Review Summary: Hot mess.
Kanye West used to be someone. His albums used to mean something. Consider his initial albums; made in protest of prevailing gangster rap trends,
The College Dropout,
Late Registration, and
Graduation redefined the essential elements of what could make rap music for popular consumption. Consider
808s & Heartbreak; an album that invented the archetype upon which Drake has based most of his career on. Consider
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy; an album that proved that Kanye’s overzealous confidence could be matched in his ability to perfect dramatic and ambitious pop songs. Consider
Yeezus; an album that proved Kanye could still find excellence without perfection, drama, or ambition. These albums changed fashion. They changed the radio. They changed the idea of what could or couldn’t make you famous. After all of that, consider
The Life of Pablo. It lacks cohesion. It has no determination. It mocks the concept of logic, following its own wild muse. It doesn’t put forward anything we haven’t already heard before. Perhaps most concerning of all, it doesn’t sound like it is suppose to mean anything; moreover, it sounds like the laziest album Kanye has to offer.
That's a hefty accusation to make for an album that does, admittedly, linger on the idea of difficulty more than any other Kanye West album before it. However, it's not unreasonable to still be confused by an album that remains subject to change far beyond its release date (apparently "Wolves" needs fixing and the persecuted need
The Life of Pablo to remain on Tidal). If the idea was to make
The Life of Pablo the world's first interactive album, then consider this feedback to the creator: your album is far from finished. Indeed, many songs here are close to perfect and would work well if they were given the respect of a full-length that's had some effort devoted to it. Alas,
The Life of Pablo is subject to half-victories. Its better moments- particularly "Ultralight Beam" and "Father Stretch My Hands, pt. 1 & pt. 2"- feel rushed, cursory sketches at best of potential hits in the making. It's an issue that arises incessantly, track after track, systematically destroying the album's value. To think that Kanye was ready to make "Waves" the title-track to the project is downright lazy. Finding its way onto the main tracklist at the behest of Chance The Rapper, Chris Brown delivers a chorus that might have provoked some discussion of a creative resurrection. Lo-and-behold, though, it's an underworked song that could otherwise have been perfect had it any momentum or form. It’s not as if that’s a one-off, either; "Fade", an unlikely closer, works a ridiculously groovy house beat into an ingenious hook from Post Malone and Ty Dolla $ign. Again, though, it finishes before it ever makes an impact, and takes
The Life of Pablo to some underworked and confusing conclusion.
Truthfully, most of these songs are flat-out ruined by such haphazard composition. What's most frustrating then is that we've heard
The Life of Pablo's highlights already. Take "Real Friends", a song whose attention to detail stands out awkwardly in
Pablo's mess. Kanye channels his
808s... heartbreak to sing the woes of mistrust and deception that occur in a family unit complicated by fame ('
When was the last time I remembered a birthday? / When was the last time I wasn't in a hurry?'). Replete with production from Boi-1da, the track out-Drakes Drake with its somber and minimal plodding, coupled well against Ty Dolla $ign's sporadic assessments of Ye's dysfunctional lifestyle. Similarly, there's "No More Parties in LA", a Madlib joint that takes pride in being as close to 'real' Hip-Hop as possible; the sort of song you'd appreciate more for the bars and the beats than the melody or the structure. Kendrick Lamar makes an appearance to wax lyrical with 'Ye, boasting and gloating until Kanye spits, '
I know some fans thought I wouldn't rap like this again / But the writer's block is over, emcee's, cancel your plans'. It's an anomaly, though; most of
The Life of Pablo is a humorless continuation of
Yeezus' vile one-liners with none of the genius to prop it up. That line about having sex with Taylor Swift on "Famous" that seems like the truest realization of Kanye's insecurities as overconfidence? It's surrounded by boring beats and average features. The admission in "FML" that he's desperately trying to ween himself off of antidepressants? It's upstaged by a far more succinct and, frankly, better hook from The Weeknd. Even if "Real Friends" and "No More Parties in LA" signal to a different album entirely- and the charm of this album is in its other, half-finished moments- they're indicative of what
The Life of Pablo should've been; a better album.
In both of these songs, Kanye effortlessly and maddeningly proves that he can play this game better than anybody else. He's more than adept at 'real' Hip-Hop. He's more than adept at 'popular' Hip-Hop. That he instead chooses to spend the rest of his record indecisively floundering beggars belief. It leads me to think that the cohesion of
The Life of Pablo is a lack of cohesion itself. It wouldn't be surprising, as the last few weeks of debt collectors, frustrated co-writers, and claims of Bill Cosby's innocence can attest. Whatever the f
uck it is though that
The Life of Pablo is trying to say, it surely has nothing to do with Kanye finding stability in family or having confidence in his vision.
The Life of Pablo is a hot mess, dabbling in trends, formlessness, and the occasional moment of greatness. Whether or not I can grow to accept and appreciate it is beside the point; I just hope that Kanye knows what the hell it is all meant to mean.
