Kanye West
Yeezus

Release Date: 2013 | Tracklist

Despite the speculative mentions of "primal screaming," the Nine Inch Nails comparisons, and the positively Marilyn Mansonesque leaked demo of “Black Skinheadâ€� (no, that’s not a “Beautiful Peopleâ€� sample) preceding the release of Yeezus, Â*Kanye West's sixth full-length, one's first listen renders a Â*comfortable comparison to his most radio-friendly, Graduation, and his at least second most radio-friendly, 808s and Heartbreak. That being said, Yeezus is still plenty dark and consequently pretty refreshing for a hip-hop album.

The accountability for variance is disproportionately placed in the hands of an expertly-selected array of producers. Not to take credit away from West; he evidently spent a great deal of time fashioning the album into a very cohesive whole. The hyped-up futurism of the Daft Punk-helmed opener “On Sightâ€� make Executive Producer Rick Rubin's repeated use of a "minimalist" descriptor seem absurd. Obvious highlight "Blood on the Leaves," produced primarily by Hudson Mohawke of TNGHT, invokes College Dropout-era Â*Kanye with a chopped Nina Simone sample and pairs it with all the bravado we've come to expect from the aforementioned production duo. Picture the sprawling romantic expanse of "Runaway" riddled with Adderall, cocaine, caffeine and auto tune.

Perhaps it's just the elaborately crafted persona, but, in an interview with Pitchfork, Rubin paints a picture of a lyrically ill-prepared Kanye who "scored 40 points in the last quarter." Due to the strength of the lyrics, this doesn’t seem likely. The most prominent themes, racism and sex (were you expecting something else?), are handled with an equal parts twisted and genius sense of humor. Lines like "Black girl sipping white wine, put my fist in her like a Civil Rights sign" and "And I know she like chocolate men, she got more niggas off than Cochran" are way more in touch with the (let's face it) mostly white twenty-something demographic who know more about "Ain't Nobody Got Time For That" than they do Rodney King. Needless to say, it's a much-needed refresher to a genre that has been romanticizing minority crime, or at the very least, weed and pussy, for far too long.

Overall, it's the little quirks and fine tunings that make Yeezus so great; the hip-hop album that doesn't worry about venturing too far from home base. In a lot of ways, it’s far more fitting of the title of Hip-Hop is Dead than Nas‘s recent misfire. Â*"Hold My Liquor’sâ€� second half sounds more like a straight Bon Iver song than a Kanye West song. "New Slaves" sees West at his most politically adept; so much so that you hardly realize the song eschews drums completely. In fact, it's so good at identifying the more chameleon-like racial hierarchy of today (particularly that private prison nonsense) that it's arguably as relevant as "*** the Police" was twenty years ago.