The lyrics question faith and fate as the music ebbs and swells, with Franklin providing a closing blessing for, among others, “everyone that feels like they’ve said ‘I’m sorry’ too many times.” The hymnlike opener “Ultralight Beam” is West at his best, even though he’s almost a supporting player on his own track West is joined by Chance The Rapper as well as soul savant The-Dream, R&B belter Kelly Price, gospel crossover star Kirk Franklin, and a choir-as well as a sample of a four-year-old whose anti-Satan testimonial was found on Instagram. Its instrumentals teem with flourishes that are as informed by crate-diggers’ boundless discographical knowledge of acts like the gloomy post-punk act Section 25 as they are by pop savants’ familiarity with the power of the hook. Its guest list features old hands like El DeBarge, up-and-comers like Chance The Rapper and Desiigner, and chart stalwarts like Rihanna and The Weeknd. It trafficks in myths taken from both the Bible and The Book of Kanye. It’s sprawling and unpredictable, immersed in celebrity culture while at times being stubbornly withdrawn from it. (He’s now said that the album will never be made available for purchase, and will only stream on Tidal.) Being in on its accelerated, highly public process over the year’s opening weeks was like watching the smartest kid in the class finish his homework on the bus ride to school, interspersed with self-promotional boasts that seemed essential to the hurried prodigy’s progress.ĭoes The Life Of Pablo bear out West’s Twitter-igniting self-adulation? Yes-to an extent. It debuted during a Madison Square Garden event that doubled as a fashion show for West’s clothing line and was beamed to movie theaters around the world-and then had tracks added to it for its initial commercial release, via the artist-centric streaming service Tidal, two days later. West’s eighth album, which he referred to as “a gospel album with a lot of cursing on it” early in February, began life as So Help Me God long ago, then was redubbed Swish and transmuted into Waves before becoming #TLOP- The Life of Pablo. Sometimes that has more to do with his brash personality than with his music-even those people who declare themselves to be utterly divorced from pop culture probably have an opinion on West and his antics. Say what you will about Kanye West, but he’s one of the few remaining artists who can make an album launch a newsworthy event on its own.
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