KANYE WEST
Executive Producers: Kanye West and Rick Rubin
Released June 18, 2013
It seems fitting to follow the previous piece celebrating Stevie Wonder with this new posting giving you my first impressions of the sixth album from music and pop culture ultimate enfant terrible, Kanye West because he once said concerning Wonder and his own artistic pursuits, goals and plans, "I'm not trying to compete with what's out there right now. I'm really trying to compete with Innervisions and Songs In The Key Of Life. It sounds musically blasphemous to say something like that, but why not set that as your bar?" If you have never seen that statement from West before now, perhaps that can shed some light over what he has been attempting to do artistically for the entirety of his career thus far and additionally, maybe it can shift the focus to the work instead of his outlandish public antics and voluminous arrogance.
While I woud not suggest that Kanye West has created some of the best album ever made like Stevie Wonder has done, I will say that West has truly created a staggering body of work where each album he has released contains its own theme, sonic palate and vision that is independent from the other albums in his ouvre, and frankly, they are defiantly independent from the remainder of hip-hop itself. It is as if, we are taking a trip to Ye's ever expanding personal museum and each album release is like a stand alone painting on the wall. With that, all of his albums work and flow together to essentially tell Ye's ongoing tale and explore his mental state as well. If "The College Dropout" (released February 10, 2004) showcased a young artist swinging for the fences with his one shot at bat, "Late Registration" (released August 30, 2005) signaled his full arrival into the big leagues. The late night synthetic textures of "Graduation" (released September 11, 2007) threw us into the deep and increasingly dark side of success, while the surprising musical curve ball "808s And Heartbreaks" (released November 24, 2008) depicted the crash, burn and aftermath of a broken soul. "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" (released November 22, 2010) lived up to its title in an especially profane and epic fashion while "Watch The Throne" (released August 8, 2011), his collaboration with Jay-Z served as a wildly enthusiastic victory lap of an album. And now, we reach his latest album "Yeezus," a radical U-turn of an album, which by the sounds of it, the mind of Kanye West is a frightening place to be.
As of this writing, I have listened to "Yeezus" nearly four times and I have to say that for an individual who is at the forefront of modern popular culture, he has released a work that unapologetically and unrepentantly flies completely away from anything resembling the mainstream. As you can see from the photo posted above, the album possesses no cover and no artwork. There are no liner notes (but you can find them on-line) and there are no decorative treatments in any way. As for the music itself, I honestly cannot hear even one potential single from it and I honestly do not think that one could be re-created from what exists within the album's 10 tracks. "Yeezus" is easily the darkest, hardest, most ferocious, abrasive, raging album from Kanye West to date. It is a complete 180 degree turn from "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" as the briskly paced (the album is only a few seconds over 40 minutes) and razor sharp focused "Yeezus" is ferociously minimalist and metallic, where "Fantasy" was drenched in excess and opulence.
The sonic twists and turns of this LOUD album constantly keep the listener off guard as tempo shifts, false endings, jarring interruptions are whiplash inducing. The music primarily consists of drums (on the album, West proclaims that his "new movement" will be led percussively) augmented by a barrage of synthetic squeaks, howls, alarms and on the astonishing "I Am A God," the album descends into nightmare as the track is interjected with West's night terror screams and breathless panting. Only by three of the album's later tracks ("Guilt Trip," "Blood On The Leaves" and "Bound 2") do we even approach anything that sounds remotely melodic as the broken robotic auto-tune singing from "808s And Heartbreak" makes a return. Even so, the effect is no less disturbing than anything else on this rancorous album.
While the sonics of "Yeezus" are startling, the lyrics...well...
Yes, there will be much to pour over and debate with tracks like "Black Skinhead" and "New Slaves," and I really want to find the connections between the tracks, especially as "New Slaves" makes reference to "blood on the leaves," mirroring a later track of the same name. But the majority of the album's lyrical content is aggressively and shamelessly vulgar, sophomoric, scatological, crude, puerile, flat out nasty and truth be told, tiring to the point of exhaustion. Yes, West's head spinning wordplay has not lost its skillful power (and shocking humor) but the subject matter of all of his excesses, from money to sexual conquests to his sheer megalomania, was wearying to me and made me wonder and worry that he had just run out of subjects to make music about. But not so fast...
While the albums within Kanye West's body of work so far have all existed as complete, individual statements, all of the albums flow together as they have played off of each other in regards to themes and even West's artistic progression. Remember the track "Runaway," the elegant, prog-rock influenced nine minute epic from "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" on which he warned all of us to get as far, far away from him as possible as he is nothing but the worst of damaged goods? This is an example of West's cunning and conceptual cleverness as he is ahead of the curve enough to make his albums essentially critic proof--for there is absolutely nothing that anyone can say about him that he has not and will not say about himself on his own albums. And West has been considerably and mercilessly self-lacerating time and again.
That said, and for any complaints and distaste towards his lyrics or really anything within "Yeezus," no one can say that he didn't warn us. West even taunts the listener on another track where he chides how much we like it when he is out of control, a statement of which there is more than a little bit of truth. The public has been simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by Kanye West for years now and if we were really so very disgusted by his raging antics, he would have rejected him long ago. But we haven't, we're still buying and we only have ourselves to blame if we do complain.
Even so, it cannot mean that we cannot make observations and remarks bathed in constructive criticism. I have to say that as much as I was riveted by the sound of "Yeezus," I did miss the relative soulful warmth of his first three albums. But, again West is much savvier than he is given credit for. If you do pay attention to the lyrics and sonic delivery, you can hear how each Kanye West album is inching closer and closer to more synthetic textures, possibly mirroring West's emotional state, which I am reading as harder, colder, more entrenched against potential pain. Just think about "808s And Heartbreaks" and how perfect that merging of studio wizardry, lyrical content and the reality of West's life at that time (the passing of his beloved Mother and the end of his longtime relationship) actually was. The auto-tune was utilized so artistically (and I still feel...brilliantly) and it reflected a vulnerability that I think rapping would otherwise cloak. But like the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi explained to Luke Skywalker concerning the soul of Darth Vader, the former Anakin Skywalker, "He's more machine than man now."
Maybe the iron clad harshness of "Yeezus" is where Kanye West is at this stage of his life, robotically zooming through an existence of mass excess and to what end and to obviously outrun what? If any answers are to be found in "Yeezus," that is for us to discover.
But now I must warn you...it is not going to be a comfortable journey.
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