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

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

Asking the Maître d' in this FRENCH ASS RESTAURANT what happened to my DAMN CROISSANTS.

And since I am enquiring, where is my damn FRENCH ASS ONION SOUP?

What I meant before is, absent of hooks (I love hooks), more than any of his previous, this album rests on how interesting your find Kanye. And I don't. I mean, cool for those who do, but his striving gatsby-level desires to transcend the middlebrow just doesn't speak to me. He's the perennial b-plus student with a rhyming dictionary that is an actual dictionary and he seems to gets a thrill when everything he looks up a word and fine it has a rhyme and you feel awkward for the guy because of the whole swimming in the shallow end thing. Do we need an idiot king? Possibly? Do we need an idiot king that can't piper us toward hooks? Less sure. And unless you're interested in the intersection between whatever and blah, he kinda has nothing to say, am I wrong?

^drunk, phone, spelling, don't care.

he cut the "like black kids in chiraq did" line out of "black skinhead" yeah?

― J0rdan S., Friday, June 14, 2013 5:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

uh no that's definitely in there?

http://25.media.tumblr.com/c8b9b2aefe48ee80ffcae0c159808563/tumblr_moem591NwL1ried3so1_400.png

"Deepak Chopa" is the new "algerba"

"He's the perennial b-plus student with a rhyming dictionary that is an actual dictionary and he seems to gets a thrill when everything he looks up a word and fine it has a rhyme and you feel awkward for the guy because of the whole swimming in the shallow end thing."

― Popture, Saturday, June 15, 2013 6:02 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think the only word I've ever looked up that he used was "disestablishmentarianism". Does he usually stretch your vocabulary?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-yToohKaEOM

lolll "american psycho-inspired short film" aka a shot-for-shot recreation of the scene where patrick bateman murders a dude with an ax in his living room

not nearly up to his lvt-biting runaway short film that most everyone ignored cuz it's ~35 mins

Every Specific Person, Place, and Thing Mentioned on Yeezus
2Pac
300
7-Eleven
Alexander Wang
America
Baptists
Bentley
Benz
Beyoncé
Big Poppa
Blackberry
Bobby Boucher
Brad (Pitt)
Capricorn
Catholics
CCA
Chicago
Chief Rocka
Chiraq
Chi-town
Chewbacca
Cochran
Corolla
Cosa Nostra
The D-League
David Grutman
DEA
Deepak Chopra
Don C.
Elvis
Fight Club
Forever 21
God
The Hamptons
Ibn Diamond
Indiana
Instagram
iPhone
Jay-Z
Jeromey “Romey Rome”
Jesus
Joe Brown
King Kong
Leos
Louboutin
Maybach
“Michael”
Michael Douglas
The New World Order
’Nolia
Porsche
Prince
Pyrex
Range Rover
Rat Pack
Rio
Romans
Shabba
Shaka Zulu
Star Wars
Swaghili
Timbs
Trojans
Tron
Virgil
Yeezus
Yeezy

and Ye