Kanye West, Yeezus, 6/18/13 (TBC because who knows anymore)

gotta say that "Black Skinheads" sounds more amazing now than a few weeks ago. Love how it never quite hits a climax.

Skinhead

lyrically, he's covering a lot of the same ground he's covered before, cold sexual hookups and the fucked up desolation of wealth and fucked up relationships that result from it, maybe, and usually i find it compelling and original and he keeps going to the same places here and the problem isn't that i've heard it before but that he's repeating it with less sophistication with lots of awkward turns of phrase and just garbage what the hellllllll lines.

otm

i'm still listening to this so i don't know what i can say about it but "blood on the leaves," man... "strange fruit" played straight then chopped into a horrible bleat, autotune that sounds like a goofy kanye molly joint and then degrades into fucked up amnesiac wobble, turbo grafx dmx howls, stutters, first lyrical coldbloodedness witnessed on here. ---> "guilt trip," where i can wash away the memory of sweet and sour pussy, stupid loveable kanye back on some irv gotti pastoral late90s chillout beats / distorted dancehall and drones.

"rap's Flowers of Romance," a FB friend wrote, meant as a compliment (but not to me).

"bound 2" puts a dumb smile on my face like the first time i heard ghost doing "holla" over an uncut delfonics track smearing himself off beat singing along to the chorus

what you doin in the club on a thursday
she said she only here for her girl birthday
they order champagne but still look thirstay
rock forever 21 but just turned thirtay

"blood on the leaves" / "guilt trip" / "send it up" / "bound 2" is a great second half

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yvX9l2PfRg

"he done made shit i can step to. i'm an old motherfucker that like to step and this nigga make beats i can step to, so i like that shit"

http://www.hotnewhiphop.com/rick-rubin-speaks-on-recording-process-with-kanye-west-for-yeezus-news.6052.html

https://soundcloud.com/felixxxiao/voiceofageneration

A good example would be the song that became “Bound.” When he first played it for me, it was a more middle of the road R&B song, done in an adult contemporary style. Kanye had the idea of combining that track with a cool sample he had found and liked – I removed all of the R&B elements leaving only a single note baseline in the hook which we processed to have a punk edge in the Suicide tradition.

i've never heard suicide but "bound 2" is great because it's kanye on, i guess, according to rick rubin, a "middle of the road r&b song" with limited intervention.

so: did he write all the lyrics this time?

i don't get the sense he ever hasn't, give or take a punchline contributed here or there by rhymefest or pusha or whoever

if he did, he should probably leak some ghostwriter rumors, let cyhi da prynce or rhymefest take some of the blame

production credits

1. "On Sight"
Daft Punk

2. "Black Skinhead"
Daft Punk, Travi$ Scott (co.), Mike Dean (add.)

3. "I Am a God" (featuring Justin Vernon)
Daft Punk, Hudson Mohawke (co.), Kanye West (co.), Travi$ Scott (co.), Mike Dean (add.), Rick Rubin (add.)

4. "New Slaves" (featuring Frank Ocean)
Daft Punk, Travi$ Scott (co.), Hudson Mohawke (co.), Mike Dean (co.), Kanye West (add.)

5. "Hold My Liquor" (featuring Chief Keef and Justin Vernon)
Young Chop, Mike Dean (co.), Arca (add.), Rick Rubin (add.)

6. "I'm in It" (featuring Justin Vernon)
RZA, Travi$ Scott (add.), Mike Dean (add.)

7. "Blood on the Leaves" (featuring Tony Williams)
TNGHT, Kanye West (co.), Mike Dean (add.)

8. "Guilt Trip" (featuring Kid Cudi)
Symbolyc One, Arca (co.), Travi$ Scott (co.), Mike Dean (co.), Ackeejuice Rockers (co.)

9. "Send It Up" (featuring King L & Iamsu!)
Gesaffelstein, Arca (co.), Daft Punk (co.), Hudson Mohawke (add.)

10. "Bound 2" (featuring Charlie Wilson)
Kanye West, No I.D., Symbolyc One (co.) The Heatmakerz (co.), Rick Rubin (add

heatmakerz are like the ghost of roc-a-fella past in this bitch

i can't imagine the circumstances that required the addition of the heatmakerz to that lineup of producers for a barely touched soul sample with almost nonexistent additional drums

little bit suicide, little bit "dipset anthem"

hahaha dylannn

I'm surprised how few tracks he touched himself.

I mean obviously his producer goons got goons, but I still expect him to be the guiding hand behind it all.

architecture, man.

was kanye listening to a lot of rap-a-lot era yukmouth and 5th ward boyz and just had to have mike dean as his second-in-command? how did that happen? it seems like he went from z-ro albums to graduation with no logical transition.

i kind of imagine how prominent his name is in the credits for a given song doesn't mean that much, it's obviously all his choices, mixing and matching different producers' contributions like samples.

yeah the Mike Dean thing has always been slightly confusing in that way

i thought he was a fairly generic rap-a-lot studio producer. i've heard so much of what he's produced that i feel like i can tell when he's programmed the drums on a track-- but it's hard to say. the other day i found a blac monks album, obscure mystical paranoia houston group featuring mr 3-2 released by rap-a-lot, bought it at a thrift store ten years ago, weird feeling to see it was all produced by mike dean.

the thing is like, he's ONLY done records for kanye and then houston southside guys and a handful of rap-a-lot west coast division stuff.

yeah i mean, usually Kanye's collaborations, especially with southern rap guys, are kind of transparent -- do a few songs with Toomp after "What You Know" blows up, etc. i mean Kanye did some Scarface stuff but mike dean didn't even work on The Fix, did he?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIS3KouPdgM

the first possible intersection of kanye and mike dean

i think he did everything on the fix, engineered it, recorded everything

DX: Kanye West worked on some projects with you early in his career. With his budgets and stardom, he went you to mix some of his best work. Did he ever tell you what it was about your mixing that appealed to him so much?

Mike Dean: He said they were the best mixes he’d ever had. I mixed “Guess Who’s Back” from The Fix, and he really liked the mix on that, so he hit me up for his first record. He actually came to my house, and we did the first three or four mixes here before he had budgets for a big studio somewhere.

I mixed four or five records from College Dropout, but I think only two of them made it. The rest were mixtapes, like “Keep the Receipt,” the song with [Ol' Dirty Bastard]. I mastered “Through The Wire,” I mixed the “Two Words” song with Mos Def and Freeway. For [Late Registration], I pretty much did all the singles except for “Diamonds From Sierra Leone,” I didn’t do the final mix on that.

see, i had no idea he touched "through the wire."

could def combine like 1/2 of this w/ half of mbtdf and make 1 really killer lp & 1 other straight instrument of torture imo

Pitchfork prediction sweepstake?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/06/Spinal_Tap_-_Up_to_Eleven.jpg

SFJ on the album: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2013/06/24/130624crmu_music_frerejones?currentPage=all

already some pretty ludicrous exaggeration of what the album actually sounds like

West has suggested that he may not release a single from “Yeezus,” and from an artistic standpoint the impulse is not perverse. The album is so tonally unified that it comes across as one very long single—an extended thought, coughed up quickly. There are few steady drumbeats, and West can’t seem to resist pausing the sound and then bringing it back from silence; he never wants you to forget that he is standing over the boards. This is music with a lot of empty space: it consists largely of profane rapping over wildly distorted bass lines, which often serve as the only melodic motifs. When synths do appear, they aren’t pretty.

profane rapping over wildly distorted bass lines

Thanks for the life update Kanye, but you can't dance to this shit.

right. i think my number one criticism is that kanye has set aside the straight ahead dance beats of his previous releases and simultaneously veered into autobiographical lyrics.

well, my #1 criticism is inspiring think pieces requiring writers to do more twisting than a contortionist.

girlfriend made me turn it down so i just went out to the garage. sanding some wood to send it up. life ain't bad

Thanks for the life update Kanye, but you can't sand wood to this shit.

yes you can! i'm also gonna lay down a coat of varnish too. this swing is gonna be the shit

"My swing is the nucleus."

FYI that credits list is completely wrong

oh rly?

lol at this being the album he releases after revealing that his principal motivation for making music is winning grammys

ahaha

i love this so much. new slaves is fire, and i love the outro too. i'm not convinced by all the tracks but i've only listened to this twice all the way through so far

FYI that credits list is completely wrong

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Saturday, June 15, 2013 1:16 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

i've been listening to "send it up" all night trying to hear even a trace of iamsu