys daughters wedding - Geetha Prabhakar arrives for the Reception and wants to talk to GeorgekuttyGeetha seeks forgiveness for what she did to Georgekutty saying that She truly believes Georgekutty did the right thing. Had we lived in any other country - You would have called the cops and this case would have been closed in 1 month - Geetha says. Geetha seeks true remorse and seeks forgiveness from Rani, Esther and Ansiba and they have a tender sorrowful moment when Geetha realizes she could have been a better mother to Varun.She feels disgusted at her attitude as IG and at Sahadevan kicking the little girl and she feels disgusted at the Indian Justice System.She says “Varuns chapter is closed now” and she wishes Georgekuttys daughter all the best.As she leaves Georgekutty looks on with a smile and looks up at the skyRaj meanwhile calls Murali Gopy (Addl Director CBI) who is also shocked at what Raj has to sayGeetha Prabhakar gets a call the next day saying Madam - Georgekutty has confessed to your sons murder in front of the magistrate. He is there with his lawyer and wants to tell you the whole story.Meanwhile Raj is interviewing a lot of people and coming to the same conclusion on How Georgekutty pulled it off.At the same time - Prabhakars Laptop now purchased by a young law student with limited money - also opens up to a video of Prabhakar made a few months before his death to Geetha and Georgekutty.As Geetha drives to the Magistrates office, she gets a call from Raj and slowly realizes what Georgekutty did.The Entire Story of the Corpse of a Different Boy of 14–20 was FALSE. There was no corpse. The Remains belonged to Varun and were tested for DNA.PRABHAKAR switched his own blood sample. Prabhakar had met Georgekutty in the Theater and Georgekutty had later confessed the whole thing. Prabhakar who realized he has been a poor father decided to allow the whole thing to lie down but Georgekutty decided that HE COULD NOT DO IT ANYMORE and promised Prabhakar that his son would have his final rites.JOSE met Georgekutty four days before and blackmailed him for 20 Lakh Rupees. Georgekutty agreed to pay him on one condition - He would tell the Cops whatever he knew. JOSE agreed and so it was Georgekutty who kickstarted the whole thing and planned it from the moment Jose confessed to IG Murali Gopy.Georgekutty was getting ready to surrender when Prabhakar called him. Georgekutty decided to meet Prabhakar and Prabhakar told George Kutty that he was asked to give his blood sample for DNA testing. Prabhakar tells George Kutty that if he went to Jail now - Justice would never be truly delivered. He tells George Kutty that he is dying (Of a heart issue) and he has only a few years left and has not even told Geetha. He tells George Kutty that if you feel my wife Geetha has found some pity and compassion for your side of the case - you can do what you like but otherwise My soul will never be at peace to see your daughter suffer for something my son did which i could have prevented with better parenting.Prabhakar distracts the nurse by wanting orange juice and when she is gone, he swaps a test tube of someone elses blood with the same blood group as Prabhakar (GEORGEKUTTY who has the same blood group A+)The DNA report matches the DNA of Varuns with the DNA of Geetha and Georgekuttys and obviously showed only 48.2% match so the DNA authorities decided that the Skeleton of the Kid cannot be the Kid of Geetha and Prabhakar without considering for a minute that Prabhakar switched the blood samplesThe Magistrate orders Georgekutty to be arrested just as his daughter leaves on the flight with his wife and his elder daughter flies to Dubai. George has ordered them to leave without looking back.Georgekutty is tried , he pleads guilty and is sentenced to Life in prison for his crime with the Judge being very angry and calling Georgekutty a plague upon the systemOne Year LaterThe President of India finishes a meeting with Geetha Prabhakar , Murali Gopy, the Retired Judge (Who came in Drishyam 2) and sees the video of Prabhakar that he made before his death.Geetha tells the President to pardon Georgekutty and says her husbands wish was also the same.The President then says he will announce his decision later.As Geetha and the rest walk out - the President announces later thatIts been 75 years since we became Independent yet we think like a British Colony. A simple accident where a young boy who committed a mistake was beaten in defense by a young girl which should have been closed in a month in any foreign country - resulted in so much confusion because a Man , an Indian citizen feared our System rightly so. He feared the cops, he feared what would happen to him and his family - so he decided to buck the system even further.Georgekutty did right as a father should by protecting his daughter because he feared she would not get Justice. I am ashamed to say that he is absolutely rightWe have to revolutionize our Legal System and change the perception from the minds of our Citizens about the Police and the Law.However i believe we can change - after all I became President only because I was a writer on Quora and the PM identified potential in me. We will change the law - i promise you - otherwise i will change my name from Kanthaswamy BalasubramaniamI am hereby Pardoning Georgekutty. I feel all his tension and suffering and one year of Jail is sufficient for him.Georgekutty gets released from Prison where the following people are awaiting him with smiles:-His Family including his brother in lawIkkaHis old Cable BoyGeetha PrabhakarRaj the InvestigatorRenuka LawyerMurali GopyThe Two Undercover CopsA Huge AudienceThree Years LaterGeorgekutty has sold all his newly acquired wealth and has established a Civil Rights Group headed by Geetha Prabhakar and Renuka who fight for womens rights and for teenage girls and against Police abuse of cases.He now has the same 5 Acre farm that he had in Drishyam. He lives happily with his wife Rani and has gone back to being the same old miser - talking about earthworms etc.Wow!!! A Lot of typing.So that would be my story as Director of Drishyam 2I of course put myself in here as President of IndiaI am basing my info on How DNA testing for Paternity is done.I believe since Varuns samples were not available with the Cops, they must have taken Geetha and Prabhakars samples to do a Paternity Match. This way Prabhakar could have swapped the samples.I also believe this movie will not have a Meaty role for Mohanlal but will instead have Dulquer Salman as Raj.I believe Prabhakar was always uncomfortable with the way things were going.I also believe that Geetha would genuinely reform once she saw the other side of police harrassment.I have brought my own views about the Justice system here.

I believe that Kanye West is the best and most creative musician working in the world today, in any idiom or genre. Here’s a draft of a paper I’m working on that explains why.A few months ago, I was invited to participate in a tutorial session entitled “Why Hip-Hop Is Interesting” at the 2016 International Society for Music Information Retrieval conference. A typical pop music listener might find it surprising that such a tutorial would be necessary. Hip-hop is the most listened-to music genre in the world, at least among Spotify listeners (Hooton 2015). Surely a musical form with such a broad global impact must be interesting. After the tutorial, however, several audience members remarked that they had never heard rap songs analyzed so closely; one said that it had never occurred to her to think about rap music at all. These conference attendees are representative of the music academy generally.Hip-hop has received significant scholarly attention in recent years, but that has mostly been in the context of cultural studies. When humanities scholars engage with hip-hop as an art form, the focus is usually on the lyrics, reading them as a subgenre of African-American literature that just happens to be performed over beats. Interesting though rap lyrics are, it is not sufficient to study them outside of their musical context. “We need to begin to hear not only what these rappers are saying, but also what these musicians are composing - how they are using rhythm, rhyme, and rhetoric to enact survival and celebration, clamor and community” (Walser 1995, 212).Why do music theorists so rarely examine hip-hop for its musical content? Perhaps it is due in part to the way that hip-hop focuses on rhythm so much more heavily than other musical dimensions. The jazz drummer Max Roach characterizes hip-hop as “rhythm for rhythm’s sake” (quoted in Lipsitz 1994, 37). Theorists trained to understand music in terms of harmonic and thematic development might therefore not expect to find much in rap to interest them. I intend to demonstrate that, to the contrary, hip-hop has rich musical interest beyond its rhythmic innovations, using the example of Kanye West’s song “Famous,” from his album The Life Of Pablo (2016).A note about authorship: Contemporary hip-hop is a collaborative art form, especially in the upper commercial echelon where West resides. West made his name as a producer, but on “Famous” he did not work alone. The album credits list West and Havoc as the producers, with co-production by Noah Goldstein, Charlie Heat, and Andrew Dawson, and additional production by Hudson Mohawke, Mike Dean, and Plain Pat. West is the author of “Famous” in the same sense that Steven Spielberg is the author of “E.T.”—he supervised a creative team, rather than doing all of the hands-on work himself. West does not discuss his creative process in detail, so it is difficult to know what specific role all of his collaborators played. For the purposes of this article, when I refer to a musical decision as having been made “by” West, I mean that it was made by West along with any combination of the other producers listed above.“Famous” was immediately embroiled in controversy upon its release due to its part in the ongoing highly-publicized feud between West and Taylor Swift. It is beyond the scope of post to address the controversy; the popular press has covered it exhaustively, and in any event, it is peripheral to the song’s musical interest. For present purposes, we can acknowledge the feud’s existence, and move on.The music video for “Famous” has been another source of extramusical controversy. It is a ten minute art film that shows West in bed sleeping after what appears to be a group sexual encounter with his wife, Kim Kardashian West; his former lover, Amber Rose; his wife’s former lover, Ray J.; her mother, Kaitlyn Jenner; West’s frequent collaborator Rihanna and her former lover, Chris Brown; West’s high-profile nemeses Taylor Swift, Anna Wintour, and George W. Bush; and, for no obvious reason, Bill Cosby and Donald Trump. While this video is richly interesting, it is once again beyond the scope of the present analysis, which focuses only on the aural content of the song. Suffice to say that in his videos as in his music, West embodies the way that hip-hop “takes pleasure in aggressive insubordination” (Rose 1994, 80).West’s lyrics in “Famous” carry their share of aggressive insubordination. Like many of his songs, this one uses problematic and offensive language. In the first verse alone, West greets “all the Southside n****rs that know me best” and calls Taylor Swift “that bitch.” I am reluctant to fall into the cliche of the white hip-hop critic who celebrates the music’s sonic innovations while judging its regressive lyrics (Chapman 2008, 157). I do not want to patronize West, who for all I know is using this racially charged and misogynistic language ironically or critically. While discussing his collaboration with West on his earlier album Yeezus, the singer Justin Vernon observes: “Kanye feels like a director, and I don't think everything he's saying in the songs is actually him saying it every time. It's like a movie, or a concept” (quoted in Dombal 2013). Perhaps we can read the opening verse of “Famous” as a playful boast or taunt. Rose (1994) points out that for all of its technological innovations, rap music “has also remained critically linked to black poetic traditions and the oral forms that underwrite them. These oral traditions and practices clearly inform the prolific use of collage, intertextuality, boasting, toasting, and signifying in rap's lyrical style and organization” (84).We can also regard the function of West’s lyrics not as conveying particular meaning, but rather as being the topmost layer of a bed of rhythmic sound. Adams (2008) encourages us to hear rap lyrics this way, especially in a song like this one: “In rap songs whose lyrics do not seem to have a single unifying theme or narrative… the best approach is first to disregard the semantic meaning of the lyrics, and to treat the syllables of text simply as consonant/vowel combinations that occupy specific metrical locations” ([12]). While West has written albums worth of songs with clear narrative and autobiographical meaning, “Famous” has neither. Furthermore, in addition to West, the song features four additional vocalists whose lyrics also resist literal interpretation. We can feel some confidence that in this case, as in many rap songs, “the music comes both logically and chronologically before the text, and the meaning of the text is often secondary to its interaction with the music” (Adams 2008, [43]).“Famous” has an unusual structure for a mainstream hip-hop song. The graphic below shows the audio file in Ableton Live’s Arrange view.The sections are color-coded as follows: yellow for the intro, orange for the instrumental break, blue for verses, green for the hook/chorus, brown for a groove section that will be discussed in detail below, and pale yellow for the outtro.Aside from the brief instrumental interlude, every section of “Famous” is six, twelve, or twenty-four bars long. For example, the verses are three sets of four-bar phrases. This is highly unusual for the genre; hip-hop songs are almost always built on phrases that are eight, sixteen or thirty-two bars long. “Because of the high degree of repetition, the short length of repeated units, and clear formal boundaries demarcated by changes in text, texture, and other parameters, structural patterns of larger units such as phrases and sections are generally more perceptually salient in vernacular music than in many forms of art music” (Biamonte 2014, [1.2]). The factor-of-three-length phrases in “Famous” thus represent a mild but noticeable hypermetrical dissonance.The six bar intro consists of Rihanna singing over a subtle gospel-flavored organ accompaniment in F-sharp major. She sings a few lines from “Do What You Gotta Do” by Jimmy Webb. This country/pop standard has been recorded many times, but for West, and presumably his listeners, Nina Simone’s 1968 recording is likely to be the most meaningful reference point. Simone carries clear significance for West; he has sampled her on two previous releases, “Blood On The Leaves” (2013) and “Bad News” (2008). Having Rihanna interpolate Nina Simone is the first of many intertextual moments in “Famous.” Walser (1995) cites veteran hip-hop producer Hank Shocklee as “arguing for a view of music as something discursive and social, created out of dialogue with other people in the past and the present rather than through some sort of parthogenesis” (196). West begins his song with a literal dialog between African-American music’s past, as embodied by Simone, and its present, as embodied by Rihanna.After Rihanna’s intro comes a four-bar groove, a more aggressive organ part over a drum machine beat, with Swizz Beatz ad libbing on top. This beat and organ sample were created by Havoc, and were the first elements of the track to be created (Preezy 2016). The drum part is a minimal funk pattern on kick and snare. The snares fall on the backbeats, with the kick playing more complex syncopated patterns around them. As in the James Brown grooves that inspired so many hip-hop producers, “the emphasis of the downbeat grounds the groove while setting up the playfulness of the rest of the phrase" (Greenwald 2008, 268).Aside from the kick drums on each downbeat, the snare drum hits on beats two and four are the most stable element in the rhythm. If there is a single unifying feature of hip-hop, it is the omnipresent accented backbeat. While the syncopation represented by the backbeat is traditionally thought of as a rhythmic equivalent to tension or dissonance, American vernacular forms like rock and hip-hop make beats two and four rhythmically consonant through sheer force of repetition. “Because it is an essential component of the meter, functioning as a timeline—a rhythmic ostinato around which the other parts are organized—I consider the backbeat in rock music to be an instance of displacement consonance rather than dissonance” (Biamonte 2014, [6.2]).While the “Famous” beat references classic hip-hop’s basis in funk, its timbre is futuristic, soaked in cavernous artificial reverb. This conspicuously unnatural sense of space is a world away from the organic-sounding soul samples underpinning West’s first few albums. The move into increasingly otherworldly timbres is in keeping with the broader sweep of popular music. In 1990, Goodwin pointed out that “pop musicians and audiences have grown increasingly accustomed to making an association between synthetic/automated music and the communal (dance floor) connection to nature (via the body). We have grown used to connecting machines and funkiness” (55). Chapman (2008) describes the production style of West’s contemporary Tim “Timbaland” Mosely as evoking “a sonic no-place, where the dancing body resides as a starkly minimal, mechanical trace of the more ‘human’ breakbeats that earlier rap production would sample from 1960s or 1970s soul” (169). Most contemporary hip-hop combines dance rhythms and party-oriented lyrics with bleakly posthuman electronic timbres. West pushes this juxtaposition to the extreme.Swizz Beatz ad-libs gruffly over the brief introductory groove, as he does over much of the rest of the song—in fact, he is present during a larger portion of the track than West himself. His ad-libs are almost free of semantic meaning, functioning completely as percussion. We can take one interjection more literally, the announcement that “We gon’ let the beat rock.” Swizz Beatz is inviting us to relax into an open-ended groove. We could imagine a DJ extending this section in a club or party setting if the crowd is responding energetically. The tidy loop structures of hip-hop and electronic dance tracks are designed to make it easy for DJs to spontaneously extend them at will. Since its origins lie in social dance, groove-based music exists to create a mood rather than a narrative. As Walser (1995) observes: “Because the groove itself is non-teleological, it situates the listener in a complex present, one containing enough energy and richness that progress seems moot” (204). While looping in the studio and the DJ booth alike are achieved through highly technological means, the musical impulse is warmly organic: to foster dance, socializing, or head-nodding.The organ riff that runs throughout the verses of “Famous” is in F-sharp minor, which is an abrupt mode change from the major tonality of the intro section. West’s co-producer Havoc sampled the organ from the closing section of “Mi Sono Svegliato E…Ho Chiuso Gli Occhi” by Il Rovescio della Medaglia, an Italian progressive rock band. This song is itself built around quotes of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, making a pleasingly recursive chain of musical reference.Rap music has been criticized extensively for the practice of sampling. There is a widespread perception that sampling is nothing more than an expedient way to avoid learning instruments or hiring musicians. In this instance, however, using the organ sample was not much more expedient than recording a soundalike would have been. Given the generic simplicity of this organ riff, it would have been a trivial matter for West to replace it using a similar organ sound from any number of software instruments. Why, then, was West willing to take on the expense of the sample clearance and licensing fee? We must assume that he was drawn to the specific ambiance of the sample, because it allowed him “to signify upon a different kind of space and distance, the long perspective of passing time… [T]he materiality of these recorded samples, their saturation with buzz and crackle, intensified their demarcation of a distance between past and present” (Chapman 2008, 160). West has built his entire discography on carefully selected samples. In his output as in hip-hop generally, “[e]xisting recordings are not randomly or instrumentally incorporated so much as they become the simultaneous subject and object of a creative work” (Culter 1989, 21).Verse one continues over Havoc’s drum machine and organ, with West alternating between aggressive rap and loosely pitched singing. West is more highly regarded as a producer than a rapper, but his flow is nevertheless distinctive. In rap terms, the word “flow” encompasses both emcees’ lyric writing and the rhythmic and articulative aspects of of their delivery. The metrical aspects of flow include the placement of rhyming or otherwise accented syllables, the relationship between lyrical phrase boundaries and musical hypermeasures, and the number of syllables per beat. The articulative aspects include the use of legato or staccato, the articulation of consonants or lack thereof, and the placement of any given syllable ahead of or behind the beat (Adams 2009).Most contemporary emcees use what Krims (2000) has called a “speech-effusive style” characterized by the casual enunciation and loose rhythms of everyday spoken language. This is in contrast to two other major flow styles described by Krims. One is "sung," a schoolyard chant feel with on-beat accents and strict couplet groupings, characteristic of the first generation of rappers like Run-DMC and Kurtis Blow. The other is "percussion-effusive," a more rhythmically complex flow that is freer with metrical boundaries and rhyme schemes, but which still has crisp articulation and clearly discernable regular rhythm patterns. This pattern is more typical of a later cohort of rappers like Rakim and Q-Tip. West’s flow is mostly speech-effusive, but in “Famous,” his rhymes have a simpler chant-like quality harkening back to early rap.It is a widely held belief that rap has no melodic content. However, attentive listening reveals that all rappers use pitch expressively. The border between rapping and singing is a porous one, and most emcees cross it routinely in the course of a song, as West does in “Famous.” Furthermore, even in straight rapping, the pitch sequences are deliberate and meaningful. The pitches might not fall on the piano keys, but they are melodic nonetheless. The easiest way to explore the pitch content of rap is to use pitch-tracking software on acapella tracks. Sadly, there is no acapella version of “Famous” available. However, West delivers one line in the second verse “in the clear” (without instrumental backing), making it amenable to automated pitch detection. The graphic below shows the line as visualized in Melodyne, with lyric annotations by the author:With the assistance of the audio-to-MIDI feature of Ableton Live, it is possible to map these pitches to the closest piano-key note.Even this short fragment shows considerable melodic interest, starting and ending on B3, with a leap up to D4 and drops to G3 in between. Melodic analysis of rap vocals is a largely untapped vein of potential scholarly inquiry, and a promising area of future research.After the first verse would conventionally come the “hook,” the hip-hop term for a chorus. Rihanna continues to interpolate the Jimmy Webb/Nina Simone quote from the intro over the F-sharp major organ part from the intro. Swizz Beatz continues his ad-libbed interjections on top. While his function on the track is mostly to add rhythmic energy, in this section he also adds another layer of intertextuality by quoting “Wake Up Mr. West,” a short skit on West’s album Late Registration. That skit, in turn, is itself richly intertextual—it features a comedian (DeRay Davis) imitating another comedian (Bernie Mac) over a sample of “Someone That I Used To Love” by Natalie Cole (1980).Verse two is much like verse one. At the end, we expect Rihanna to return with the hook, but instead we only hear her sing the pickup, “I just wanted you to know.” In place of the hook, the track shifts into a new F-sharp major groove over fuller drums, including a noisy artificial snare sound resembling a socket wrench. The lead vocal in this section is a sample of “Bam Bam” by Sister Nancy (1982).“Bam Bam” is a frequently-used sample, one that a more-than-casual rap listener is likely to find familiar. The author immediately recognized it from “Lost Ones” by Lauryn Hill (1998), “Just Hangin’ Out” by Main Source (1991), and a variety of unofficial mixtapes.West does not merely sample “Bam Bam.” He also reharmonizes it. Sister Nancy’s original is a I–bVII progression in C Mixolydian. West pitch shifts the vocal to fit it over a I–V–IV–V progression in F-sharp major. Rather than simply transposing the sample up or down a tritone, he instead keeps the pitches close to their original values by changing their chord function. Here is a transcription of Sister Nancy’s original:And here is the sample as it appears in “Famous”:Pitch shifting a vocal by even a small interval alters its timbre. The formants are transposed in parallel with the base pitch, rather than staying constant as they would if the vocalist were actually singing at the new pitch. Also, the phase vocoding that makes it possible to alter pitch independently of tempo further colors the sound. The resulting sonic artifacting gives Sister Nancy the feel of a robot from the future. This association directly conflicts with the lo-fidelity recording artifacts in the sample. As with the Nina Simone interpolation and drum machine part, the juxtaposition of audio past and future represented by the Sister Nancy sample has an otherworldly effect.Like the Il Rovescio della Medaglia song discussed above, Sister Nancy’s song is comprised of pre-existing musical elements. She is singing over a widely used instrumental track (a “riddim” in reggae parlance) called “Stalag 17” by Winston Riley (1973). Furthermore, her chorus is a quote from a song of the same name by Toots Hibbert (1966). There is a pleasing symmetry between her collage aesthetic and West’s. We cannot be certain whether West selected “Bam Bam” on that basis, or because of its lyrics, its melody, its sound, or some motivation known only to him. But it is interesting to speculate. “The arrangement and selection of sounds rap musicians have invented via samples, turntables, tape machines, and sound systems are at once deconstructive (in that they actually take apart recorded musical compositions) and recuperative (because they recontextualize these elements creating new meanings for cultural sounds that have been relegated to commercial wastebins)” (Rose 1994, 85). What new meaning does West create for “Bam Bam” by including it within “Famous”? Sister Nancy’s chorus means “What a bummer” in Jamaican patois. She is referring to her struggles to make it as an emcee in the male-dominated world of dancehall reggae. Does West intend that meaning to rub against the casual misogyny of his own verses?After twenty-four bars of the Sister Nancy groove, the track ends with another Jimmy Webb/Nina Simone quote. But this time, rather than Rihanna singing, we hear a sample of Simone herself.West has combined an interpolation of a sample with the original recording before, on “Gold Digger” (2005), in which Jamie Foxx’s imitation of Ray Charles is followed by a sample of Charles himself. However, that juxtaposition occurred at the very beginning of the track. In “Famous,” Simone’s first appearance comes at the end, and on first hearing comes as quite a surprise.We can read West’s bringing Rihanna and Simone together on his song as a form of bragging. Few producers can afford a guest appearance by Rihanna. Similarly few have the resources or the audacity to sample a sacred and iconic figure like Simone. By doing both, is West engaged a kind of musical conspicuous consumption, the sonic equivalent of flashy jewelry? Or does he intend a deeper musical meaning?Holm-Hudson (1997) observes that John Oswald’s sampling practice “creates a larger web of stylistic references from the interaction of various formerly unrelated samples. Oswald's technique, in particular, often extricates extramusical meaning from the ‘innocent’ sample, ironically commenting on its source, the sampled artist or the music industry that spawned both” (Holm-Hudson 1997, 24). This analysis applies neatly to West’s use of Simone as we compare it retroactively to Rihanna’s interpolation. West presumably wants us to feel the contrast between Rihanna’s heavily processed purr and Simone’s unvarnished, preacherly tone. Reynolds (2012) comments on the way that recorded music in general and sampling in particular can create uncanny links across time: “Recording is pretty freaky, then, if you think about it. But sampling doubles its inherent supernaturalism. Woven out of looped moments that are like portals to far-flung times and places, the sample collage creates a musical event that never happened; a mixture of time-travel and séance” (313). By sampling Simone, West invites us to wonder what she might have made of Rihanna, and of West himself.Below, the author has constructed a flowchart showing the samples and samples of samples in “Famous.”We can classify the samples in “Famous” using the typology of sampled material proposed by Ratcliffe (2014). The kick and snare are short, isolated fragments. The organ riff is a phrase, a self-referential musical element, rather than a pointer to a recognized external source. The Sister Nancy and Nina Simone samples are larger, more extensive referential elements. While sampling is ubiquitous in hip-hop, “Famous” is remarkable for deploying samples at so many different time scales.In interviews, West rarely gives specific insight into his creative process. We are forced to surmise as to how “Famous” came about in the studio after Havoc brought in the beat and organ sample. Gelineck and Serafin (2009) describe two major approaches to creating electronic music. The producer (who Gelineck and Serafin refer to as “the composer”) may start with a clear goal or idea of the finished product. Alternatively, the producer may be inspired by playful exploration and experimentation using whatever sound sources and technologies are at hand. As quoted in Preezy (2016), Havoc describes West as having “the idea for how he wanted to go” with “Famous.” Havoc also describes a process by which West’s collaborators will introduce ideas in the studio for West to react to in the moment. Taken together, these remarks suggest that West combines both a goal-oriented and a playful/experimental approach to composition.West’s music provokes strong emotional responses. In the process of writing this paper, the author discussed it with various friends and students. Their comments ranged from enthusing about West as a genius to denouncing him as an egotistical buffoon. Similarly, their assessments of “Famous” run the gamut from proclaiming it a masterpiece to dismissing it as offensive and empty. As Walser (1995) observes: “Hip hop's appeal to a variety of audiences, its cultural legitimacy, and its vulnerability to censorship all depend upon reactions to the music: whether its repetition enervates or animates, whether its noisiness alienates or accreditates, whether its complexity disorients or situates” (210). In “Famous,” we are reacting to a dense interplay of rhythms, harmonies, timbres, vocal styles, and intertextual meanings, not to mention all the complexities of cultural context. How do we even begin to evaluate such a work?Like many rappers, West praises himself for being “fresh.” The meaning of the word in hip-hop slang could be referencing any of its conventional senses: new, refreshing, appetizing, attractive, or sassy (Hein 2015). We frequently praise music for its originality, but in sample-based music like hip-hop, that term is not as good a proxy for musical quality. We need a criterion that gets at the aspects of a successful rap song: emotional truth-telling, inventive wordplay, creative juxtaposition of existing and novel musical elements, the construction of a compelling soundscape, a beat suitable for dancing or head nodding, and situatedness within a complex cultural context. We can best judge hip-hop by its freshness. “Famous” is a difficult and at times unpleasant work, but it is extraordinarily fresh.ReferencesAdams, K. (2009). On the Metrical Techniques of Flow in Rap Music. Music Theory Online, 15(5), 1–12. Retrieved from http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.09.15.5/mto.09.15.5.adams.html____ (2008). Aspects of the Music/Text Relationship in Rap. Music Theory Online, 14(2). Retrieved from http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.08.14.2/mto.08.14.2.adams.htmlBiamonte, N. (2014). 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