Music Kanye West

Wednesday at Stoke

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First thoughts?

Religious gospel music can be extremely uplifting. Unfortunately, Kanye barely scratches the surface on this project - it reeks of empty platitudes of a man who you'd imagine hasn't stepped foot inside a church. The mixing is bad. Like, really bad. The features on Use This Gospel are like 10 decibels higher than Kanye on the same song. What's going on there? Follow God and God Is are quite nice. But both stop before they really begin...

Jesus is King feels like another personification of Kanye West at the moment; an awful lot of hot air only to be left thoroughly disappointed with flavourless superficial social commentary. Ah well. We had a good run. Might go listen to Gorgeous on repeat to cleanse my ears.

PS. That Chick Fil A song is the worst song I've heard this year since Chance The Rapper's Hot Shower.

Selah is great and follow god is good but he ruins it with that crazy scream in the end. Even closed on Sunday has a nice intro and lovely flow to it but nothing is longer than 3 minutes which feels so half assed for an entire album.
 

SteveJ

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Kanye's often talked about a presidential run - I wonder if this religious phase is an effort at gaining an evangelist voter-base?
 

GDaly95

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Yeah, so my opinion is

Nice intro song
Selah is class, like absolute class
Follow God is between good and very good
Enjoyed the sax solo on Use this Gospel

The rest of it is complete meh. So passive, and like someone said above, half assed feeling.
 

100

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The same as the last few albums. Some really impressive songs accompanied by equally as shit parts. It feels like one big meme.
 

robinamicrowave

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Not on board with this. Haven't been on board with much that he's done since The Life of Pablo and yet I keep going back for more.

I suppose when Kanye is as famous as he is, and when he's as rich as he is, and when he uses that fame and fortune to protect himself from proper scrutiny whenever he spouts some badly misguided nonsense in public, it probably is easier for him to justify his social status and bottomless wealth by claiming "God put me up here for a reason" instead of actually analysing the vast wealth inequality and sociopolitical dysfunction that gave it all to him.

I wouldn't mind so much if he hadn't become one of the most boring producers in the game right now. The first twenty seconds of 'Every Hour' would have formed the backbone of a great sample once upon a time, but on this it overstays its welcome even at just 112 seconds; the sax solo on 'Use This Gospel' might have started an entirely new section of a song once but instead it just peters out into nothing here. There are flashes all over this record not of the "old Kanye" but of an artist who still has dozens of ideas but can't be arsed to bring them to their potential.

It seems this album has finally inspired his flock to finally tune out from his yammering. He's becoming more and more prolific but his albums are clocking in at under 30 minutes, some songs barely make it over three minutes, they all contain elements of fully fledged ideas but never sound completely finished. There's been a whiff of "This will do" to every album he's been in charge of since 2011, and ever since 2016 he's sounded like an artist who badly needs a rest.

His music seems tired and unfocused but the message from this album seems like he's gearing up for a run at the presidency because it's a mission from God, or whatever. I'll continue to watch through my fingers because I'm a sucker.
 

SteveJ

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Music is now just a way for him to keep his profile high.
 

Mockney

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I’ve only listened to 4 tracks, but it already immediately strikes me as the kind of thing a 40 year old Kanye album without the help 400 other producers would inevitably soundlike...

A bunch of potentially interesting samples, not made the most of, and lacking in any layered ingenuity or interesting percussion.

It’s almost as if he’s not the most significant artist of all time, after all.
 
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villain

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So the same as his last four albums then ?
Yeezus was his last good album. I think that was 4 albums ago, unless you count the Kid Cudi collab project too.

This album is booty.
 

JoaquinJoaquin

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Latest album was awful, so was Ye though to be honest.

Music wise I think he should stick to producing now, as he is tarnishing his early legacy at this point.
 

lsd

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Kanye ran out of things to say years ago . Since then he has just come out with complete nonsense in the hope that it may come off as shocking and make up for the fact he has nothing to offer any more
 

Based Adnan

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Yeezus was his last good album. I think that was 4 albums ago, unless you count the Kid Cudi collab project too.

This album is booty.
TLOP was good imo. Haven't even bothered checking out his new one though.
 

villain

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TLOP was good imo. Haven't even bothered checking out his new one though.
TLOP has some good songs - Ultralight Beam, Father Stretch my Hands p1, No More Parties in LA & Real Friends + some decent Interlude-type tracks like Low Lights.
But its a long album and less than half are listenable, and it doesn't feel cohesive at all (imo)

I rate it & him so harshly, because his first 6 albums were 4.5/5 to me, and the drop-off since then is remarkable. I don't think I can rate anything after Yeezus higher than 2.5/5. So because I know what his peak has been, to see the rubbish he puts out now, is even more disappointing than if it was a random new artist.
 

Lay

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I honestly can’t listen to him after Last Graduation. Really liked his first two albums. Not a big fan ever since.
 

SteveJ

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At least it wasn't fishsticks.
 

SteveJ

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Gawd blimey.

Kanye West: Nebuchadnezzar review – rapper's first opera is a giant folly
you could spot the singers reading from scripts, the fluffed cues that occasionally gave the production a certain Acorn Antiques air. “Then the king Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face!” intoned West at one point, but rapper Sheck Wes, in the title role, noticeably failed to fall on any part his anatomy. West tried again: “Then the king Nebuchadnezzar fell upon his face!” Still Wes remained resolutely upright. After Wes failed to respond for a third time, West gave up and moved on, fighting a fit of the giggles.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2...ezzar-opera-hollywood-bowl-los-angeles-review
 

Samid

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Just heard the leaked phone call with him and Taylor Swift. This guy and Kim are complete assholes.
 

BD

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As much of a gobshite Kanye seems to be, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is an amazing album. I'm not big into hip pop or rap or whatever the genre is, but this album has been one of my favourites of any genre for a while now.

And now I've started listening to a podcast called Dissect where the presenter goes through MBDTF song by song and, well, 'dissects' it. The podcast itself is quite good, but I'm endlessly amazed by the lyrics on the album and how many references there are and how well they tie together. You'd be forgiven for thinking that they're a stream of nice one liners that rhyme, but in reality there's so much going on.
 

lsd

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As much of a gobshite Kanye seems to be, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is an amazing album. I'm not big into hip pop or rap or whatever the genre is, but this album has been one of my favourites of any genre for a while now.

And now I've started listening to a podcast called Dissect where the presenter goes through MBDTF song by song and, well, 'dissects' it. The podcast itself is quite good, but I'm endlessly amazed by the lyrics on the album and how many references there are and how well they tie together. You'd be forgiven for thinking that they're a stream of nice one liners that rhyme, but in reality there's so much going on.

The production and the guest appearences made that a classic i would say and the last good album he has made .

You can't knock his talent or at least the talent he once had but he really has disappeared up his own ass
 

Buchan

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He’s tweeting some bizarre and worrying things over the last day or two. Seems a bit detached from reality. I hope he’s okay.




He tweeted similar/identical messages the other day but they were deleted shortly afterwards. He appears to be reconsidering that decision now and reposting some. It’s never nice seeing what-should-be private and personal issues played out in public like this.

EDIT: And now he’s deleted these tweets, too. Very peculiar goings-on.
 
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Solius

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He’s bipolar and it sounds like he’s having an episode and is refusing treatment. Probably not going to end well.
 

Tarrou

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the clip of him in full meltdown saying he almost killed his daughter was really hard to watch

hope he gets better soon the poor lad