Oh Yeezus. What a mess.
“And like most creations by wild narcissists who’ve run out of ideas, Yeezus doesn’t completely fall flat on its face, but it certainly hits a wall and spins out of control from there. Slowly rolling to a stop in the fiery heap that it is.”
Yeezus is what happens when you get so far up your own ass, you can’t find your way out.
This is really all you need to know about Kanye West’s latest long player, but it deserves a review, not just because it’s such a spectacular mess, but because it’s constantly baffling how someone like West gets a pass, as he lays turd after celebrated turd in his career.
When you convince yourself you’re a genius, you make bold decisions that most people find insane but many still eat up like the utter crap it is, just because you’ve in turn convinced them you’re brilliant. Kanye is so in love with his own genius that he’s prepared to throw everything at you including the proverbial kitchen sink in Yeezus. A kitchen sink that consists of every kind of garbage keyboard sound, strange beat and dissonant sample. And like most creations by wild narcissists who’ve run out of ideas, Yeezus doesn’t completely fall flat on its face, but it certainly hits a wall and spins out of control from there. Slowly rolling to a stop in the fiery heap that it is.
I’ll always give Kanye credit for his superb production skills but Yeezus comes off like a more talented Justin Bieber doing a mound of coke and cutting loose in studio over a long weekend. West is from Chicago so if you told me he was really influenced by the 80’s industrial sound that came out of that city, I’d be impressed. But the Nitzer Ebb flavored keyboards on the first track “On Sight” are just more retro crap someone who didn’t grow up hearing that will think is cool. Put it this way: Miley Cyrus has been playing this album non-stop.
It’s a bit of an understatement to say Yeezus comes off as the recorded ramblings of a crazy person. “New Slaves” is just such a mess it’s amazing someone at his record company didn’t question its release. On “Hold My Liquor” he just seems to be rhyming words with what works best with the beat and goofy samples. Later he rhymes “D league” with “Swaghili” because, well, it kind of rhymes? “Guilt Trip” does some really cool things even though it sounds like the Alan Parsons Project supplied the music, but it’s only when West lays out and doesn’t cloud the track with his forced rapping that it really takes flight.
And that’s where Yeezus really falters. When Kanye has to open his mouth – and that’s a lot – it just doesn’t match with the music backing his tired lyrics. To further his D league anecdote, it’s just a complete airball from someone who thinks he’s the smartest guy in the gym. Playing in the D league.
What most of these egomaniacs forget as they spiral down deep into their own inner child is how to write a song that people can enjoy. This album is chock full of those examples – just track after track of songwriting done solely for the creator’s fragile psyche and not for anyone’s enjoyment. And when the artist’s vision doesn’t do anything to move the listener, other than to turn it off, you’ve failed as a musician. If you paid money for this, I’m sorry.
Miles Davis was a genius but also started making some of the weirdest, most dissonant jazz of the late 60’s, early 70’s. But he was virtuoso who gained a lot of respect before setting out on his path of strangeness. Davis made music later in his career that I’m sure a lot of people hated because it was hard to listen to and even harder to digest. But he was probably the greatest jazz musician of all time. If Davis is an elephant in his musical stature, West is a fly on his ass. Davis probably accepted the masses weren’t going to embrace him anymore after an album like Bitches Brew, and he carried on just the same. But Kanye is in full belief that the thumbs down he’s receiving to his weird noodling is the public’s fault. And if you’re not on board, you’re the one with the problem. Good luck with that. When you make something this inaccessible, you may as well wave goodbye to the rest of humanity from high atop your perch.
West is concentrating so hard on shaking things up and taking everyone out of their comfort zone on Yeezus, he seems unfocused and amateurish. The lyrics especially seem to wander and are being forced into the narrow constraint provided by the disjointed beats and trite samples. LIke an country singer deciding to do a black metal album, I’m sure someone will call it a “bold choice” but it’s going to suck regardless..
Kanye gets a pass because of his past success, but it’s baffling how anyone can absorb this album without thinking it’s just a colossal wank-off in a very nice studio. Everything about it is cliche in the sappiest, most avant garde way possible. West’s true talent always lay in his ability to create a mood and a groove with a great beat and his unconventional delivery. But once you believe your own bullshit long enough, you think you can slap anything together and sell it to the public like $2 gas. To an extent he’s right: the critical reaction to Yeezus has been positive and the masses have been eating it up, but if they take a listen to this a couple of years from now, it’s going to seem as faulty and ridiculous as Zubaz pants.
I’ve read up on Yeezus and it seems that all of the positive reviews are so in love with the self professed genius of Kanye West that that they can’t see what a mess this is. Radiohead suffers the same affliction where its fans can’t seem to notice the shortcomings of their favorite artist because they’re too busy revelling in the fact that there’s more music being offered to them. I can understand. If you like a group or singular artist, you want more. And when it’s offered to you, even in an uneven, shambling package, you take it. Willingly. But let’s not pretend this is revolutionary or good by any stretch. Kanye can only dupe the public for so long before everyone will catch on that he’s operating with an empty cupboard in a rich, palatial estate facing foreclosure.
