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

ha that was the best line from dewey cox some dude, good job

The croissants line is so ridiculous, it could easily have been in a Lonely Island song. Something about the delivery—you can imagine him sitting in a french restaurant with Adam Samberg nodding along.

Nah. I can imagine him sitting in a French restaurant shouting at the croissant for not being a Grammy.

...while across the room the Dixie Chicks and Rick Rubin eat their Grammy croissants together.

i hear a lot of peter gabriel in kanye's production often, especially this album. has he ever mentioned him as an influence at all?

I can't imagine the horror of a "San Jacinto" cover:

I WALK THE LINE (BOOM)

You really can't imagine it if you think that lyric is in "San Jacinto"

Not my fault he's English.

Increasingly, Kanye West’s lyrics feel like the result of a gross misunderstanding of the phrase “the personal is political”: the rampant use of imagery loaded with poignant historical context in service of mainly describing the life of a drugged out, oversexed celebrity.

so otm with this. all that stuff on this album is pretty gross to me.

that said the first four tracks get me pretty amped before "Hold My Liquor" kills the thing dead. never really recovers except for Send It Up.

I like that weird outro at the end of New Slaves ...

most of the quick cuts really work for me (the New Slaves outro, the psychedelic gospel part in "On Sight") but the two different parts of Bound 2 make no sense together

dig the first half of this (including "hold my liquor", which slows things down but holds my attention completely). after that, it gets draggy, with only "bound 2" perking things up.

it's a fascinating album, but i think i'm hitting the wall on the entertainment value of gross, self-centered, asshole bullshit.

i think the question with this is if i'm going to feel like listening to it the number of times that will be required to figure out if there's any coherence at all

so... are you going to feel like listening to it once?

i did, and i'm undecided about twice.

i don't think this is lyrically very coherent at all. i've listened to "New Slaves" and "Blood On The Leaves" many times and still only have the broadest idea of what Kanye is trying to say in those songs beyond raising the general subject matter.

i think the album is *about* its contradictions... how the lines between political and personal outrage are always getting crossed, how righteous anger (against racism) and prejudicial anger (against women) can feel similar when you are a narcissist out of your mind on cocaine. i don't know or care if any of this is intentional, but to me that's what it sounds like: an exploration of bitterness and anger and of what happens when you indulge these things past the point of sanity. what i have taken away from it is that sometimes the fantasy worlds we construct for ourselves -- ostensibly to make us feel better about ourselves, our successes and failures -- can be the worst place of all for us to live.

i think kanye undermines his political messages by framing them in this way, which is more than a shame, because the prison industrial complex and its connection to the legacy of racism in america is a very real, very urgent thing. but all of kanye's work is confessional, it's just the kind of art he makes.

i don't think this is lyrically very coherent at all. i've listened to "New Slaves" and "Blood On The Leaves" many times and still only have the broadest idea of what Kanye is trying to say in those songs beyond raising the general subject matter.

― some dude, Thursday, June 20, 2013 5:41 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yr review i suspect is a completely apt takedown of the lyrics. for me, there's no reason i'd want to listen to anything kanye has to say in 2013 and this should purely be an album of aural/production pleasures. but his voice seems mixed so high that i kept getting distracted by it.

Not sure in what way "New Slaves" is incoherent.

i feel like this is nowhere near as 'you have to care about kanye' in a TMZ way as '808s' was.

like at this point it's more you can't separate kanye

Used to only be niggas now everybody playing
Spending everything on Alexander Wang
New Slaves

ok, like this part, is this a play on 'slave to fashion'? is he saying that all the luxury brand stuff he's been championing for years is a bad thing? is he saying fashion/trends make slaves of people besides blacks who are descended from slaves? or that people are jumping on a bandwagon that he started/has been on? the whole thing is, if not incoherent, then at least hard to parse for me.

ok, like this part, is this a play on 'slave to fashion'?

yes

is he saying that all the luxury brand stuff he's been championing for years is a bad thing?

yes

is he saying fashion/trends make slaves of people besides blacks who are descended from slaves?

yes

or that people are jumping on a bandwagon that he started/has been on?

maybe, but that's kind of an immaterial reference in the context of the rest of the verse so I'm inclined to say no

ok, like this part, is this a play on 'slave to fashion'?

Yeah. The song to me depicts how black Americans form part of a consumer industry that, according to Kanye, still exploits them yet they (the black American men) go along with it.

ok thx djp genius

i guess i have trouble reconciling that with kanye continuing to walk around in alexander wang and brag about other brands in an un-critical way but i guess that's why kanye is "interesting" or w/e

i feel like this is nowhere near as 'you have to care about kanye' in a TMZ way as '808s' was.

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Thursday, June 20, 2013 8:01 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hmm, i get this, i guess on first blush 808s was a little more universal (in that we've all experienced a bad breakup) whereas this.....is not

haha this is one of the few compelling tracks on the album

xpost

yeah a lot of 808s functions without any context. not much of this record does imo.

But that's chiefly because 808s had hooks.

obviously 808s was more pop/accessible, but i think we're talking more about subject matter or sentiment

there are hooks on this album, you just don't ever want to say any of them in public

nah i will be belting that Charlie Wilson shit

like, you can get away with muttering "so keep your love lockdown" or "how could you be so heartless" to yourself on the train without drawing too much attention; muttering "I'd rather be a dick than a swallower" or "hurry up with my damn croissants" is going to get you some serious side-eye

(btw CAD had this album come out in time I totally would have tried to put "I Am A God" on yr wedding playlist)

like, you can get away with muttering "so keep your love lockdown" or "how could you be so heartless" to yourself on the train without drawing too much attention; muttering "I'd rather be a dick than a swallower"

says the Bostonian

well the croissants line isnt a hook but i already hear people quoting it lol

i was, like, seeing kanye/croissant photoshops the first hour the album had leaked, before i even knew it had leaked

http://24.media.tumblr.com/1352090f28dd20b87cd00d7f57762e94/tumblr_mogtlgMTxn1sw13a0o1_500.jpg

Lol

well the croissants line isnt a hook but i already hear people quoting it lol

this is what i meant by its memeification

such a horrible line to quote

Not too far from an R. Kelly "lol he's talking about food" meme.

It's a funny line. It does not require photoshops.

"then she came like AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

There's rumours that apparently him and Kim Kardashian have named their kid 'North'... if so, I have no words.

I fux with that.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-_fA_JNpEHMs/Tq3B4TTg-JI/AAAAAAAAAIY/sWIyBK0bhds/s1600/sdo00i.jpg?

i think the album is *about* its contradictions...

not saying this isn't right (and i think the incoherence/messiness of the whole thing is kinda what makes it compelling) but hasnt this been kanye's schtick, more or less, since day one?!

yeah, but metastasized this side of graduation

The "since day one" thing is my problem these days. I revisited All Falls Down and there's nothing Kanye's said since about conspicuous consumption, the perils of wealth and his inability to shed his own bad habits that he didn't say better in that song. I feel like we've been praising his contradictions for almost a decade without him either changing or discovering any new insights. So money doesn't make you happy - OK, got it, now what?

sort of trolling but: nobody ever complains that rothko kept saying the same thing over and over. maybe kanye found his great subject early on and just dug himself in. not changing or discovering so much as refining. or maybe he's lost his damn mind.