Posted on 24 February 2016.
In our Double Takes series, writers from the Emerald share their (often contrary) thoughts on new music with one another.
Kanye’s new album The Life Of Pablo has only been out for just over a week and it’s already the rapper-producer’s most polarizing and controversial work. After giving our writers ample time to process its twists and contradictions, here’s what three of them had to say.
Alex Ruby (@arubyrubrub)
Kanye West has never been humble. He’s never been subtle or subdued. Kanye has always been loud and outspoken. However, for a five-song stretch on The Life of Pablo, he’s remarkably introspective, much more so than he has been in years. On “I Love Kanye,” he becomes self-aware and talks from a third-person perspective about the changes Kanye has gone through, including the ones fans didn’t like.
On “Waves,” he uses a metaphor to talk about his lost loved ones (particularly about his mother, Donda West). “FML” and “Wolves” are deep, heartfelt odes to his family. “Real Friends” hits hard with its message about keeping up with old friends. While the rest of The Life of Pablo is somewhat erratic and loosely tied together, this middle section serves as the heart of the entire album.
And even though this is supposed to be a gospel album (and it certainly is in most parts, with church choirs and pastor sermons throughout), it remains very modern-sounding with its trap and mumble-rap influences. The features are also major points to the enjoyment of this album. Not only are there so many, but they work so well together that Kanye mixes them into his own lines.
On “Real Friends,” Kanye and Ty Dolla $ign share lines, feeding off of each other to make it a truly collaborative song. The entire album is one big collaborative project, even if Kanye spits the majority of the lyrics. Each track has multiple writers, producers and speakers, and it feels like a culmination of both Kanye’s influences and successors.
It also feels like a culmination of Kanye’s whole body of work thus far, with references to past albums, mistakes and career moves. On “Famous,” Swizz Beatz quotes DeRay Davis’s famous line “Wake up Mr. West” from both Late Registration and Graduation. On “Ultralight Beam,” Chance the Rapper references Kanye’s line from Watch the Throne, “I made ‘Jesus Walks,’ I’m never going to hell” and makes it his own, saying “I made ‘Sunday Candy,’ I’m never going to hell / I met Kanye West, I’m never going to fail.”
The album may not be as universally appreciated as The College Dropout or as groundbreaking as My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, but The Life of Pablo certainly makes for another cornerstone in Kanye West’s career. There’s truly no way of knowing where he’ll go next.
Casey Miller:
“Ultralight Beam,” the first track on Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo, starts with a child singing without rhythm but with spirit, and then a beautiful synth comes in to harmonize with Chance the Rapper’s voice. Soon, a gospel choir joins in an artful euphony. Immediately it appears as if Kanye West put as much effort into this album as he claimed. It may, in fact, be a work of art.
Midway through the second track, “Father Stretch My Hands,” I immediately wished to retract that statement. The loveliest lyric of the song: “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.” I held onto hope for the next few tracks.
“Pt. 2” is something you’d hear at a mediocre frat party that just ran out of alcohol. In “Famous,” now known for lyrics dissing Taylor Swift, Rihanna is featured on the chorus. However, her talents as a vocalist aren’t taken advantage of; she just drawls a few lines.
At this point, I’m four songs through Pablo and still have no idea where the rest of the album is going. “Feedback” has a gritty keyboard with the occasional dropped-microphone style screech. “Low Lights” features a poetic two-minute ballad from an unknown female songstress about God. No Kanye featured. No credit given to the mystery artist.
As expected, in “I Love Kanye,” Kanye West raps about Kanye West. He drops his own name 25 times in a mere 44 seconds (yes, I counted).
“FML,” featuring The Weeknd, is mediocre at best, with a weird fade-out in the last thirty seconds including a creepy voice that reminded me of an alien-child-thing. “Wolves” was a sweet surprise, with an angelic woman’s voice crooning in the background behind Kanye’s rapping and minimal instruments. The last song, the EDM-style “Fade,” was not what I expected Kanye to go out on.
Overall, I finished the album confused but impressed. The amount of collaboration involved is incredible: over the course of nearly three years, Kanye West managed to gather an amazing team of world-class producers and top songwriters.
Maybe it’s just the man himself, Kanye West. The narcissistic image he’s created for himself is working, and might be an example for other artists to follow. If you think you’re great, so will everyone else.
Daniel Bromfield (@bromf3):
The Life Of Pablo is the Kanye West album with the least replay value to date, which is frustrating because it’s his most thematically confusing. Kanye’s claimed this is his “gospel” album, supported by intermittent references to God. But he spends far more time on oafish sex raps and secular personal reflections. Maybe there’s a deeper meaning behind this boorishness, but you’ll likely feel as stupid analyzing a line like “sometimes I wish my dick had GoPro” as all those poor souls at Madison Square Garden looked listening with a straight face.
Kanye doesn’t actually rap a whole lot here, at least on the album’s first half, which is given up mostly to samples and guests. This causes a double-edged problem: Kanye’s groaners are refreshingly absent most of the time, but they’re even more egregious when they show up. The guy can still rap, as evidenced by “No More Parties in L.A.,” and he spins heartbreaking personal narratives on “FML,” “Wolves” and “Real Friends” that give refreshingly clear insight into the guy’s brain. These are the album’s best songs. But why is he mostly just shouting stupid, misogynistic shit on Pablo? Art, I guess.
It’s lucky, then, that the only place in which Pablo resembles the high art Kanye seems to think it is is in the production. Pablo is a great reminder that Kanye’s greatest strength has always been in assembling albums, namely getting the right producers and singers and rappers to fit his vision. The album’s brightest spots are given up to the guests, best among them are an animated Kendrick Lamar, an emoting The Weeknd and two Future ripoffs who are given ample work. And the beats are great, though they suggest Kanye is settling as an industrial rap artist after Yeezus.
Pablo is not finished. If it were, Kanye wouldn’t have left the “I ain’t dropped the album” line on “Facts.” Kanye added and subtracted songs endlessly before Pablo’s release, but there’s no reason “Only One,” “All Day” or “FourFive Seconds” couldn’t have been on this. The album gains nothing from leaving them out and might actually garner its Physical Graffiti and White Album comparisons had they stayed on. Without them, Pablo feels less like a messy masterwork and more like a mixtape. Seeing as most of us are going to get it for free anyway, there’s no reason not to call it one.
