Earlier today, I wrote my first review of a rap album on a friend's website, rockoranything.com. I had to keep condensing the review until it was two paragraphs. So I'd like to take this time now to share the original review in its entirety:
Well, it’s finally
happened. Kanye West has officially lost his mind—and perhaps even his throne
as rap’s best modern producer. Yeezus marks
the release of Mr. West’s sixth studio album and his first legitimately weak
piece of work. Upon hearing Yeezus
for the first time, my reaction was: “WHAT?! Is this really the same rapper
slash producer who gave us such great albums as College Dropout, Graduation, and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (my personal favorite of the
six)? On this one, everybody’s favorite rapper-to-hate is just trying too hard
to be hated. As a whole, Yeezus has
no musical direction, allowing Kanye
West to become lost amidst electronic beats and weak wordplay.
Now before I go
any further, let it be known that I’m a huge rap fan. I usually listen to songs
while simultaneously following along with the lyrics, rather than just hear a
bunch of words over a beat. I look at rappers (the good ones anyway) as
wordsmiths. I love when a rapper is able to tell a compelling, vividly
descriptive story over a great beat or use clever metaphors and complex lyrics
to create rhyme patterns. But as I listened to the tracks on Yeezus and read along with the lyrics, I
couldn’t help but wonder: sweet Yeezus, what is this man rambling on about? He
really doesn’t talk about anything other
than how great he is. Bragging and boasting about one’s personal achievements
is a crucial part of rap. Every rapper claims to be the G.O.A.T. (Greatest Of All Time), but this is just too much. But I’ll touch
more on that later.
I actually saw
Kanye perform a few weeks ago, as one of Governor Ball’s major headliners. He
gave his audience a little preview of his forthcoming album and then told us
all that he refuses to market it. Well Kanye, I don’t know if you realize this,
but by saying that to tens of thousands of people and headlining in Governor’s
Ball, you just did market your album.
And don’t even get me started on your promotional video, which featured Keeping Up with the Kardashian’s Scott
Disick horribly re-enacting Christian Bale’s epically insane performance in the
film American Psycho. But that’s all besides the point. We’re
here to focus on the album.
Yeezus is 40 minutes and ten tracks
worth of inflated egotism, rebelling against corporations, and really lame
misogyny. The album opens up with something that sounds like Skrillex on a bad acid
trip called On Sight. One of Kanye’s biggest strengths as a producer was taking
samples from other songs and turning them into catchy choruses (think College Dropout’s Through the Wire or Watch the Throne’s Otis) On Sight makes use of this device as
well; only here, the sample is smacked right into the middle of the song,
making it feel awkward and out of place. After that, there are a handful of
songs that just make you shake your head and wonder whether the best years of
Kanye West are behind him. There’s Hold
My Liquor, which sounds like a robot dying throughout the entire song, and Send It Up, which sort of makes you wish
that you were that dying robot. The
best and catchiest song on the album, by far, is Black Skinhead, which you may recognize from Scorcese’s The Wolf on Wall Street trailer (if you
haven’t seen this yet, stop what you’re doing NOW and watch it).
But alas, Black Skinhead ends and on comes the
most cringe-worthy song on the album: I
Am a God. Now, we all know that Kanye West is an absurd, egotistical
maniac. We knew it when he stood beside Mike Myers and stated on national
television, “George Bush doesn’t like black people.” We knew it again when he
felt like it was perfectly OK to walk onto the stage at the VMA’s, swipe the
microphone out of Taylor Swift’s hands, and completely crap on her special
moment. But at this point, Kanye West is bordering on a God complex (if you
haven’t figured it out, Yeezus is a
combination of ‘Ye, Kanye’s nickname, and Jesus). I mean, just look at the
brilliancy that Kanye demonstrates in these few bars alone: “I am a god/even
though I’m a man of god/My whole life in the hands of god/So y’all better quit
playing with god.” Yes Kanye, you can rhyme the word “god” four times in a row.
Thanks for bestowing us with your talents. He then has the audacity later on in
the song to say “Everybody know you brought real rap back” and compare himself
to Michael. Assumedly, this is either a reference to Michael Jordan or Michael
Jackson. Either way Kanye, I’m sorry to say that you’re neither of them.
To see the review on the site, check out:
http://rockoranything.com/?p=572
