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

slowly coming around to "hold my liquor" after thinking it was by far the low point before. folks keep talking about the second half being disappointing but iono "Send it Up" is just as good as the first few songs

send half, starting with "hold my liquor" is where the magic is

"Send It Up" and "Bound 2" are prob my favorite songs, but the middle section gets pretty gross

'bound 2' is a gladdening throwback on its own but just feels kinda sad to me at the end of all that

ehh it feels refreshing at the end of the album for me, less for the zzz soul sample than for a song about relationships/women that isn't all fisting and lynching

that was my initial reaction but once i started thinking of it in the lineage of previous throwbacky/celebratory kanye album closers it palled rather (nb i love "gone" and "homecoming" a great deal)

never figured you for a fan of the coldplay song

I think that's precisely what makes "Bound 2" a failure for me: after an album of rough sex it comes off sentimental, to prove that Deep Down what Ye wants is Love.

i think that's pretty present throughout the album

also very fond of "hold my liquor", one of Kanye's finest achievements imo. The guitars kill me (softly, actually) in combination with the rest. I'm very surprised that Daft Punk were apparently not involved in this. Plus, the Corolla line. Traces of actual storytelling. "Soulmates became soulless" etc. etc.

the song really isn't that saccharine if you actually listen to the lyrics! it's just...not about profound emotional betrayal and ass eating. (xp)

and I'm not suggesting rough sex and Real Love are a binary.

never figured you for a fan of the coldplay song

oh this surprised me too, it just really works. though tbh it's pretty obv that triumphalist/sentimental corn and coldplay go together

what do (co.) and (add.) mean on the production credits (here: http://nahright.com/news/2013/06/14/kanye-west-yeezus-tracklist/)?

co producer, additional production?

not surprisingly i love this now that i've heard it. it doesn't seem particularly amelodic to me but maybe that's just me. "blood on the leaves" and "guilt trip" are my least favorite because emo autotune warbling kanye is my least favorite kanye but they both still have interesting aspects.

those credits are likely wrong

guess Iamsu's contribution got lost somewhere along the way

HBK Iamsu! @IAMSU

This foo ye got my verse sounding crazy! #Yeezus

0:31 PM - 10 Jun 13

oh ok. i was looking bc it was interesting listening to this not knowing who produced what or who the guests are and trying to figure it out.

those credits are likely wrong

it's quite funny that no one even knows the proper credited features yet. like, there even seems to be confusion over whether it's "bound" or "bound 2"

i think he's posting the full credits online tomorrow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iszwuX1AK6A

So is "Bound 2" a bummer simply due to its placement in the tracklisting? It's to abrupt of a send off, but it's a great song on its own, and it's one of those that I correctly assumed would be a huge grower for me. Most of the 2nd half only took 3-4 listens.

I'm also still at the point where a lot of this is getting mashed together in my head. I keep hearing "I Am a God" lyrics over the "On Sight" beat.

all the tracklisting keep leaving assassin/agent sasco uncredited for his fairly substantial verse on 'I'm In It' - unless it's a sample like the Beenie Man one on 'Send It Up' or Popcaan on 'Guilt Trip' or Capleton on 'I Am a God' but I think it's a proper verse of its own...

yeah i was wondering about that too

I like the croissants like because it made me laugh, I dont think you can worry too much about douchebags being douchebags because they always will be and will find something to latch on to

Also a large part of Kanye's music is in it being music *for* douchebags: I remember when I went to see Watch the Throne there was a guy who was suddenly got so in to Runaway, he was singing along to every single line and holding his arms aloft in ecstasy like it was the all time jam of his life

so i haven't really been paying attention but when did he stop trying so hard with the whole uh rapping thing? like, years ago? just remember him being pretty wordy and even clever. now he really does sound like a record producer rapping.

i listened to most of this on youtube. sounds like a decent mixtape. i read reviews that call the music "wildly experimental" and it makes me feel really jaded or something. he's always had kind of a quirky/weird ear. still love kendrick's alcohol song way more than kanye's liquor one. they both even give a shout-out to chicago at the beginning of both songs.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2013/06/14/the-inside-story-of-kanye-wests-yeezus/

RReginald wrote:

Kanye West is LL Cool J with more money. It’s the same tired old 16 year-old mentality rap that stopped being shocking or interesting in the 90s. if you want to listen to good rap look for lyrical depth and any sign that the rapper has moved on from high school. Look for rappers that have something to say other than how big their dick is. Look for rappers that don’t engage in misogyny and homophobia that plague the black community. Look for rappers that talk about the real problems the black community faces instead of throwing tantrums about their agents. Look for grown ups and not spoiled children. Kayne West is indicative of everything wrong in the black community.

Would love to hear the pre-Rubin version of "Bound."

still love kendrick's alcohol song way more than kanye's liquor one.

those are both prob the worst songs on their respective albums

"Five songs still needed vocals and two or three of them still needed lyrics. He said, “Don’t worry, I will score 40 points for you in the fourth quarter.” In the two hours before had to run out to catch the plane, he did exactly that: finished all lyrics and performed them with gusto."

sounds like it too. which isn't really a bad thing except for the bad lyrics. which is why it reminds me of a mixtape. get something done fast cuz i got places to go and people to do.

wonder if that ratatat dude did any production on "hold my liquor" bc the harmonized guitar parts sounds totally ratatat

really? you don't like swimming pools song? i liked it right away.

lol at me that my favorite songs on first few listens were "I Am A God" and "Hold My Liquor"

i've never understood why the ilm rap goonz hate "swimming pools"

I love it now.

Me too. I didn't like it in advance of the album

I'm not as down on it as I used to be, still not a big fan

i can't think of a strike against it. i love the beat, i love kendrick's voices, it's super catchy and also super moody, it does that "gucci gucci" thing of pretending to be above something but actually working as an anthem for it at the same time

I love "Swimming Pools" to death but you have to be a special kind of oblivious to use it as a drinking anthem

oh the song is clearly meant for having your cake and eating it too

Man, I hope "Awesome" surfaces somewhere eventually. I kinda like that song more than anything on this album.

Maybe "Cruel Winter" is something more than a rumor.

let's hope not

"Bound 2" = "Devil In a Blue Dress" but lazier minus the lame RR verse

i listened to most of this on youtube. sounds like a decent mixtape.

This was sort of my reaction, too. Like an aggro experiment. I suppose I appreciate its audacity, though. Whomever noted the hilarious irony of this album following that "I want more Grammys" interview was OTM. I do miss the Kanye I can play in front of my wife and kids. Gonna save this haunted house music for Halloween I think.

'devil in a new dress' rick ross verse is classic... spinnin teddy pendergrass vinyl as my j burns...

totally different things too, sparkly gushy classic soul sample kanye (but produced by bink), the way that the samples on 'bound 2' are cut up is something new, i think, in that they're not mixed like the way samples are traditionally combined or like they're combined on a kanye west record but really brutally chopped up in a way that's not like expertly cut smokey robinson. i think it's referencing soul sample kanye but also i dunno subverting that sort of vibe with the hard cuts. i don't know what fuckin rick rubin is talking about it sounds like punk rock but it does sound hard and it makes a goofy soul sample work after eight, nine tracks of desolation.

9.5

"wildly experimental" nothing on it sounds totally out of left field against the background of rap production 2013. for all the trouble of staying out in paris looking at le corbusier lamps, he probably could have stayed in chicago and done records with young chop and i can't see the vibe being too far off from this.

wtf pitchfork, there's better dicks to chrome out there.