How much do I not give a fuck?
Let me show you now ‘fore you give it up.
How much do I not give a fuck?
Let me show you now ‘fore you give it up.
So, given that West’s Life of Pablo just came out, I guess it’s probably time to put a period on his last album. I’ve been listening to it off and on for over a year now, I guess, and I still struggle to really put my feelings about this record into words. I suppose I should start at the most basic level. This is one of those albums that reminds me of why I put up with West’s bad behavior and stupidity; it’s because he’s working in a way, on a level, whatever, that no one else works on. Yeezus is . . . nothing short of jaw-dropping in its greatness. It’s like nothing he’s ever done before, an extreme melding of angry, bitter rap and grim, unrelenting industrial sounds. Yeezus is a tough album; one critic referred to it as an unyielding hunk of cartilage and I know exactly what he meant. It’s a nightmarish album, merciful only in its short running time (right at forty minutes). Kanye’s lyrics and performances here are brilliant in their intensity. The production is stripped down, grinding, a nightmare inspired by Trent Reznor and Throbbing Gristle and not Kanye’s usual soul inspirations. But how great is this album? This great: Kanye samples perhaps the ne plus ultra text of black American music, Billie Holliday’s Strange Fruit, and it doesn’t feel either glib or shallow. The track itself, Blood on the Leaves, isn’t broken by the mythic weight of that sample; it feels absolutely, perfectly right, a stark, haunted sample for a stark, haunted album. The pounding stop-start of Black Skinhead, the vitriolic lyrics of New Slaves, the brutal screaming gasps of I Am a God . . . this is an album that really shook me up in all kinds of ways. Again, I feel like I’m rambling but I still feel like there’s depth to this album that I haven’t even come close to plumbing. It feels fresher and better every time I listen to it. The album does end with a brilliant grace note. It’s not unlike When the Ship Comes In on one of Dylan’s starkest albums, The Times They Are a-Changin’. Bound 2 could easily feel like a misstep, like something that just doesn’t fit tonally with the rest of the album. But like with Dylan, that’s the beauty of it. Ending the album with the one soul sample based tune, a surprisingly low-key love song (of a kind), somehow intensifies the dark emptiness of the rest of the album while, at the same time, offering just a bit of hope to see us out. Somehow it doesn’t ruin the album; somehow it makes it stronger. But that’s really no surprise. Kanye West remains one of the most brilliant musical artists working today; no, more, he’s one of the greats of all time without question. Yeezus makes that clear, even if nothing else he’s ever done already had. It’s an uncompromising, dangerous artistic statement, unafraid to be angry, offensive and brutal. Make fun of him for his antics, roll your eyes when he talks, whatever. But when the album drops, listen and listen well. This is what genius sounds like. 4 stars.
tl;dr – harsh, uncompromising album is West’s darkest, and possibly his best, yet; a masterpiece for all time, a grim mash-up of vitriolic rapping and grinding industrial sounds. 4 stars.