Kanye Rocks Facebook HQ A Capella

Wow! Interesting things are happening at Facebook. First, the trailer for The Social Network, the movie about how Mark Zuckerberg started the website as a student at Harvard looks way, way more compelling than something with that title and subject matter seems like it would. (It stars Jesse Eisenberg and Justin Timberlake and was directed by David Fincher, who is most famous for making movies about serial killers, so, that’s really funny!) Now, or yesterday actually, Kanye West comes to Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, stands up in front of group of employees and gives what is probably the greatest rap performance ever staged in a corporate conference room. With a nice suit, too, and without any musical backdrop (and so a little too spoken-word style for my personal taste.) But it should really lay to rest any remaining doubts as to Kanye’s talent with words. He is not just a good writer of rhymes. He is great one. As was indicated earlier this summer by the great single, “Power,” the half a year he spent out of the public eye seems to have been a fruitful time for him, artistically.

Here’s the Social Network trailer. The stunning version of Radiohead’s “Creep” that plays behind it is performed by Belgian woman’s choir called Scala, conducted by Stijn Kolacny, with the piano accompaniment of his brother, Steven Kolacny. (Older readers will recall Scala’s excellent cover of Divynl’s “I Touch Myself.”)