- I took a long swig of beer and I told this stranger of a dream I’d had. “I have this idea where I’d like to, just once, opt out of the whole cycle and write a review of an older album,” I said. “And not one celebrating a special anniversary or something, because that’s also something we are expected to do now. Maybe when a big artist has an album coming out, I’d write a review not of their new album, but the previous one that they put out, that I’d lived with for a few years. I’m curious about what impressions remain and what impressions fall away; maybe it would even better help me understand my first response to the new album. Is this a better way to talk about pop, to evaluate it, to explore the way it actually functions in our lives?”
Well, it wasn’t the worst idea he’d ever heard, he said. But if it was going to be about Kanye West, with all due respect, he probably wouldn’t be reading it, because he really didn’t care about Kanye West. How can I explain that this made me so much happier than if he’d been excited to read it? It reminded me that the world is not as small as it sometimes seems. There are other ways of doing things.
I've been expanding my music tastes starting with Gambino onto Frank Ocean onto Chance and now sit with The Life of Pablo as yet unlistened. I've hated everything I've heard about Kanye, but I keep hearing such high praise that I want to give it a good go, should I try Yeezus first? Is Pablo a good place to jump in?
Yeezus is abrasive and emotional. One of my favorite of his albums but maybe not a good place to start. Pablo is best understood as thoroughly a product of its time (mid-late 2016). Ignore the controversies following its release. You may be best served starting with The College Dropout and tracing his development, but it really depends on your taste. TCD and Late Registration are the old, chop up the soul Kanye. By Graduation he was moving into a more electronic production style, but still mostly just rapping over beats. With 808s and Heartbreak he moved into a new place (for him and for hip hop) of this weird r&b fusion thing exploring his feelings of loss following the death of his mother and the end of a relationship. Not much rap. MBDTF is widely considered one of the greatest albums of all time; again you'll find mostly singing, but this time over really maximalist production. I'm not as familiar with Watch the Throne.
Also if you'd rather have something coherent than TLOP's sort of disjointed fragmentation, check out these fan-made mixtapes that organize some leaked tracks, some TLOP shit and some other Kanye bits into a more digestible format. I really dig "So Help Me God," but all 3 are pretty good. OR if you really wanna go crazy, you could start with the New Westament, which is tracks from Kanye's entire discography arranged to form a coherent story of the rise and fall of Yeezus. I have Google Play playlists of all 3 acts labelled the Old Westament, New Westament, and Quranye.
I always thought that if I studied musicology I'd write about Kanye. His work is so autobiographical. So much of it is all about him but in a different way from all the other autobiographical hip hop. He is as self-agrandizing as any rapper but he also bears his soul, knows it's despicable and ugly but leaves it there for all to behold. Rappers have flaunted their antisocialness for a long time but Kanye redefined it. Big L made himself an object of terror, like a dog that should be put down. Kanye has raps that can do little but make the careful listener look at him as a contemptible piece of shit. And godamn if the man isn't filled to the brim with talent. Despite his pettyness, his nastyness, his antisocialness his occasional hideous honesty and massive talent make his work unique. As a body of work, it's a journey through a man's life like no other.
What I love about Kanye is that he embraces contradiction like almost no other artist I know. Who but Yeezy could (or, perhaps more importantly, would) follow a track Ultralight Beam with "If I fuck this model / and she just bleached her asshole / and I get bleach on my t shirt / I'ma feel like an asshole"? Who else would have the audacity to release an album called fucking Yeezus, featuring the track "I Am A God," while remaining totally steadfast in his Christian faith? But I think people identify with that. We aren't coherent pieces of humanity. Each individual is a collection of multifaceted fragments, somehow figuring out a way to peacefully (or not-so-peacefully) coexist. lil OftenBen