Note: This post discusses Kanye West’s performance of “Love Lockdown” at the Video Music Awards. For my review of the single, please go here.

On my first day of seventh grade (in the school seen above), I was the new kid. It sucked like every teen movie says it will. There was even a girl who, no joke, sat behind me in English, flipped out the tag on my shirt, read it aloud to the whole class, and said, “Oh, cool. Did you get that JC Penney?”

And… um… my mom had gotten my shirt at JC Penney, but I thought it looked really awesome. It was neon yellow, and I had a bright blue button-down on top of it. I can see now that this was (ahem) a fashion misstep, but at the time, I was psyched. I even laid this outfit out a week early, just so I would feel prepared. And I called the one girl I already knew–Brooke Rodgers, where you at?–to tell her what I was wearing. And when I saw her in the hall that day, I said, “Brooke, this is the outfit!”

I may as well have screamed, “Put me in drama club!”, but I digress…

The point is, there was no need for this girl in my English class to get all hankty about my threads. Because I could tell that her “excitement” about my shirt was really just Haterade. This is why Mean Girls has always seemed like a documentary to me.

And my whole reason for telling this story is to get you in my mindset as I headed to my first day of gym class, surrounded by boys who understood football. I was like, “Please don’t kill me. And also, please take off your shirts.” It was confusing.

As we were sitting on the bleachers, awkward and quiet, the coach told our class we should get to know each other better. Like, right then. He wanted to know if anyone had done anything interesting that weekend

And you guys? I had just watched the MTV Video Music Awards, and I so wanted to ask if anyone else had seen them. I had this little fantasy where I would say, “Anybody watch the VMAs?”, and then everybody would start talking about “Losing My Religion” winning video of the year and Janet Jackson’s surprise victory over Paula Abdul.

But I didn’t say anything. Looking back on it, it was probably for the best.

Now, however, I don’t have to hide. I want to discuss this weekend’s VMAs, and I specifically want to talk about Kanye West’s performance of his new single, “Love Lockdown.” And by God, I’m gonna do it. Freeeee-dooommm!

Here’s what Kanye gave us…

… to which I say, “All actors want to direct.”

Meaning that lots of rappers (Missy Elliot, Andre 3000, Queen Latifah) eventually start singing on their records, whether they can carry a tune or not (Lil’ Kim). And while he has flirted with singing in the past, Mr. West now seems to be full-on channeling his inner Luther.

Is it working?

Kanye’s voice sounds okay–at least as good as Andre 3000′s–and I’m sure it’ll sound better after he’s tweaked it in the studio. (His new album drops in December.)  What I think is most interesting, though, is how this track doesn’t sound like a Kanye West song at all.

Obviously, there’s no rapping, but there are also no self-conscious lyrics about social ills or West’s own ego.  Instead, we get a straight-forward love-gone-bad song.

Musically, the simple, repetive keyboards and the sudden drum bursts remind me of an aggressive techno song, like “Army of Me” by Bjork.

So will this even be a hip-hop album? Or an R&B album? I’ll be interested to hear how far Kanye West pushes his genre boundaries.

What do you guys think of this new direction? What will seventh graders think?