Kanye West
Yeezus
Def Jam Records
Available now
Stars: 4/5
For a number of years, the mention of Kanye West’s name has conjured up discussions of everything under the sun except for his music. Despite releasing two recent stellar projects, the solo album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Jay-Z collaboration Watch the Throne, most people seem to only talk about how much of a clown, media whore or all-around douche he is. But like Muhammad Ali back in the day, his embodiment of excellence in his field is why people paid attention to him in the first place.
Yeezus is West’s latest release, and going by the title alone it would be easy to assume that he is up to his usual acts of narcissism. This is wrong. Yeezus is the confessional of a man coming to terms with the contradictions in
himself and the society he lives in.
At first glance, this doesn’t seem like a hip-hop album. There aren’t the usual “Impeach the President” samples from the genre’s golden age, but it’s still light-years away from anything going on in contemporary rap. Kudos to West for making the music he wanted to make without capitulating to what’s popular in the genre. He’s like Outkast in the sense that you never know exactly what you’ll be getting, but you know it’s going to be incredible in a way you couldn’t possibly imagine.
Half the tracks on the album were co-produced by Daft Punk, who help West take hip-hop back to its Kraftwerk and Afrika Bambaataa roots with tracks that tickle the listener’s audio senses. His level of lyrical honesty and passion is exactly what hip-hop has been missing.
The track “New Slaves” is positively epic. On the production level, there’s so much going on that the song defies easy categorization (even for a genre like hip-hop, which is known for coloring outside the lines). West tackles the issues of race, stereotypes and his own id in captivating fashion. He gets more off his chest in one song than your average NFL lineman does in a bench press.
“Black Skinhead” is the best use of Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part 2” since the time of Michael Jordan’s prime, and the song is just as hype-inducing as it was when it was used by the Chicago Bulls. The fact that this is the first time the track has been sampled is a testament to Kanye’s intuition. The song “I Am A God” harkens back to his earlier record 808s and Heartbreak with its heavy bass and dark, atmospheric tones.
In scope, “Blood On the Leaves” is similar to the bookends of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Samples of Nina Simone, complemented by surprisingly tasteful Auto-Tune, lead into the most neck-snapping beats of 2013. Nobody out there is doing music this raw, this boundless and this sincere.
Whatever he does outside of the music studio, and regardless of how he’s painted in the public arena, this man is a musical genius with a capital G. Yeezus is not only the record that hip-hop needs, it’s what the music industry as a whole needs. West is the subject of media scrutiny who has created endless amounts of controversy, yet he still managed to come out with an end product that justifies all the attention he’s received.
Yeezus is available now.