Book Review: Glow In The Dark, by Kanye West

Glow In The Dark

By Kanye West

Photography by Nabil Elderkin

I went to see Kanye West’s—am I giving away too much off the bat here?—legendary “Glow In The Dark” tour during its first visit to Madison Square Garden in May 2008. I got a ticket through a friend who works at a radio station. Kanye wasn’t even my favorite act there—that would be opening act No. 1 Lupe Fiasco. But after seeing that show and watching West mesmerize the crowd for nearly 100 minutes, there was no denying why his name was above the others on the billing.

So why make a book about it? What’s the point of a Behind The Music-esque take on a concert tour? Seems like a pretty Kanye West thing to do. Well as it turns out, West’s “Glow In The Dark” tour has some pretty interesting backstory behind it. And while I’m not saying most concert tours probably do have some cool anecdotes and great memories, like most of the stuff West puts out, his tour book is leaps and bounds above anything like it. That’s a product of what’s contained inside as much as how it’s contained.

There’s nothing paperback about Glow In The Dark: It’s just under 300 pages yet measures more than an inch thick, weighs about five pounds and comes with a CD (this is Kanye West, after all). The book is paced like a story, beginning with the tour’s inception and opening jaunt to Australia. Once West wrapped up the first leg of the tour, he decided to scrap the entire set he’d used and start from scratch before trekking through the U.S. and beyond. The two-month cram session to go from zero to new set is chronicled, as are the sets and even costumes he designed for the tour’s three U.S. openers—Fiasco, hip hop/rock trio N.E.R.D. and pop princess Rihanna. West’s thoughts are scattered throughout the book, offering insight into how external events (his mother’s death, breakup with his fiancée, releasing a new album—the polarizing 808s and Heartbreak—while he was still knee-deep in shows).

Inside, you’ll find more than 400 photos from all facets of the tour, including pre-production, backstage, performances and the in-betweens of shows. Nabil Elderkin, the photographer (who West says is, “going to be a big, famous photographer after [the book] comes out”), pulls together a great mix, both in terms of what the images cover and how they look. Not every image in Glow In The Dark is a perfectly centered, focused and lit shot. And that’s OK—Kanye West considers everything about himself to be a sort of art, so naturally there are going to be pictures washed out with color or covered in light trails as the result of extended exposure settings. The shots are printed on super high-gloss paper, the kind that will reflect overhead lightbulbs at your eyes, but to put these massive, gorgeous images on anything else would be like eating at a high-class restaurant with plastic utensils.

Certain images are accompanied by brief descriptions of circumstances surrounding them, either in the form of blurbs from West himself or excerpts of an interview he did with film and music video director/producer Spike Jonze (about whom West says, “I think we are like the music and director counterparts, having avant-garde ideas that are successful and people being envious of). A massive chunk of the interview precedes the photos and is indeed like a meeting of like minds—West’s influence on music as an entity in the past decade is largely unavoidable, and Jonze’s unique mind has led to a pair of the most remarkable music videos of all time (“Praise You” and “Weapon of Choice,” both for British DJ Fatboy Slim) and groundbreaking film work (1999’s Being John Malkovich, 2002’s Adaptation and this year’s Where the Wild Things Are). West speaks at length about his goals for the tour, struggles with his image and a desire to constantly top himself. West used Jonze’s brother to help re-work his songs into new arrangements, and you’re able to glean a real admiration between the two.

The included disc contains four of the instrumental arrangements West used on the tour, as well as a short snippet from his interview with Jonze, where he mentions Jesus dying a virgin and segues into one of his verses which discusses that very subject. The arrangements are interesting re-imaginings of their source’s material, combining keyboards and drum patterns a la Daft Punk’s 2007 tour and subsequent live album, Alive 2007.

All together, the package Glow In The Dark presents is a very cohesive one—rather than just wax poetic about how extravagant everything from the lighting to the monster Jim Henson’s team designed to the band rider were (and there is a little bit of that), West pulls back the curtain but keeps the production high. If you’re not a Kanye West fan already, Glow In The Dark won’t do much to convert you. But its an excellent reminder of why, after leaving Madison Square Garden that night in May, nobody could honestly say West’s performance wasn’t an ultra-engaging roller coaster from start to end, nor that he didn’t give 110 percent, like it was his last show.