Since Kanye West entered pop culture’s conscience in 2004 with his debut album The College Dropout he has not been one to bite his tongue. With the instances of him accusing George Bush of not caring enough about African Americans during a 2005 Hurricane Katrina relief telethon or him hijacking Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech for the Best Female Video at the 2009 MTV VMA’s, Mr. West has been just as good at causing controversy as he has been at delivering great music. The lead up to his seventh studio album The Life of Pablo was no different. Upon changing the album title from Swish to Waves, West entered into a heated debate with one Wiz Khalifa over the proper respects being paid to Max B, the wavy baby himself and creator of “the wave”. During this said debate West not only called out Khalifa’s musical catalog but also proclaimed that if not for him Khalifa wouldn’t have a child since the mother of his child is Amber Rose, West’s old lover and even goes as far to claim that he owns Khalifa’s son. This was typical Kanye West behavior but the only difference between now and previous instances were that there was always great music being released by West to mask the blemishes of his character. Leading up to The Life of Pablo there was no major radio single that has usually accompanied West’s albums in the past, and save for the momentous banger “All Day”, most of the music released by West in 2015 wasn’t up to par with his previous works. There hadn’t been a Kanye West album release with more mystery surrounding it since 2008’s 808’s and Heartbreak and questions began to rise of whether Kanye West attitude and behavior had grown thin on even his most devout fans, especially if he wasn’t capable of delivering another great album to his catalog. West answered all of those questions with his seventh album.
The Life of Pablo is not a perfect album to be clear. The verses aren’t as laser sharp as they were on Graduation and the focus isn’t as direct as it was on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy but the high points of this album are some of the highest highs of West’s illustrious career. The opening track “Ultralight Beam” follows through on Kanye’s claim that this is a gospel album. The album opens with young girl preaching “we don’t want no devils in this house God, we want the Lord, that’s it,” with an organ playing and vocals by The Dream. Kanye proclaims this is a God dream with a choir backing him and even gets a verse from gospel singer Kelly Price and a sermon from Kirk Franklin himself on the track, but the real standout here is Chicago native Chance the Rapper. Chance’s raspy vocals blend with the track flawlessly and he delivers quite possibly the best verse on the album with lines of how his daughter looks like Sia all the way to how his ex has to regret leaving him. The song almost feels bigger than the album itself. The follow up track “Father Stretch My Hands Pt.1” might deliver the biggest surprise that you will hear in 2016, and that is Kid Cudi singing the hook over Metro Boomin production. Two completely different styles of artistry blended perfectly on one song and produce the standout track on the album. This is where Kanye ultimately succeeds the most on this album, being able to have people that are featured on this album sound better than they ever have and blend sounds of artists that wouldn’t typically mesh together.
On “Waves”, the song that caused the holdup of the album’s release because Chance The Rapper insisted it be on the album, Kanye is able to get Chris Brown to sound the most contrite we have heard him and Kanye is also able to coax a solid performance out of folk singer Post Malone and mix it with vocals from Ty Dolla $ign on “Fade”. On another standout track “Highlights” he is able to blend the sounds of Young Thug’s skittered and mumbled singing with the elegance of The Dream’s. He is even able to get Frank Ocean to come out of his music hiatus to sing the outro on the new rendition of “Wolves”.
And while this album isn’t lyrically what some of Kanye’s past albums have been there are still strong punchlines sprinkled throughout and the trademark humor and unabashed honesty that West has become known for. The latter half of the album is probably where fans of pre-808’s Kanye will find the most joy with tracks like “Real Friends”, “30 Hours”, and “No More Parties In LA” where Kanye is flat out rapping about emptiness, lost love, and rich people problems of how it took six months for him to get his Maybach all matted out but his assistant crashed it upon leaving the lot. He even admits on “No More Parties In LA” of how most of his fans never thought he would rap at such a high level again. It’s as if he has trolled his fans knowing they want the confident and boastful raps but he just chooses not to give it to them whenever they please.
The Life of Pablo doesn’t follow the suit of all of Kanye West’s previous albums of reinventing himself and a new sound pallete for hip hop. What is does though is blends all of the sounds of West’s previous albums into one, there is something here for every type of Kanye fan to be satisfied with and that might be the biggest accomplishment yet from West, being able to tie all of those different sounds into one coherent album for the masses to be satisfied with.
Album Score 8.5/10
Kameron Hay 