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

"i'm speaking swaghili" is the best line on the album

you are everything that is wrong with America

lol

"raplic priest" is actually worst because it doesn't even have meme potential like swaghili, it's just plain bad

vomit on my sweater already, mom's swaghili

I don't even have anything to say about "Guilt Trip", which makes me like "Blood on the Leaves" more in retrospect

I'm glad "Send It Up" is switching up the tonal palette of the album here, I don't think I could make it through another navel-gazing sad-Kanye-is-sad song right now

sarge, you liked his bit in Beyonce's "Party," right?

It's pretty amazing that he's still clearing his rhyme books of swag puns from 2009 though

ha i totally didn't even make the "swagu" connection... no i thought that was really dumb

on spotify the artist field for "I Am God" is listed as "Kanye West, God"

man "Bound 2" is making me grit my teeth something fierce, the sped-up samples without supporting drum programming to make the beat pop gets under my skin so badly

"Have you ever asked your bitch for other bitches?" <--- I really can't say I have, no

ha i totally didn't even make the "swagu" connection... no i thought that was really dumb

how is swagu dumb and swaghili not...like how can you like one and not the other?!

I could see some of the songs on the second half of the album growing on me but MAN is this thing front-loaded

brb gonna play "Black Skinhead"/"I Am A God" on repeat (would include "New Slaves" if I could get Spotify to skip the coda)

how is swagu dumb and swaghili not...like how can you like one and not the other?!

― lex pretend, Tuesday, June 18, 2013 11:30 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

sorry i don't have intellectual consistency when it comes to swag puns. one is funny to me and one is dumb, idk what to tell you.

Has anyone guessed that the coda was the easiest way to fit in a Frank Ocean cameo?

DFA RECORDS ‏@dfarecords

Are Jews for Jesus?
Are Yous for Yeezus?
40 minutes of "Bless You"
Like an album of Sneezus
-for @kanyewest

do I swag myself? Very well; I swag myself

I want to hit this terrible review over the head with a rolled-up copy of some dude's.

http://thequietus.com/articles/12580-kanye-west-yeezus-review

Revolution requires a spark, and West has chosen to be that spark, albeit one that recalls a virgin-seeking suicide bomber more than a molotov cocktail or gunpowder plot. Not that we’d expect any less from him. Yeezus, then, marks a subversive table turn of the Mandingo mythology, the trembling blackness thrust into Hampton wives as a sort of coup d'etat against the ugly and persistent status quo of culture, status, and race, a problem well-summarized by Gil Scott-Heron on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’s finale 'Who Will Survive In America'.

WHAT THE FUCK

i actually kinda thought the MLK tribute was the funniest line...

turns out that's the second time he's quoted that MLK line in a song. first time on "My Way" for more political purposes.

the trembling blackness thrust into Hampton wives

o_0

is that an actual lyric?

yep def

totally

it's a recurring motif that ties together all the songs

This bit is even worse:

West most effectively ejaculates his views with 'New Slaves', a soapbox screed or manifesto that addresses the counterproductive consumerism and oppressive constructs that hinder the success of black men. He shoves all this down our throats so that we might gag, that we too might prefer not to be “swallowers” as he bluntly puts it.

those are some poor verb choices

well, if nothing else, kanye is really making us think about penises. finally, the long hard national discussion can begin.

curious how the bon iver haters feel about his contributions here - i feel like his wispy harmonies make a nice contrast to all the noise and bombast, especially on 'i'm in it,' but expect others don't feel the same way.

i am ambivalent about bon iver as a solo artist but you have to give the guy props for being on a kanye album and a colin stetson album in the same year. actually kanye should have gotten colin stetson to guest on this album, would have fit in really well.

Kris Ex's review is really good, I think expresses more clearly or successfully some of the things I was trying to get at: http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/2013/06/yeezus_review_kayne_kris_ex.php

i've never really heard Bon Iver music, but his voice on Kanye records is nails on chalkboard more often than not.

it's weird/lol that Kanye, who tries to get white audiences at his concerts to say the N words, has Bon Iver and Chief Keef sing more or less the same lines but lets Super Bon Bon do a N word-free variation

yeah that kris ex review is good too! i don't know why it's been so hard for so many critics to not start with the premise that this is a Defining Genius Album Of Our Times.

bon iver's contributions to kanye's music sort of wash vaguely over me, like his own boring stuff too

I haven't seen "ejaculate" as a verb since the last Austen novel I read.

i agree with kris pretty much. dumb lyrics, smart music. which is pretty much how i've always felt about kanye. and waka flocka definitely the best thing to play loud if you want to scare white people. i can clear my store in 2 minutes flat if i put him on.

i like bon iver and i liked bon iver on MBDTF but he seems out of place here mostly because that collaboration felt very of a time and place to me. it was sort of a moment in its own way whereas this is the sequel that no one really wanted.

ships i like your review. i like kris ex on this, too, especially for factchecking the c-murder interpolation.

i out bon iver checked him out after the watch the throne thread where i repped for "new day" and someone complained that it sounded like bon iver. i barely noticed him on this, though.

lol some of his review URLs still say "kayne"

did kris ex ever post to ilm?

not that i can remember. r.i.p. the bentley drinking cognac.

http://thequietus.com/articles/12580-kanye-west-yeezus-review

is giving a 404

Sorry
An error has occurred

We've been notified of the problem, and it should be fixed shortly.

bently drinking cognac... refresh my memory there.

if the quietus are getting notified of the problem that they have some shitty reviews then idk why that is the only 404 error on their reviews page

there it is

Maybe I've missed (difficult keeping up with this thread) but I haven't read much discussion about the sound quality on this, I haven't seen any reviews mention it either. I know Kanye is gaining a reputation for brickwalling and the harshness of the EQ on MBDTW offended a lot of people. This new one is just terrible in that respect. Mad clipping all over the place, anything resembling a beat anywhere throughout is harsh to listen to. I managed to listen to the album for the first time on headphones whilst out and about today and it was a lot more bearable. I'm not sure I can listen to it on the stereo, if I push the volume up to a reasonable level things get messy and headache inducing. A shame because I think there's some great material on the album and some really inventive and layered production which deserves better.

I mean this is pretty shocking stuff http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/details.php?id=41051

dylannn do you really not remember this!? Govt. Names vs Kris Ex?

yeah, it was somewhere in the back of my mind and i found that while googling "kris ex ilm" just now-- i can't really remember what happened or find any other material on the topic. but i can't remember a drunk bentley.

iirc you deleted the gn post, so some of the details are lost to the sands of time, but the part where you made fun of the "as smooth as a bentley after a bottle cognac" line or w/e was hilarious

It was funniest because Oliver Wang was weighing in & you dropped the bentley drinking cognac line and Oliver was like

"O-Dub must contemplate."

i wonder what conclusion he reached.

kris ex is all right! i wish he had worked the term "bitch-baiting" into his kanye review.