“what genius isn’t a little crazy?”
Y’know, when I first spun this new Kanye West, my expectations weren’t high at all. After what seemed like years of hype, underwhelming singles, name changes (that were probably fake, in hindsight) and finally a string of really odd tweets, I felt like we’d get an unhinged, disjointed mish-mash of bad songs from Kanye, that he’d defend as art.
I thought he’d drop the Yeezy Season 3 of Music.
I don’t like Kanye West’s clothing. I’m not part of the avantgarde fashion troupe who think wearing rags and overly-distressed (and expensive) clothing is sensible. I’m a regular guy, working a regular job, who happens to really like music. So much so I’m two paragraphs deep into a review of an album, while I’m in the office trying to pay bills. Slow day, let me breathe will ya?!
I subscribed to TIDAL for this joint.
I’m not a Yeezy stan, and I’ve never been great at being an all-weather supporter of any musician’s career. I’m quick to call bullshit on a bad tune, be it from Nas, Kanye or even the magnificent Tame Impala. So subscribing to TIDAL for this guy’s album (I mainly use Apple Music for streaming tunes) was both a shameful act of hypebeasting from me, as well as an act of sheer curiousity about TIDAL’s HIFI streaming chops (spoiler: it really isn’t that epic). Anyway, TLOP was my first taste of HIFI streaming, and Kanye’s “God dream”, and while it certainly isn’t bad, it certainly isn’t the best album of any time.
It’s the first Kanye album that feels utterly directionless…
Kanye always seems to have a plan, a theme, and a sound to his albums. From College Dropout’s ode-laden soul to Graduation’s forward-thinking Hip-Pop sound, he’s had a plan. Hell, even the odd, trippy Yeezus (it was garbage) had a sound. TLOP feels, at all times, like an odd step forward, backward, to the side, then a regression into fan service. The good news, is that all of it generally passes muster by not being awful.
Disjointed albums are difficult to enjoy, though.
One minute Kanye is Gospel, next he’s Graduation Yeezy, and then he’s Yeezus, then he’s Kanye from Southside Chi-Town (or Chi-raq, if you’re nasty). It’s a jarring listen, when you try to go through the project in its entirety. The fidelity of the production is excellent (and TIDAL helps in this regard. I’ve listened to the ripped versions and the loss in bitrates is annoying) and Kanye being funny and boastful in his lyrics is, as always, endearing. But seeing as how he isn’t a rapper, and seeing how Rhymefest, his main writing partner (he was his writer basically), sensationally quit working with Kanye over what he believes are Kanye’s mental issues, the bars are just as disjointed as the sound is. It plays like a collection of singles from different eras of the man’s career. “Feedback” could have been the best song on Yeezus, while Real Friends is soul Kanye at his absolute zenith. The raps themselves sound like a guy who’s learned how to rap not by talent, but by reading what’s been written for him before and attempting to follow the template.
Sometimes the braggadocio is too much or too little, but sometimes, like on “I Love Kanye”, it’s perfect. Endearing, funny, and narcissistic as all hell. Kanye, just as Rhymefest and CyHi Tha Prynce wrote him all these years. But they’re gone, and therein lies the quandary. Ye is trying to recapture things that can’t exist any longer. “Highlights” is probably the cleanest amalgamation of various eras of Ye’s career on the album, though. The Graduation-era chirpiness and synths combine with the narcissism of Yeezus and auto tune of 808s and Heartbreak to create a sure-fire hit, helped along by Young Thug and the ever-present-on-everyone’s-projects impresario, The Dream.
So it’s disjointed, but not bad. What stands out?
I always say to friends, that had Ye not panic-produced Yeezus, it could have very easily been his best work. “Freestyle 4” is a triumph of interesting, non-rappety rap beats I’ve heard in years. The menacing violin, the synths that pop in out of focus and assault your ears, the slight distortion on the vocals and the eventual entry of rent-a-Future at the back-end of the track…. It all combines to create a visceral, dark soundscape – one that feels like the album’s first real step forward in Kanye’s sound.
“I Love Kanye” pads the gap between production motifs in “Freestyle 4” and “Waves”, where Chris Brown, as is usual, pours out a lovely chorus and manages to add to the soulful, but current-sounding beat. Like most of the album, this track is excellent alone, but it really benefits from the beat-less palette cleanse provided by “I Love Kanye”.
A song that stands out mostly because it’s just SO BAD, is FML. I don’t know whether Kanye should have tapped his post-Amber Rose album for inspiration at all, honestly. It was a great, left-field and heady project that doesn’t need replication. FML just feels unnecessary, even in an album that’s already disjointed. The Weeknd’s vocals don’t work with what Kanye is going for on this song. Maybe a female voice would’ve worked.
Real Friends is easily the best traditional song here, though.
I’m a HUGE Ty Dolla $ign fan. Daft name aside, this man’s husky, weed-enhanced voice carries more soul than a graveyard of restless ghouls, and added to the highly-touted collabo beat (Madlib, Ye, and Havoc worked on this, I think?), the soul and heart is on overload. Kanye doesn’t need to rap well or say much, but he does reasonably well, and makes apt use of the magic that is Ty’s voice to lather your ears in some of the best music Kanye has released in years. Current, yes. Soulful, yes. This is the Kanye most of his fans want to return in full (won’t happen) and it isn’t hard to see why.
What comes next, is Wolves. It’s a great My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy-esque track, which came out last year, albeit with Vic Mensa and Sia on it. This time, Ye harnesses music’s most elusive crooner, Frank Ocean. Over a stanza or two, Frank reminds us why we’re all so depressed about him not releasing something (honestly, even a damn spoken word poem from this guy would be called a classic right now).
Okay this is dragging. Good or nah?
Man, it’s tough… There are many, many great songs here. Almost all the production is perfect, too. But this album, seen as a whole… It’s just so badly jarring over an entire listening session that I can’t say it isn’t annoying. The lyrics are lazy on the whole, apart from the places where Kanye admitted that Drake assisted him – “30 Hours” is the best rapping Ye does on the whole album. The sounds are haphazard and seem like a number of discarded A-sides spanning his entire career. If that was the goal, then bravo. Maybe it explains the name The Life of Pablo. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t result in a cohesive album.
VERDICT? 3 Flame Emojis out of 5.
Great collection of songs, PLENTY to stuff onto a playlist for the party, the trunk and the office. It just isn’t a cohesive project, and as a rap album, it isn’t very good either. Also, I’m insulted that Andre 3000 only sings “30 hours” on the entire album. Kanye, WYD???
Stream The Life Of Pablo on TIDAL by clicking here
Bheki is just a guy. He has opinions, and they’re usually based on some form of knowledge, however flawed they may be. Find him on Twitter.
The Lens Blur. 