Review Summary: Lowbrow american television in audio-book form.
Kanye West's career started out promising. His first few albums featured highly innovative production and he coupled catchy sounds with a humble attitude. Somewhere along the line he decided to lose his reserved attitude in what was quite obviously a marketing ploy. On numerous occasions he appeared on TV-news doing different sorts of stupid stuff, and this of course made him relevant in America's asinine media. Eventually he shed his image as a publicity-whore and good producer, and remarkably gained status as a respected "artist" with
My Dark Beautiful Twisted Fantasy, an incredibly pretentious album in which Kanye appropriated the talents of much more talented people than himself. His preceding album
Yeezus was Kanye's new low. A complete cry for attention by a fraud who was facing the edge of irrelevance. The typical melt down every famous person goes through when they stop getting their ass kissed by everyone around them. After his small window of opportunity expired, he was forced to get by on raw talent, and he failed miserably.
His response was to double down on his stubbornness by saying anyone who doesn't like his repetitive and simplistic music is a hater.
The Life of Pablo is basically 59 minutes of Kanye bragging and talking *** in between overproduced flashy beats. If he's not doing this he's rambling on about his past in an uninteresting way. This is, remarkably, his worst album ever, which is impressive because
Yeezus only didn't have an album cover because they were all used up as toilet paper. The features on this album are uncharacteristically horrendous. Even the usually solid Kendrick Lamar delivers a pitifully simplistic and lame verse. Kanye frankly seems like he was high as hell when he recorded this album. It almost seems like a joke. The vocals throughout the album are incredibly grating, something which is the antithesis of most Kanye albums. The atmosphere of the album is quite whiny and depressing, again, a huge difference from all other Kanye albums. The production fails to provoke interest. Basically Kanye fails in all his usual ways and he also manages to embarrass himself by stooping to new lows with insults taken at celebrities.
Contrary to the beliefs of many Kanye fans, it is not his vulgar boasting and narcissistic attitude that turns so many people away from Kanye. It's the sheer repetitiveness of his lyrics. He seemingly can't talk about anything but himself and how much he's hated. Kanye has made a career by convincing his fans that he is controversial and widely disliked. In reality Kanye is disliked in exact proportion to the amount of *** he needlessly stirs up. He goes out of his way looking to be criticized for attention. His music reflects television culture in everyway imaginable. The sounds Kanye is notorious for are like commercial jingles, created strictly for their catchiness. The maturity of the album is like watching an episode of MTV's Sweet Sixteen, where rich girls throw fits over not getting the right color Ferrari. It's amazing how whiny this album sounds, yet when you look back on it, the worst thing Kanye can recall happening to him is getting his laptop stolen. Kanye's level of phoniness is like watching an infomercial. The whole album just basically comes across as someone doing anything he can to hold your attention for a few moments for financial motivations, it's a commercial.
This album drops the ball completely in every aspect except production. Even as a producer, he is highly overrated. His single talent comes from selecting the right samples. In other words, his forte is taking other people's music. When Kanye is left on his own, his extremely limited imagination is exposed. His personality has become a bigger and bigger part of his music, and as his ego has grown so has his reluctance to actually create decent music. He seems to be convinced his mere presence is enough to make good music. He has basically destroyed any chance of making a good album before he overdoses on drugs. People need to help and pity this man and stop encouraging him, instead he's worshipped by millions. In this way, and in this way only, does this album have some sort of value. It is a glimpse into the schizophrenic mass-hysteria of modern America. It represents the confusion common in American culture where people fill their meaningless lives up with materialistic goods, artificial drama and drugs in a misguided attempt to be happy.
