rolling donda thread

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

the organ sounds on this are generally pretty good. that was true of jesus is king, too

kinda just takes up space. like when you go in someone's unfurnished house but they have a huge tv

Brilliant analogy....like an NBA rookie's new McMansion

"junya" seems obviously good, a carti song with church organ

his carti imitation sucks though

life if Pablo > mbdtf imho

that is the most ridiculous opinion I've seen in a while and I don't even like MBDTF that much anymore

Life of Pablo is as close as you can get to a moron shitting directly into your ears and people are all "man this slaps, how groundbreaking"

the new one is closer & there's still a large fanboy contingent that's all "man this slaps, how groundbreaking"

Life of Pablo is as close as you can get to a moron shitting directly into your ears and people are all "man this slaps, how groundbreaking"

― a gentle push against my Wonder Bread face (DJP), Thursday, September 2, 2021 10:22 AM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lmao

the funny thing is he can still make cool beats, the Abstract Mindstate album is totally slept on this year, i guess a two middle aged backpack rappers isn't really going to get attention, but if you want the old kanye/chop up the soul kanye, these beats are so much liver than anything he's done in recent memory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfdV0cywXDk

like just classic backpacker shit he was so good at

even this song, which is a little closer to the darker, more pretentious recent kanye - it's so much more developed than anything on donda, like it feels like an actual completed song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_g3lhvdFYk

yea I mean half the tracks on this album you keep waiting for the song to start, only to look at the time and realize this is the actual song. whether this was intentional or just him dumping out everything he had because he didn't wanna put in the work to finish the album, who knows, but if you have to answer that question then it's not worth spending 2 hours on. like 23 minutes of this are "Part 2" tracks which are nearly indistinguishable from the "Part 1"s. the fact that so many people are taking this seriously is kind of a testament to how much of a curve this dude gets graded on

yeah somehow still when he produces for others the results generally end up much more focused and polished than his recent solo material

idk maybe just having someone else he's working for who can reject anything particularly bizarre/unfinished makes a big difference. also i guess there's deliberate stylistic decisions that differ between his solo material where he's going wild experimenting with everything, and his production work where he's usually committing himself to a particular style

on his work for other artists, he likely doesn't put the pressure on himself to make the greatest beat of all time by the greatest genius to ever live

i would imagine it's a combo of both, but it's pretty glaring how much better he is for other people now

voodoo - that "greatest genius" kind of gets as what i think really rankles me about the whole cult of kanye. since forever the media and critical establishment always seems to think that hip hop is something that need to be "transcended" and kanye's sophomoric "art" antics have always played into that

like i love Public Enemy, but are they ultimately better than EPMD? Big Daddy Kane? I don't know but they certainly scanned closer to a rock music ideal of confrontational music than people who were just making classic hip hop tracks

Been listening to one of Mike Dean's two instrumental albums from last year, which (not surprisingly) has some of the Kanye textures without anything getting in their way.

surprised at how good watch the throne sounds to me rn. production's awesome and nowhere near blown-out as mbdtf. kanye verses all rancid. jay pretty good

The thing about talking Kanye now is being sufficiently scorched earth but also not tipping into total “fuck this guy” territory — not that there’s anything wrong with the latter, I just feel like as an intellectual exercise it’s fun to be precise. Anyway I like this: https://www.theringer.com/2021/9/2/22654013/kanye-west-donda-discography-revisionism-legacy

Though it doesn’t really dig into the music much

Was just coming to post that link. It's a very good piece.

saw that when you tweeted it very good writing

His self-importance serves you, not him; his self-importance is killing him but letting you witness the glitziest self-immolation you’ll ever see.

This seems factually wrong. During the Yeezus era, when people loved his music, he was in a deep hole financially and psychologically. Lyrically and musically on that album, he comes across as bitter and aggrieved and the album features some of his most misogynistic moments.

Today he is worth over a billion dollars and says that Christianity has helped him overcome opioid addiction among other challenges. To be fair, he often still seems scattered and sometimes grandiose, but the bile that fueled him in the Yeezus era is mostly gone. He doesn’t seem to be in the worst place of his life psychologically.

Musically he is not on top of his game (what is he, 45?). Politically his instincts have been atrocious. But the spectacle of his unraveling was more of a thing in the days when he made good music. Honestly the media liked him better when he seemed to be on the very edge and that probably contributes to his sense that they are trying to “enslave” him, as he often says.

That post itself is Kanye level disingenuous. Congratulations

i agree that the new abstract mindstate beats aren't bad but the whole album feels so knowingly retro that it flirted with ersatz. my favorite kanye of the past decade is probably DAYTONA followed by his nas album.

that nas album was terrible

i think a lot of the beats on the abstract record are great. daytona obv is the best thing, i'm more in voodoo's camp on the nas

abstract isn't like a major record or anything but i found it charming, corny in places but i didn't find it ersatz, just two 49 year old rappers coming back and rapping like they used to 25 years ago because that's how they rap

for me it was just cool to hear kanye doing some more old kanye shit

oh KTSE by Teyana Taylor that was good too

Pure Souls is good

Jail and Pure Souls are the best ones. Jesus Lord is almost good but Kanye's flow is garbage and ruins it.

😳😳😳😳😳😳 “DRAKE ATE HIS LUNCH ANYWAY” OUCH https://t.co/kRKgk7c3oW pic.twitter.com/1c6WjB9HaQ

— THE KID MERO 🇩🇴 (@THEKIDMERO) September 14, 2021

okay that might be the very last person who I thought would enter into this

"Nobody flies in the entire world of hip-hop just to croak one syllable, just so you can say that everybody was on it." so is this why he wanted TR-i on it?

lol nice

Article says 88 Keys got Rundgren involved not Kanye

lol I love that Rundgren played a passive role in this. It reminds of the Paul McCartney Kanye story.

"I had no idea what was going to happen. I didn’t want it to be at his house or my house, because it could be awkward if one of us wanted to leave. So we met on neutral ground -- a cottage at the Beverly Hills Hotel -- and I showed up with a guitar and my roadie, and we had a keyboard and a bass," McCartney recalls, before revealing how West spent some of his time during that session.

"I was sitting around, strumming the guitar -- that’s normally how I start a song -- and Kanye was looking at his iPad, basically scrolling through images of (his wife) Kim (Kardashian West)," McCartney says. "So we were telling stories, and at one point I told him how 'Let It Be' came from a dream about my mother, who had died years before, where she said, 'Don’t worry, just let it be.'"

"He said, 'I’m going to write a song about my mother,' so I sat down at this little Wurlitzer keyboard and started playing some chords, and he started singing," he continues. "I thought, 'Oh, are we going to finish this?' but that was that. And it became 'Only One.'"

McCartney went on to collaborate with West -- and others including Theophilus London and Allan Kingdom -- on "All Day" in 2015. West and McCartney also teamed up with Rihanna for "FourFiveSeconds" the same year. The process of collaborating in that way was new for the former Beatles member, but something he was thrilled to participate in.

"It’s this modern process that I was happy to open myself up to -- you’ve got loads of stuff, and the skill is to distill it. I was sitting around, just strumming a little groove and nobody said, 'Let’s make a song of that,'" he says. "But months later I got a song with Rihanna on it and I said, 'Where am I?' I didn’t recognize it because they changed the key. I thought that record was great."

“Tell Mr. Sinatra it was an honor working with him!”

“Yeah, for him, too. NEXT!”

drake's album was worse, though

it’s funny that the pitchfork score for this is lower than both ‘Jesus is kind’ and ‘ye’ which are both way worse

i guess it depends on what you look for in an album. this is overly long and feels unstructured. but the highs are much higher.

jesus lord would have been really powerful if he removed that self-serving section from larry hoover jr. from the end -- a voicemail of him thanking ye for advocating for his father in the oval office. it just feels like a cheap point -- see? that oval office visiti was good actually! -- and it mars the main subject of the song, which is about feeling lost and needing a source of hope

i feel like his need to publicly talk about his mother, still, is somewhat odd. especially because the way he brings her in is not really about her but about him. and it feels sort of sad, kind of -- like, he is talking about how his mom loved him unconditionally almost as a way of demanding that the american public do that too.

i think sometimes people feel embarrassed for kanye listening to stuff like that which is why they don't like the music.

jesus lord would have been really powerful if he removed that self-serving section from larry hoover jr. from the end

Funny, when I saw there was a “Jesus Lord 2,” I figured that would be a single version without the Hoover part, but nope, there it is again. Love the hook on that song, could listen to it for 10 minutes straight. It could be a new gospel standard if not for the rest. Less a fan of the verses.

Yeah, I know Drake is ridiculous but give me that LP over this one

The best thing about Donda is probably guest verses. Maybe it’d feel different if the production was sharper? But also maybe not

Love the hook on that song, could listen to it for 10 minutes straight.

seems like the direction he's headed

I just had this bizarre vision of this song being performed live with Korn at the Grammies

Sorry: "Hurricane" specifically

ima fix donda:

keep my spirit alive
remote control
ok ok pt2
off the grid
junya pt2
hurricane
moon
pure souls
lord i need you
come to life
jesus lord pt2