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

with deej and djp in that the first five songs offer enough simple listening pleasure to temper (though not overwhelm) my distaste for kanye's lyrical pov/persona. but that 33rpm article otm straight through. besides, i can't imagine i'll be half as happy to hear these tracks in a year or two as i am now when something off power triangle or the book of david pops up on random.

I bet the "Blood on the Leaves" loop was built, lyrics happened an hour before the flight to Milan.

ANIKA PATRICK: Hahaha, we in this, ladies. I'll keep it one thousand thousand with you, when I heard Ye-Ye was dropping another riddim rekkid and I heard he was working with Le Corbusier and Daft Punk, I got a little touch of (808s and) heartbreak. See, I'm still bumping the genius of Yeezus's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, that provocative slurry of postbreakup Ben & Jerry's, Bon Iver fedora poetry and Thought Catalog-inspired self-harm realness. But Yeezus lives up to the name-- In the beginning was the ill raps and the ill raps was with Yeezus, and the ill raps was Yeezus #canigetaamen.

Once again, Ye goes in on the prison-industrial complex just like he did when he was dropping gems on the beauty myth in "All Falls Down." I can forgive a little creative accounting with the Civil Rights stuff-- even #1 soul brother MLK had a problem with the hood rats #believedat. If they can do Julian Assange dirty, I'm willing to cut Yeezy some slack. I'll admit, some of the misogyny is a little off putting but context is everything. This might not be a post-racial world but we're getting there. What I'm trying to say is, if he's eating his Asian girlfriend's pussy with sweet and sour sauce in 2013, I've got a great little Szechwan place in Flushing I need him to try. Ye, step your condiment game up.

The music ranges from agit-prop rave-ups a la Killing Joke and 3 a.m. pista dé bailé sweatdowns that call to mind early Diplo and behind it all with a bit of the confessional worldweariness of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

there it is

whatever that style of writing is called i really hate it

pretty horrible.

this album is interesting on first listen but i dunno if i never need to hear it again.
the lyrics are consistently at odd with the production and the BOLD CHOICES generally seem doofus-y.
it's like a more fully realized kid cudi album and who asked for that?
and god, i just got to strange fruit, what a poor poor decision

but then i hated 808 and fantasy deeply so i was hardly expecting this to break his streak

Guilt Trip seems pretty good

When I listen to this album, particularly "I Am A God" I think of:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6SyBwLG6fLw/UL6bUDwgumI/AAAAAAAABho/sAuD5Kr3V2U/s1600/hurt.jpg

lmao dylannn going full-on "peep game on gas prices" just like old times

even #1 soul brother MLK had a problem with the hood rats #believedat.

ugh stop it

ok this is the sad part where people can't be bothered to figure out if something is parody or an actual cut-and-paste

this is the internet I don't have time for that shit

Nice photo in that Spin piece:
http://www.spin.com/sites/all/files/styles/style620_413/public/130621-kanye-snl_0.jpg

That is a fantastic parody. I had to google it to be sure.

ts: heatrock vs. gas prices?

I've got a great little Szechwan place in Flushing I need him to try. Ye, step your condiment game up.

^^^^ classic

did this make the rounds?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BbHi-2Wl3o

he's not wrong about a lot of that stuff

"White Girls Are Poppin' Right Now!" vs. "If Lil Wayne Died He'd be the G.O.A.T."

charlamagne = legend tho btw

Realized today that, gender aside, Kanye's verse in "N's in Paris" and the last verse of "New Slaves" remind me of this.

If they can do Julian Assange dirty, I'm willing to cut Yeezy some slack.

amazing

At the age of 10, Kanye moved with his mother to Nanjing, China, where his mother was teaching at Nanjing University as part of an exchange program. According to his mother, Kanye was the only foreigner in his class, but settled in well and quickly picked up the language, although he has since forgotten most of it.

this is "this is the thread for unusual details in wikipedia articles" material to me. i never read kanye's mom's book.

only foreigner in class, all I need is sweet and sour sauce

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/24/kanye-west-i-am-a-god-fashion-week-diss_n_3490688.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

It turns out this song was inspired by a serious diss—not from another rapper but from a major fashion designer. Last fall, a few days before Paris Fashion Week, West was informed that he’d be invited to a widely anticipated runway show only on the condition that he agree not to attend any other shows. “So the next day I went to the studio with Daft Punk, and I wrote ‘I Am a God,’ ” West says. “Cause it’s like, Yo! Nobody can tell me where I can and can’t go. Man, I’m the No. 1 living and breathing rock star. I am Axl Rose; I am Jim Morrison; I am Jimi Hendrix.” West is not smiling as he says this, and his voice is getting louder with each sentence. “You can’t say that you love music and then say that Kanye West can’t come to your show! To even think they could tell me where I could and couldn’t go is just ludicrous. It’s blasphemous—to rock ’n’ roll, and to music.”

he's not wrong about a lot of that stuff

never heard of this dude before but he is totally otm

axl and kanye making out... forever

get in MY ring

this is a boring, joyless album (so far...first listen)

more and more, i feel like the week in 2008 that an album Kanye threw together in a few weeks outsold Chinese Democracy was pretty symbolically significant

of no one really giving a fuck about axl rose 15 years after his last album?

that, and just 808s really was kind of the moment that kanye fully became the axl-style l'enfant terrible of popular music

tru. I've insisted before that that was his heel turn and not the T-Swift moment

we in this, ladies

dylannn for poet laureate

t/s: sweet and sour sauce v. sarcophagus

the sarcophagus line was kind of a running joke among me and one or more other people, i forget exactly. it's a memorable one.

According to his mother, Kanye was the only foreigner in his class, but settled in well and quickly picked up the language, although he has since forgotten most of it.

I don't think this sentence's amazingness has been analyzed.

new slaves is more compelling after repeat listens. i think i might have changed my opinion from what i said upthread -- i forget what i've said -- with regard to kanye's "hypocritical" condemnation of consumerism and his hypermaterialistic lifestyle. i don't have as many cool jackets as kanye, but i relate to it. capitalism makes hypocrites of us, all and it is a real conflict to want to succeed within a system you disapprove of.

it is an old theme for kanye though. might be wearing thin...

croissants makes gluttons of us all

everything that axl roses must converge

the other day i stumbled upon that 80 billion tweet rant he did last year announcing DONDA, and in it he mentioned that he hadn't bought a car or any jewelry in 2 years at that point. obviously has bought lots of expensive clothes since then but considers that more of an artistic pursuit than copping a chain or w/e i guess. in any even that slightly tempered my view of the whole "it's hypocritical of him to hate on conspicuous consumerism in songs" angle.

eh he still rides around nyc in a maybach

exactly, it's been so long since he bought a car that he's literally driving a model that is no longer in production

anyway i feel like music -- esp popular music -- doesn't need to be rigidly coherent. in something like "new slaves" you can pretty easily glean his POV. even something as simple as "i know that we the new slaves" is pretty powerful. and, like, who can really in 2013 level the realities of how we live with a belief system. it's sorta the same arguments people made against occupy wall street: how can you protest WHILE HAVING AN IPHONE??? i guess maybe you could say kanye has more leeway in his life to slant things further towards his belief system because he's a celebrity but i could certainly see it being the opposite.

the guy is a great sloganeer, and certainly this album is pretty blaring evidence of that even if it also bleeds into something like croissant line.

croissant line is dope tbh

i understand people who feel like the lyrics here are halfassed and even a lil insulting in how little they think is required of them to be considered trenchant political commentary, but this "hypocrisy" thing: who'd you think he was so angry at? similarly i totally feel the exasperated eyeroll tone of the guy in the video upthread but the moment he should have stopped for a second and gone like huh! was right after he said "you're telling me you chose to be a slave?"