CD Review: Kanye West's "Yeesus"

By Andres "Pop Rocks" Santos

Kanye West's sixth solo album "Yeezus" finds West as confused and angry as ever. It's a complicated album from a "tortured artist." It's his 2005 public rant against George Bush times ten. West rails against women, racism, and class inequality all while still being as crude and as nasty as ever.  The sonic template and palette is as experimental and electronic as 2008's "808s & Heartbreak." Borrowing heavily from new wave, no wave and industrial rock, it's as if West locked himself in a room with nothing to listen to but Suicide's debut album and emerged inspired by their edgy and stark weird drum machine and bass heavy music.
The album finds West in a dark mood, he's pissed off but at who? Himself? Corporate America? The high fashion community? The list is long. The music is abrasive, riddled with hard beats and textures. It's anti-pop from the impresario of hip pop. The music and subject matter is darker than his last solo album 2010's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy."  Written and produced with Daft Punk and Rick Rubin, the album veers away from the uplifting soul samples and grandiose opulent production of previous records. The album palette is stark black and white with more than fifty shades of gray. Kanye has graduated from his signature maximalist approach to music to the aesthete's equivalent of fine taste: the Zen of minimalism, cue West calling on Rick Rubin to do his signature production "reducing." Gone are the soul samples, in their place are razor sharp industrial beats and sounds with Kanye's new and raw primal scream approach to rapping.
The album opens with the acid house of "On Sight." It is two and a half minutes of industrial synths co-written and co-produced by Daft Punk with West announcing his new approach to rap.  "Black Skinhead" follows building off an industrial drum sound reminiscent of Marilyn Manson's "Beautiful People." It makes sense he heavily borrows from that other agent provocateur's signature song on an album where he is questioning even his most ardent fans to dislike him, a theme Manson has toyed with in his work.
 "Blood on the Leaves" finds West sampling Nina Simone's version of Billie Holliday's "Strange Fruit". Instead of harnessing the songs powerful anti-racist message he raps a crude rhyme about a man juggling two women, apparently nothing is sacred to Kanye. President Obama's assessment of Mr. West as a jackass following his 2009 Taylor Swift PR debacle was more astute and on point then Obama intended.
Kanye West has positioned himself as hip hop's answer to David Bowie. He's able to try on new sounds and run them through his filter, to be both fashionable and anti-fashion, be both an insider but speak from an outsider's perspective. The man deals in contradictions and revels in contrasts and the dichotomy they create. He's a walking contradiction and his music reflects it. Like David Bowie before him he's also able to mine current fashions and trends in music like Chicago's drill music and try them on for size. Eager to find the new sound and direction in hip hop and rap he's embraced the emerging hip hop trends of trap and drill with their gritty street cacophonous drum sounds even featuring emerging Chicago artists like the 17-year-old Chief Keef and King L on the album.
Eager to re-invent himself this is West being a "serious artist," which may be his most self-indulgent pose yet. He's aiming for credibility yet his rap verses still reflect a crude lyrical sensibility. He's eager to be taken seriously by rap and hip hop fans and critics. "Yeezus" is his most "rap" album whereas other albums were hip hop for the masses, "Yeezus" is far from the crowd-pleasing "Gold Digger." Deejays will be hard pressed to find a song fit for communal enjoyment off this album. It's darker, more introspective, Kanye has always been tongue in cheek and been a confessional rapper with a sense of humor yet his humor has become darker, more biting.
Created by a slew of top writers & producers and armed with a bevy of both obscure and familiar samples there are far too many cooks in the kitchen. "Yeezus" is largely a transitional album like PJ Harvey's "Is This Desire?" or U2's "Pop" before it. West is baiting audiences like Radiohead and Nirvana before him, eager to toy with perceptions and his image. Taking the anti-commercial, anti-mainstream, anti-Top 40 ethos of Nirvana's "In Utero" and Radiohead's "Kid A" he's created an album even his most ardent fans would be hard pressed to love, in ploy to shed the fat of his mainstream audience all while being involved with and dating the woman who represents everything he rails against on "Yeezus": materialism, commercialism, consumerism, style with no substance, looks as if he's found his own pretty hate machine. Kanye sure does like to contradict himself. Pull a chair and listen to West's public therapy session which veers from self-aggrandizement to self-loathing, Kanye is locked and loaded into The Matrix (i.e. the Zeitgeist) and taking passengers on the downward spiral. Like Suicide before him this is self-immolation at its finest.