Review Summary: i will never ever let you live this down
It’s now been ten years since multi-millionaire, multi-talented rapper/producer Kanye West put out his debut record, The College Dropout. A record that defined mainstream hip-hop at a time where artists such as 50 Cent were starting to garner popularity with a young, impressionable audience, the album owed a lot to classic soul and funk records, which were sampled profusely as part of West’s all-encompassing production style. West’s rapping wasn’t the best, but his dedication to his craft translated perfectly in his honest, quirky lyrics. A multitude of guest appearances both from the realm of popular hip-hop and the then-underground helped keep things fresh, and the album remains a near classic to this day.
But since then, Kanye’s output has felt less focused. Late Registration was bombastic and featured massive choruses and smooth, soulful production much like its predecessor, but Kanye’s role as an emcee this time round felt negligible, like anyone could have rapped over the beats to make them sound good. Graduation went full pop but remained exciting thanks to excellent sampling, while 808’s redefined hip-hop as cloudy, autotuned R&B, the spaced-out influence for today’s cloud rap scene. Luckily, the gorgeous, fantastically orchestrated and grandly produced My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy brought Kanye’s relevance back to hip-hop, resulting in some of the best tracks of his career and rarely missing a beat lyrically or with the career defining guest features.
Now, Kanye is under pressure. With such a diverse discography, it’s no surprise that his fans all want different things. Then again, he probably didn’t care because, satire or not, his narcissism reaches new heights on his latest record. Incredibly self-aware yet also stupidly vain, the track I Am a God perfectly encapsulates the attitude West takes here. I’m not going to quote his groan-inducing lyricism but it’s obvious that Kanye’s lyrics are about one thing, himself. And by ‘himself’ I mean his women, his cars, and his opinions. Here he seems obsessed with the subtle racism that apparently pervades the society we live in, yet plays along with the stereotypes he claims are false on half of the remaining tracks. For example, New Slaves compares the experiences of his mother and other black people in the American south to how he is viewed as a black man in modern times. On the other hand, Blood On the Leaves sample the classic Nina Simone song Strange Fruit not as a way of addressing race but as a rather uncomfortable metaphor for the decisions surrounding an abortion. It does seem a little like he’s digging for material in places he won’t find it, but at least he proves that he’s out to send a message.
Musically this is definitely the weirdest Kanye album. Of all his releases, this is the one where West contributes the least to the production, leaving this duty solely to French electronic masterminds Daft Punk on the first three tracks. The pulsating, unsettling vibe of On Sight guises terrible lyrics whilst the driving, industrial themes of Black Skinhead give it a more sinister feel than anything in his past catalogue. And the aforementioned I Am a God sounds as if it will buckle under the massive layers of synth piled on top of Kanye’s sneering vocals, before the song’s finale succumbs to the madness as he screams in rather inhuman fashion. Of course, when the electronics don’t dominate Kanye does actually have some interesting stuff to say, and on Hold My Liquor addresses the issue of alcohol addiction in a more mature way than expected after the dick jokes and boasting about massages and croissants. The guest appearance from Justin Vernon here is amongst the finest moment on the whole album, as with all albums Kanye knows how pick a great guest roster and work them into the fabric of his songs.
The album’s second half is just as inconsistent as the first. Guilt Trip and Send It Up are great songs with cool guest appearances, while I’m In It is a massive failure. Dancehall artist Assassin contributes his nonsensical vocals to a skulking tribal beat, but the bridge sounds awkward as Vernon’s vocals fail to translate into such an aggressive song. Some of the very sexualised lyrics are a bit too much as well, not so much because they’re offensive (as Kanye would probably like you to think), but because they’re such a vivid transcript of a sexual encounter that it’s hard not to cringe at lines like ‘I know you need that reptile’. But it's on Bound 2 where Kany's egotism and sexism collide so disastrously. Whilst fairly similar to something he’d make pre-2007, it manages to be the worst song of his entire career for the same reasons. In an album full of adventurous songs that push genre boundaries (and rarely perfect them), this song sticks out by being totally uninteresting. Terrible sample aside, the Charlie Wilson hook is cheesy and Kanye himself delivers his laziest rapping, something that’s quite tough to manage after such a languid, lethargically produced album. This is the sort of thing that happens when an artist becomes too self-indulgent and they believe they can pull off anything. And sometimes, he is capable of what he so often says he is. But here, he falls victim to his unfounded belief in his own ability far too often.
