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| It's quite an atrocious album cover. There's no doubting it's 100 % Kanye, though, no media advisor did this. |
It's been a rough year for Yeezy. Always eccentric, his stage antics and public persona have this year turned so crazy that you end up just shrugging off his absurd rants (that last one is priceless, bruh), mindless Twitter-attacks and ambitions of running for President in 2020 (never say never!) as Kanye "just being kanye", in a similar way as we did for Trump's craziness before it got serious, like during the primaries. But the spiralling has gone too far, and the year has ended with Kanye getting hospitalized "for his own health and safety" and cancelling the rest of his "St. Pablo tour" due to ongoing need for psychological and medical treatment. I sure hope sorts himself out.
The rollout for his new album was similarly crazy. First announced to be called SWISH, then Waves, the album was renamed The Life of Pablo just days before its release. In a move that could be seen as either pioneering and groundbreaking or just impulsive, indecisive and rash, he kept changing the tracklist of the album after its release. Admittedly, the "album" concept is not the physical product it once was, it is now equally or more an online bundle easily subject to change and such the changing could feel like an interesting statement. But by the way it's done, there's nothing that indicates that this was a planned move, the haphazardness of his behavior just takes away the effect of the statement. Mixes kept changing, late-album tracks were added, some of them days after the release, some of them months after.
At the moment the album is 20 tracks and over an hour long. It's a sprawling, unfocused album, some of it absolute gold, but ultimately too incohesive as a whole and packs much less of a punch than Yeezus or My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. There are uninteresting "ad-lib" tracks, and Kanye's freestyling is much less interesting than, say, Kendrick's, But for better or worse, West is still absolutely fascinating to watch, a true master of his craft and probably our generation's most iconic musician.
When you listen to his best tracks, you want him to continue balancing on the genius/madman line, and Life of Pablo is packed full of new ideas, challenging the listener and the contemporary music scene, cutting and pasting from the most unlikely places and creating shocking collages. It doesn't just make me want to go back and freak out to Yeezus, I actually want more of the good Pablo. You see the link from his last albums, but one thing that sticks out is that there's a lot more gospel here. These are the most frequently fantastic ones. There are certainly songs here that sit neatly alongside his best, feeling like instant classics (see "best tracks"). Also the more melancholy songs shine especially brightly; the sparse glory of "FML", "Wolves", "Saint Pablo", "No more parties in LA" and "Real friends" is 2016-Kanye at his best. They're concentrated on the album's second half, so if you manage to get past a lot of cringeworthy dick-jokes and meaningless interludes you're in for a lot of pleasant surprises.
To sum up: There's a lot of genius present here, but there's also a lot of lazy and/or crazy. A 12-track Best of Pablo would be on par with Kanye's best work. There are songs you should skip, but it's still very worth a listen. Kanye addresses many of his problems in an interesting way, and while he really often delivers unforgivably bad lines, he remains a master hiphop producer and is often a great rapper and lyricist.
Best tracks: "Saint Pablo", "Ultralight beam", "Famous", "Waves".
The rollout for his new album was similarly crazy. First announced to be called SWISH, then Waves, the album was renamed The Life of Pablo just days before its release. In a move that could be seen as either pioneering and groundbreaking or just impulsive, indecisive and rash, he kept changing the tracklist of the album after its release. Admittedly, the "album" concept is not the physical product it once was, it is now equally or more an online bundle easily subject to change and such the changing could feel like an interesting statement. But by the way it's done, there's nothing that indicates that this was a planned move, the haphazardness of his behavior just takes away the effect of the statement. Mixes kept changing, late-album tracks were added, some of them days after the release, some of them months after.
At the moment the album is 20 tracks and over an hour long. It's a sprawling, unfocused album, some of it absolute gold, but ultimately too incohesive as a whole and packs much less of a punch than Yeezus or My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. There are uninteresting "ad-lib" tracks, and Kanye's freestyling is much less interesting than, say, Kendrick's, But for better or worse, West is still absolutely fascinating to watch, a true master of his craft and probably our generation's most iconic musician.
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| Kanye's Saint Pablo tour features him above the crowd on a floating stage. |
When you listen to his best tracks, you want him to continue balancing on the genius/madman line, and Life of Pablo is packed full of new ideas, challenging the listener and the contemporary music scene, cutting and pasting from the most unlikely places and creating shocking collages. It doesn't just make me want to go back and freak out to Yeezus, I actually want more of the good Pablo. You see the link from his last albums, but one thing that sticks out is that there's a lot more gospel here. These are the most frequently fantastic ones. There are certainly songs here that sit neatly alongside his best, feeling like instant classics (see "best tracks"). Also the more melancholy songs shine especially brightly; the sparse glory of "FML", "Wolves", "Saint Pablo", "No more parties in LA" and "Real friends" is 2016-Kanye at his best. They're concentrated on the album's second half, so if you manage to get past a lot of cringeworthy dick-jokes and meaningless interludes you're in for a lot of pleasant surprises.
To sum up: There's a lot of genius present here, but there's also a lot of lazy and/or crazy. A 12-track Best of Pablo would be on par with Kanye's best work. There are songs you should skip, but it's still very worth a listen. Kanye addresses many of his problems in an interesting way, and while he really often delivers unforgivably bad lines, he remains a master hiphop producer and is often a great rapper and lyricist.
Best tracks: "Saint Pablo", "Ultralight beam", "Famous", "Waves".
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