rolling donda thread

it’s not worth engaging the trolls who come out and say he was “never good” or whatever

Two points before I leave this thread:

1. Kanye was definitely great once upon a time, he got lost in the way and he’s a fucking burned out asshole nowadays, but he was a great producer and an artist with a vision a decade ago.

2. I only listened once to this album albeit skipping pretty much half of the tracks after a minute. I don’t want to support him but got morbid. Immediatly regret it as I don’t want to be involved in most of the conversations in here or other forums regarding this album. People have been in heavy denial because they think the old kanye is still somewhere in there. I think this is the final nail in the coffin for me.

godspeed

been listening in fits and starts. the pop smoke moment is completely embarrassing. he didn't even bother trying to mix it into the rest of the song. it was clearly a voice note from pop's phone, complete with background noise and a very tinny drill beat that completely clashes with the main instrumental. the verse itself probably never should've seen the light of day, but of course v*ctor and co. will never turn down a check.

there's a more complete though still pointless & embarrassing version on the posthumous pop smoke album this year which only makes the one on this album seem even more confusing

even though it's basically panning it the p4k review comes across as way too generous to this lol

it got interesting for a bit when you focused on style, fashion, stadium events etc., but once manson & co hit the stage - turned out there's hardly any substance

You’ll notice: P4K FINALLY rated him below a 7.0.

this is why I find it odd that it's just taken as a given that "Kanye is the best hip-hop producer of all time".

i don't even think he's top 10

lol I forgot they gave Jesus is King a 7.2, what a joke

no fan but Donda is better than JiK

I actually like jesus is king more than this, i think. People were understandably turned off by the MAGA stuff when that dropped, which led people to say, insanely, that it was worse than ye.

synth pad synth pad synth pad synth pad kick snare patter *lion king ass grandiose singing for like 3-4 minutes* *a rap finally*

You can dismissively describe anything that way though.

People were understandably turned off by the MAGA stuff when that dropped

MAGA, Jesus, bad couture, Musk-like behaviour...take your pick

His production work for Pusha and Nas in recent years has been great and has also made it hard to resist not listening to any of his albums since Pablo but somehow I'm managing

He found a way out of the materialism+misogyny that was so constant (the “meet me in the bathroom stall” verse of even one of his best songs). That’s the stuff I could never get past with him. The lack of status symbols and negging on the last two albums have kept them from having those lowest low points (sweet and sour, bleached asshole, etc.).

You can dismissively describe anything that way though.

― treeship., Tuesday, August 31, 2021 9:30 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

No you can't

U Pussy. U really wore that trump hat too. You did a-lot of corny shit in ur career and got a pass. Bitch ass nigga apologize to Taylor swift @kanyewest

— Soulja Boy (Draco) (@souljaboy) August 31, 2021

ye is just kinda boring but it's still more listenable than the two since

just toning down the misogyny from his very worst moments and adding in a bunch of inane even by his standards religious stuff isn't really much of an improvement

& the music itself has really declined too of course

haven’t listened to this yet but life of pablo is awesome, i didnt realize there we’re ppl who dont like it

iirc pablo did not appreciate having his life aired out like that

i pretty much loved life of pablo, dumb lyrics and all

I love pablo.

That’s just the waaaaave.

i always forget that ilm doesn’t like any kanye after graduation/808s. weird

pablo is like 2/3rds decent but has some of his worst lyrics and the sequencing is dreadful, a real incoherent mess. was really the beginning of the end

mbdtf is overrated elsewhere but still good, just really could have used an editor, some very bloated track lengths

yeezus is a classic

i tried to resequence tlop into something good again recently and there's just no way to make it work at all idk

lol i think the sequencing of pablo (at least before it falls off the rails post “wolves”) is really kinetic and great, each song flows into the other, sets up a rise and fall of anticipation where i can’t really imagine say “famous” without “feedback” following

Yeezus and Pablo are my faves, easily.

I couldn't get into Kanye until Yeezus and that one hit me like a ton of bricks. It brought his prior work into focus for me and Pablo had a similarly loose production style that I liked. I'm done with him though. I was curious if he would move past the Trump shit and own up to mistakes (silly, I know), but instead he brings more shit-bags to the party. Pure troll.

I bought Late Registration when it came out and could not understand what the big deal was. The hype around Graduation convinced me to try that one... nope. Sold both of them back. I listened to Yeezus nonstop for a long time. It might be the last big major current superstar thing that felt Important to me.

sequencing of Pablo is fine to me. maybe im just used to it

Pablo is pretty uneven imo. Def some filler, was tired of panda -2 months before pablo came out, got super tired of BEAUTIFUL MORNING bc the bar I was going to for awhile kept playing it & draining it of its magic. Idk I think it’s got good parts but. Chance convincing him to keep “Waves” on it for example. What the hell

Some heaters tho for sure in that era. “Real friends” especially. “Fade” of course. No more parties in LA. Was the lil pump song this cycle?

"waves" was extremely half-baked yeah, there were some ideas there but they weren't developed enough at all. other real duds: "freestyle 4", "fml", "facts", "low lights"

"father stretch my hands" and "famous" also kanye at his most obnoxious. "father stretch my hands" kinda emblematic of the album as a whole - there's a ton of ideas thrown together & while some of it is inspired the execution is pretty rough

"i love it" (the lil pump song) was ye-era

says a lot that the discussion in this thread is currently focused on anything but the topic

i revisited mbdtf today. “so appalled” is like a tour through the worst rap verses of all time + an ok pusha verse

idk how ppl can make it through that and “hell of a life” and think “wow what a masterpiece”

says a lot that the discussion in this thread is currently focused on anything but the topic

― octobeard, Wednesday, September 1, 2021 12:31 AM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

album is radioactive

so many tracks on mbdtf are "why the hell does this go for six minutes"

the only longer track on it i don't feel that way about is "monster"

like cut at least two minutes off "gorgeous", probably cut "so appalled" completely, at least a minute from "devil in a new dress", the idea of the "runaway" outro is way cooler in theory than in practice, the chris rock skit on "blame game" sucks

& kanye is at his most obnoxious on "hell of a life" & "blame game" even if they sound great

i had nearly forgotten the jay verse on monster is the most hilarious thing that’s ever happened

this is why I find it odd that it's just taken as a given that "Kanye is the best hip-hop producer of all time".

i don't even think he's top 10

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), mardi 31 août 2021 15:43 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah this is crazy. Thinking about it, he could make it into a top10, MAYBE (and barely)... but how could anyone who likes/knows hiphop think he's the best ever (except himself, obviously !) ??

He was the first guy sampling..Daft Punk..for the rap kids

other real duds: "freestyle 4", "fml", "facts", "low lights"

“low lights” is great! wtf!

feels weird to consider “facts” as part of the album, it’s clearly a slapped on bonus track. it does suck, true. and he did put in on the album.

the other two are lyrical disasters carried by excellent samples. he still had amazing instincts behind the boards, but was leaning into the absolute worst parts of his persona. nothing on donda approaches them, musically.

whatever the intention was, whether "30 hours" & onwards is bonus tracks or not, it was a bizarre structural decision & those tracks are still part of the album even if not part of the core sequence really

"low lights" is just a pointless interlude idk it adds nothing at all to me, easy skip

there was potential with the "freestyle 4" beat but his performance ruins it.

nothing about "fml" is very good but that long intro portion is especially bad. the whole thing is too many half-formed ideas strung together even before you get to the lyrics

idk the last 6-7 songs on pablo are easy to separate for me, since nearly all of them were pre-release singles or odds and ends. including them felt more like a business decision than anything else to me, and that decision is much less egregious than the array of reduxes that close out the new one

maybe if he weren’t constrained by the cd format, kanye would’ve tossed all the good friday tracks onto the end of mbdtf

the best pablo tracklist i've come up with is this:

ultralight beam
no more parties in la
famous
feedback
fade
highlights
saint pablo
real friends
only one
(silence / throw any of the interludes in here if you want)
30 hours (bonus track)

but it still really feels like less than the sum of its parts idk

i really love "30 hours"

xxxxxpost - i mean now you'll see list of greatest rap producers without, for example, marley marl who pioneered sampling drums

kanye isn't even the best producer on his own records - mike dean's credits are amazing, scarface - the diary is better than any kanye album ever made, all that rap-a-lot stuff was so influential

I mean I think part of it is Kanye acts more like a "eccentric rock genius" a la Brian Wilson or Phil Spector or whoever and will always get mainstream attention as being so-called genius...whereas someone as great as Ant Banks, just a dude who made amazing rap records...there's no storyline there

I definitely agree with one point here, Kanye's lyrics being just bad instead of bad and gross is a big improvement. I just remembered Chris Rock's bit on MBDTF and fuck 10 years later I'm still cringing

relistening to bits of this there are definitely some good tracks on it, like "Moon" is legitimately one of the prettiest things he's ever done, though its no coincidence that Kanye himself doesn't appear on the track at all. I mean who knows what he even had to do with it. that said the Trump thing kind of ruined this guy forever for me, not just Kanye's own MAGA phase but also the way Trump demonstrated how these kind of insane narcissists who are unlikeable but still say entertaining shit in public can have legitimately awful effects on society. it makes me feel bad that I'm paying any attention to him at all.

anybody post this yet?

no pic.twitter.com/dgpSUOYASB

— IsItBetterThanPeppaPig (@PeppaPig6point5) August 31, 2021

not sure i am going to spend a lot of time digging into the new one but "junya" seems obviously good, a carti song with church organ

the young thug record seems pretty great too. 'off the grid' is a good concept. 'jesus lord'

there's a fresh aesthetic here i think, the sort of spaced out production. just bogged down in negative feeling and lack of editing or direction, kinda just takes up space. like when you go in someone's unfurnished house but they have a huge tv