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Chicago's rapper, singer-songwriter and producer Kanye West produced Jay-Z, Talib Kweli and Alicia Keys and then fashioned one of the most personal concepts of the era, the soul-infected
The College Dropout (2004).
There are three main streams of music here. First and foremost, there are
lush smooth constructions:
We Don't Care, with Caribbean feeling and children's singsong,
Spaceship, which is lounge music with even a touch of Frank Zappa-esque orchestration, and Slow Jamz.
Then there are traditional rap rants but architected in creative manners:
All Falls Down, featuring funky Spanish guitar and female backup vocals,
Never Let Me Down, interwoven with girls humming Chinese melodies at an anthemic tempo,
Two Words, with a harpsichord simulating a suspense movie soundtrack and vast layered choirs,
Family Business, coupled with a jazzy piano sonata and a gospel hymn.
Finally there are short satirical skits that parody ordinary life by means of old-fashioned melodies like Graduation Day and I'll Fly Away.
Halfway between the cabaret and the rant are the military march of
Jesus Walks, replete with funereal call-and-response of both male and female voices,
and the demented dissonant pseudo-klezmer dance of The New Workout Plan (with more Frank Zappa-esque traits in the vocal interaction) that suddenly remixes itself into a techno number.
The 13-minute stream of consciousness Last Call that closes the show
is, instead, a mix blessing.
This is supremely intelligent, creative and trans-stylistic postmodernism.
Hyper-chromatic three-dimensional arrangements
(Jon Brion)
turned
Late Registration (2005) into a stately hip-hop fresco and a
distillation of the genre's existential legacy.
The fluttering mellow ballad Heard 'Em Say announces a less
eccentric storyteller, sometimes even
too atmospheric (Drive Slow) and
tender (Hey Mama). Those moments of excessive humanity are
complemented by the
more dramatic Bring Me Down (a duet with Brandy) and the more
theatrical Roses.
When the arrangements are dense enough, they add meaning and not just elegance,
like the horn noise of a swing band that permeates Touch The Sky,
the
almost tribal sound generated by Gold Digger,
the thundering Diamonds From Sierra Leone.
and the unconventional choreography of Addiction (Brazilian polyrhythm, soft vocals, digital backbeats, but actually little or no orchestration)
The most surreal number is the six-minute Gone, a funny piano-driven dance with wails of strings and a driving dialogue of voices.
On the other hand,
the verbose seven-minute We Major is another mixed blessing, just like the longest track on the previous album.
This album has neither the wit nor the pathos of the previous album.
Nonetheless, this album turned West into a superstar.
By comparison, Graduation (2007)
was largely uneventful, despite
DJ Toomp's and Mike Dean's synths.
808s & Heartbreak (2008), the musical soundtrack of an emotional meltdown, was at least an interesting experiment:
most of the time crooning
(Kid Cudi-penned songs)
instead of rapping (and through a vocoder-like device) over
spartan electronic arrangements (using a vintage drum-machine from the 1980s).
The result was Kanye West at his most both frigid and depressed, both robotic
and pathetic.
West also produced the seventh album by Chicago's rapper Common,
Finding Forever (2007), Common being often singled out as a rapper who
does not promote violence, chauvinism, etc.
The grandiose
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Roc-A-Fella, 2010), that basically
reversed the path of the previous two albums, was hailed as an epochal
masterpiece by the press but mostly because of what it represented (a diligent
adoption of all "cool" stereotypes of the time), and not necessarily because
of what it sounded like.
This overcrowded
album certainly brought together West's arrangement ambitions in a pompous
and multifaceted manner, feeling more like a Wagner symphony than a hip-hop
album.
By applying the lessons of all his masters (Jon Brion, Kid Cudi), West
came up with a better focused and integrated music/text melody/rap message
in the anthemic and dreamy chant of Dark Fantasy and in the
driving and hypnotic lament of Gorgeous.
This method achieved a new peak of pathos in Power, a terrifying variation on King Crimson's futuristic anthem 21st Century Schizoid Man.
The level of sophistication increases with the electronic effects of Hell Of A Life, in which West's vocal line mirrors a vintage Black Sabbath bass line.
The way Lost In The World transitions from a delicate litany
to a jovial dance (employing Bon Iver's very non-jovial melody Woods)
is spectacular.
At the same time West displays his knack as a director of voices, arranging
them in sequences and layers to obtain maximum dramatic effect.
Hence
All Of The Lights (boasting eleven guest vocalists), a quasi-house
number over thundering convoluted percussion, with trumpet fanfares and a
melody reminiscent of DHT's Listen To Your Heart.
Hence Monster, a parade of vocal actors (Bon Iver, Jazy-Z, Rick Ross)
culminating with a terrific machine-gun performance by Nicki Minaj
suspended in time.
The succession of vocal registers (Prince Cy Hi, Jay-Z, Pusha T, RZA, Swizz Beatz) sculpts the elegiac lulling sinister soothing So Appalled.
A polyphony of voices (notably Rick Ross) propels Devil In A New Dress
over a languid Pink Floyd-ian symphonic adagio.
The music is not only emotionally draining but physicially extenuating as
the pieces get longer and longer.
The nine-minute Runaway begins with just a ticking piano,
transitions to excruciating raps, ends with an instrumental coda of
deconstructed chamber music.
The eight-minute Blame Game disguises another incursion in chamber music
as a soulful Sting-like ballad.
The album ends with
Gil Scott-Heron preaching
Who Will Survive In America over a massive beat.
This compendium of rap and soul music of the era is
a sinister hallucination of self-destructive impulses.
Watch The Throne (2011) was a collaboration with
Jay-Z,
mostly an excuse to line up
world-famous and hire the world's most high-tech studios.
West's manic attention to detail is a mixed blessing: the album's sound feels
lush but also wildly artificial. Most songs exist only as sound effects (with
lame lyrics that mostly celebrate the duo's jet-set life).
There is a sequence of five songs
(Niggas in Paris,
Otis,
Gotta Have It, which is probably the standout,
New Day,
That's My Bitch) that could have been a perfect EP.
At least the lounge pop of Made in America doesn't sound like just
another sound effect.
Yeezus (Def Jam, 2013), designed with an incredible number of
collaborators, is a sloppy, awkward and amateurish work despite the
impeccable fusion of electronics and vocals, the impeccable collages, the
impeccable production. But sound quality is a technological, not an artistic,
fact.
Daft Punk are responsible for the robotic beat of On Sight and the
monster riff of Black Skinhead (one of the catchiest "songs"): cool
but nothing we haven't heard before.
There are a few moments of pathos: the reggae-like cry of I am a God in a desolate post-industrial soundscape, the gloomy crescendo of the first half of Hold My Liquor (before the misguided synth orgy), the martial
trombone fanfares of Blood on the Leaves, and... i struggled to find
at least one more.
But there are also embarrassingly trivial moments of both mashup and
sociopolitical analysis
(New Slaves, I'm in It, Blood on the Leaves, and
Bound 2, which is simply a lame tribute to soul music)
and there is certainly an unusual dose of filler (a four-song EP would have
been more appropriate for what West had to say in this album).
As a narrative experience, these stories may try something new but it's more
a case of a populist bard desperately trying to find something new to say to
his followers than a serious discussion on gender and race.
As an aural experience, this album feels terribly old, like most granpas
when they try to speak the language of their high-school grandchildren.
Maybe this album was only meant as a self-mocking joke?
The Life Of Pablo (Def Jam, 2016), available only as a digital file, was another wildly overrated album that in reality lacks inspiration and mainly delivers cliches.
West flirts with gospel in Ultralight Beam and that mediocre trick
remains the highlight for about half an hour, until
Low Lights steals the riff from Prince's Ballad of Dorothy Parker
and Waves concocts a soaring hymn.
Several bland songs later Wolves stages a romantic three-part harmony
hijacked by Sia Furler's wordless commentary, the album's standout.
After No More Parties In LA, an uneventful Kendrick Lamar collaboration,
the album closes with a musical puzzle, Fade, that sounds like a tribute
to funk-soul of the 1970s.
This album is a social event: the guests, the producers, the samples and
the songwriters prevail over the real music.
This is just a patchwork of half-baked ideas.
Too often West tries to dress up
boring beats, boring lyrics and boring melodies with boring arrangements.
It became the first streaming-only album to go platinum, and West continued
to make changes to it (so this review is probably not updated now that you read it).
In 2018 West, one of the most over-rated lyricists in the history of rap music,
released Ye vs The People
in support of the radical right-wing racist president Donald Trump.
It was certainly a great way to attract publicity. If his artistic merits
were dubious, his skills at generating media attention were undeniable.
At the same time he released
Lift Yourself that has perhaps his best lyrics ever:
Poopy-di scoop / Scoop-diddy-whoop / Whoop-di-scoop-di-poop.
The album Ye (Def Jam, 2018) wasn't even an album: at 23 minutes, it
was just an EP. The songs are clumsy and goofy. The best one is Ghost Town, because it takes
the melody from Shirley Ann Lee's Someday, the organ from
Vanilla Fudge's Take Me For A Little While, and because of
guest female vocalist Danielle Balbuena, aka 070 Shake.
(The only reason that i mention this song is that, if i don't mention any song,
his fans will accuse me of not having listened to the album, but i refuse to
publicize any other song).
West lost his inspiration, and maybe was never particularly inspired,
but has always been very good at generating publicity.
The more the media talk about an artist, the more
likely (statistically) that enough publications talk positively about the artist.
Elvis Presley, David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Morrissey and countless other "stars" have used the same tactic, and countless fans are convinced of their immortal greatness.
It is embarrassing that so much would be written about such insignificant
music (not to mention his utterly silly lyrics portrayed as memorable poetry)
while thousands of great classical, jazz, rock and hip-hop musicians
barely get a few lines of discussion.
To prove that he had become one of the most ridiculous celebrities around,
in 2018 West changed his name to Ye.
Kanye West's religious awakening got more bizarre
on the 27-minute mini-album Jesus Is King (Good Music, 2019),
whose goal to fuse gospel and hip hop was attempted with the acumen of
a bunch of high-school pranksters.
Alternates between singing and rapping and adds a gospel choir and some
other sacred paraphernalia, but all the "spiritual" posturing simply
exposes his artistic limitations. In fact, his spiritual awakening
borders on standup comedy. It is even more laughable than
Cat Stevens' conversion to Islam was in 1977.
But West was one of the most overrated artists of his era and lengthy
analyses of this ridiculous album filled the pages of most magazines.
If hell exists, they are playing records like this one to the damned.
Unable to stop embarrassing himself, West decided to run for president in 2020, aided by veteran Republican Party operatives intent on derailing the opposition to the neofascist government of Donald Trump.
His obnoxious saga continued in 2021 when he decided to change his name to Ye.
The bloated, 108-minute, 23-song Donda (2021), an album dedicated to his late mother, is a split concept, partly about
a grieving family man and partly about his Christian faith.
The lyrics display the usual problem: 'when he's not pretentious, West is boring.
Rarely has a religious awakening sounded so melancholic and anemic.
The production is underwhelming, to say the least.
The list of unnecessary songs is very long, and basically constitutes a hypothetical entire album:
God Breathed, which is five minutes of pure torture despite Vory's feature;
Jail, in which Jay-Z's verse ranks as one of the worst raps of his career;
Tell the Vision, Junya,
New Again,
Donda Chant,
Jonah,
Moon,
the neosoul ballads Believe What I Say and Remote Control,
and all the Pt.2 versions. Some of these songs sound like demos.
Songs that are already inherently weak are sometimes further sabotaged by the guests. For example, Hurricane is a decent idea best intertwined with a wavering church organ but derails by a mediocre feature by The Weeknd and a terrible autotuned one by Lil Baby.
That said the album has two gems:
Come To Life, a sort of beat-less piano-based gospel hymn, and one of West's best songs in ages, and
the nine-minute
Jesus Lord, with ominous synth drone, female choir and an electrifying feature by Jay Electronica.
Off the Grid is also notable,
despite an amateurish feature by
Playboy Carti
thankfully redeemed by Fivio Foreign's dramatic intervention.
Mildly interesting are also
Praise God, wrapped in a nebula of distorted female vocals;
the pseudo-gospel 24 with both church organ and choir;
the six-minute Pure Souls, basically a duet with Roddy Rich decorated with a loop of church organ and closed by a loop of surreal call-and-response singing;
Heaven And Hell, with bombastic neoclassical choir;
the catchy gospel-rap hymn Lord I Need You;
and the rousing closer,
No Child Left Behind (with another effective feature by Vory).
But it's like finding a few flowers in the desert.
The album, yet another million-seller, confirmed West as one of the most overrated artists in hip-hop history.
Kanye West's music had never been particularly relevant but somehow the mainstream media realized it only after his embrace of racist, antisemitic and white-supremacist language.
The fact that so many hip-hop critics thought that West was a great musician only shows how far hip-hop music was from becoming a major art.
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