Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Review: Kanye West- The Life of Pablo


Image result for the life of pablo cover

Don't worry, there's a rant post coming on the roll-out of this thing, but as always, it's first and foremost the music for me. Sorry it took me a while to get to this. Working the graveyard shift. Anyway, Kanye FINALLY dropped his album about a week and a half ago, and it's probably one of his most frustrating artistic moves, and not just because of the release.

The vibe that I get off of this is that of a kid in class scribbling answers down on his test as the teacher is collecting papers. They're practically tearing out of the kid's hands, but they're still desperately trying to write more on the page. It seems unnecessarily rushed. If you didn't want people riding you for not putting out your album, don't put a due date on it. And don't continue to tweak it after it's been releases. These decisions put across an air that Kanye didn't know what he wanted this album to be. This is far from the crystalline vision that Kanye thinks it is.

The most frustrating part about this album is that there are some great moments here, as well as the classic Kanye songs that would be good if there wasn't that one line that totally ruins the song. I'm just going to go track by track:
-"Ultralight Beam" is a great song, though I kind of wish they got North to do that opening prayer (which I thought it was at first). Chance the Rapper killed his verse, delivering one of the few consistently engaging verses of the whole album. The gospel element here is also very grand.

-"Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1 + 2" is okay, I guess. The Kid Cudi chorus is decent, but Kanye's bleach t shirt line is especially cringe worthy, and Future rip off Desiigner delivers some extremely unnecessary mumbling on part 2. Seriously, even though I hate Future's sound, I feel like he could successfully sue this guy for jacking his style so unashamedly.

-"Famous" has already been quite a topic of discussion, so I'm not going to contribute too much. Chorus is forgettable. Taylor Swift line is unfortunate, and is only making her more famous (even more unfortunate). I feel like it's almost a behind the scenes deal between the two to get more press. A tad desperate, even for these two.

-"Feedback" is a song I can embrace pretty much wholeheartedly. It's got a nice Yeezus-era beat, Kanye has an arrogant but not obnoxious verse, and the ghetto Oprah skit at the end was humorous.

-"Low Lights" is a short intermission that tries unsuccessfully to give this album some depth, with a melodramatic 2 minute female monologue. Meh.

-"Highlights" is a song so forgettable I just had to listen to it again to remember what it even was. Oh yeah, it's the one with that terrible GoPro line. Young Thug is learning to be a little less obnoxious, so there's a silver lining I guess.

-"Freestyle 4" has a really eerie beginning that builds to essentially no climax. Kanye delivers a particularly uninteresting verse, then hands it over to Desiigner to bathe it in lean and auto-tune. Pretty disappointing.

-"I Love Kanye" is a short little interlude, pointing out those fans who miss the old Kanye, as well as another excuse to say his name a couple dozen more times. I can't help but side with these fans sometimes, wishing he could even match this basic flow for most of the project.

-"Waves" is a song that has done the unthinkable; it's a song with Chris Brown that I don't despise. It's a nice track with a upbeat vibe, and I really enjoy the production. It sounds like somebody put a gospel chorus through a Leslie speaker.

-"FML" is probably my favorite song on the album, and not only because of the Weeknd feature, though that does help. It's a really dark track that shows Kanye in his least seen light; self deprecating, introspective, and I haven't really heard too much like this since "Runaway".

-"Real Friends" is a track I've already gone into some detail on in an earlier post (you should check that out btw), so I won't go too much into it here. I thought it was an ok track. I didn't get all hyped about it like a lot of people did, but I guess it was better than the tracks Kanye had been giving us up until that point.

-"Wolves" finally gets a studio version here, but whether it's the final one is still up for debate. Sia and Vic Mensa are noticeably absent, though Frank Ocean takes a break from seclusion and crawls out of his cave to deliver the closing few bars here. I enjoy the dreary vibe of the song, the female vocal line, and the atmosphere, but there are some corny lines, and that follow/swallow rhyme scheme was already used on "New Slaves". Not really something that deserved recycling.

-"Silver Surfer Intermission" is just a track to put a nail in the coffin of the beef with Wiz Khalifa. Not really sure why that even happened. Especially pointless now that the title isn't even called Waves. Totally pointless track.

-"30 Hours" is an over 5 minute track that could have been 3 minutes. The beat is decent and Kanye's bars aren't terrible, and then he just goes off mumbling, along with receiving a phone call, on record. This isn't cute. He just couldn't figure out how to end a song. He references Madison Square Garden and Yeezy 3 here as well, so this was also recorded last minute, and it shows.

-"No More Parties in L.A." is literally the only track here where Kanye spits. Kendrick does his thing as well, and the Madlib beat is good. Kanye's flow does seem a little off in spots, like he's trying to cram too many syllables into not enough space, but the song bumps, so it's all good. At first I was a little disappointed that this wasn't on the initial track list, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought this song doesn't fit. It sounds more like a promo single or a mixtape track than a song, and though the raps here are good bordering on great, having it on here, especially so late, makes it seem like Kanye was holding out.

-"Facts (Charlie Heat version)" is the biggest surprise of the album, and that is two fold: One, that this terrible set of verses (which I previously commented on) even appear on an album, and the second is that the newly revamped beat almost makes the track worthwhile. I hate that I almost like this track now. The new beat is totally wasted on a butt-hurt whine fest about getting kicked to the curb by Nike disguised as a getting money by Adidas anthem.

-"Fade" is all beat and no lyrics. There are lyrics, quite a few of them actually, by Ty Dolla $ign, Post Malone and West, though I can remember literally none of them. All I remember is the vocals in the sample, and the bass line. This song does manage to get stuck in my head, so it's doing something right, though the lyrics need a rewrite, or just to not exist.

All in all, I'm really split on this album. I like a good deal of what's going on, but there are a lot of bad moments, terrible lines and boring detours that even it out for me. This was a pretty big disappointment for me. Until the new version(s) of this record come out whenever the next of Kanye's split personalities takes over, these are my thoughts. Look forward to the upcoming rant about this beast's roll-out.

Out of a total of five stars, I give this:







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