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

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.

want to know what o-dub thinks about yeezus?

http://www.npr.org/2013/06/18/192776275/kanyes-yeezus-packs-a-bite

I guess I'm not surprised by the loudness and cliping, but on first listen it sounded much cleaner and less distorted than MBDTW

xpost to Internet Alan

i agree with al's review, kris' review, and dombal's review.

this shit is like a fucking prism for opinions, it projects back out what it takes in, or something

had roughly the same experience as other folks on this thread listening to this for the first time this morning. The first bunch of songs come out the gate quickly and hit hard and then it's like the whole album gets bogged down. I'm hoping the back half picks up a bit.

I really like what he's doing with the production on this, but then I'm a sucker for electronic nonsense.

i disliked this greatly on first listen but it has grown on me through its many, many flaws

i have no idea why lots of ppl are itt separating the first 4 songs from the remainder like there's some huge tonal/quality divide where there's absolutely none, y'all did the same thing for the last animal collective record and it was weird then too.

obv yeezus >>>>> centipede whatevz

AmCo record had no songs about fisting and sweet 'n' sour pussy iirc

but what if it did

#1 with a bullet

"i'm in it" is gross and also probably my favorite song on the album after "new slaves"

the coda on "New Slaves" throws up a wall between the first four songs and the rest of the album and the final six songs aren't strong enough as a set to regain the goodwill set by the first four until the end of "New Slaves" happens and you roll your eyes so hard that you pull every muscle in your head

i really liked hua hsu's commentary on the coda to new slaves from the grantland piece:

"I see the blood on the leaves," Kanye spits, over and over. It’s not all his. As he approaches full Boucher, no windows are smashed, nothing is torn apart, no chains are broken. But he doesn’t sound like a slave anymore. Instead, a way out: drums roll, the clouds part, strings swell, and Kanye sings, clear-eyed and full-hearted, that he can’t lose, there’s no way he will lose. Elsewhere on Yeezus, these midsong eccentricities can feel like self-sabotage. As Frank Ocean retraces Kanye’s words, it feels glorious, divine, mysterious, senselessly bright. Yeezus drops tomorrow; Wednesday is Juneteenth.

http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/79678/the-book-of-yeezus-a-song-by-song-analysis-of-kanye-wests-new-album

the coda on "New Slaves" throws up a wall between the first four songs and the rest of the album and the final six songs aren't strong enough as a set to regain the goodwill set by the first four until the end of "New Slaves" happens and you roll your eyes so hard that you pull every muscle in your head

^^^ should be a line in a review

I don't know about the clear-eyed and full-hearted part.

it's a reference

xxp: needs editing, should say "... regain the goodwill squandered when the end of 'New Slaves' happens and..."

do people hate that coda? i think it's nice or "whatever" at worst

ever since 'fergalicious' i am basically a fan of any song that pulls that kind of switch, in fact, the more switches the better

I don't know about people in general but I hate that coda and I feel like the songs that immediately follow it come across as more aimless than they would have had "New Slaves" ended differently

but i hate noisy rap production and anything that people compare to "industrial." the first half sounds like fuckin marilyn manson.

for better or for worse that's kinda the direction kanye's been taking the ship since 'mercy' and 'clique'

and i guess, monster

but i hate noisy rap production and anything that people compare to "industrial."

as a fervent Bomb Squad devotee, I find this attitude depressing

Kanye Depressed

unrepentant geir hongro of rap production. the drums on "black skinhead" make me physically ill.

Think one of the few things I haven't seen covered much is Kanye's delivery - it's SO urgent on the first 4 tracks and then it really dissipates - not entirely but enough to gradually sink the album. He sounds like he's in such a hurry on the first 4, then it sounds like he's rambling around aimlessly.

I've often found w/kanye that the most eyerolly lines, the ones that stick out as mockable, end up being on my fav songs, and that's the case thru the first 4 trax...his delivery overrides the rational ugliness of the croissants and the hampton spouse. And actually because his narratives here are either boring (american psycho played out) or gross or have these awful swaghili puns, the album's v reliant on his delivery to carry them

DJP OTM re: bomb squad

I honestly like Kanye much better in electro mode than in recycled soul sample mode, so that's why I respond so highly to the earlier tracks.

I don't mind that coda on New Slaves, but it just signals a big downshift in energy for the record overall.