Until this past weekend, I was pretty convinced that the best example of completely out-of-wack marketing for music was Drake's embrace of meme culture that led Hotline Bling from being a pretty good Drake song to the defining Drake song of 2015, a fairly prolific year for him. Either that or (insert Death Grips release here). At this point, however, after being an active participant in the hot mess that was Kanye's release of his 7th studio album, my answer has changed. Make no mistake; last weekend was a clusterfuck. However, part of me thinks it's exactly what Kanye West wanted with the album rollout.
First you had all the name changes. Over the course of 3 years, the album went from So Help Me God, to Swish, to Waves, and finally settling on The Life of Pablo. I'm not sure what the significance of naming had to be that led it to be such a back and forth battle, but suffice it to say late nights shitposting on Reddit's HipHopHeads subreddit would have been really boring if Kanye had kept the album title at Waves.
Also was all the info we did know about the album. All of a sudden, within a short span of time, we knew the tracks that were gonna be on it and had some idea of who would be featured on it. Also, leave it to Kanye to draw even more attention by going on rants on twitter, mostly aimless, and sometimes wild enough to offend people.
As we desperately waited on the album to finally drop on Thursday, we noticed that the Madison Square Garden Yeezy Season 3 show came and went, showing off a couple of the tracks off of the, at the time, 11 track album. It still seemed pretty standard at that point. If it didn't release then, maybe it would release on Friday, as albums are now wont to do. Sure enough on Friday, the album was said to drop that day, and the track list was extended to 17 tracks now, adding some tracks many were sure wouldn't be on the album, like a lot of the GOOD Friday tracks. Then, it still didn't drop. Apparently it was Chance the Rapper's fault.
It's pretty surreal to see Kanye pointing the blame at Chance on twitter, using an album generator to recreate the album art for The Life of Pablo. It's just utterly memetic, you just don't expect to see it. But it was true; Chance was fighting for one more song to be put on the album, called Waves. People were pissed, naturally. That entire night, and Saturday as well, leading up to the album release, people were going nuts. Some were renouncing either Kanye or Chance because of it. I recall one moment when a bunch of people went to some random Twitch streamer's channel while he was playing Farming Simulator, spamming jokes about Pablo. The poor dude had no clue. Again, thank Yeezus for the album name change.
The final straw for many was seeing what happened with Kanye on Saturday Night Live, which meant people had to actually watch it. Also Martin Shkreli was scaring the shit out of people by claiming he had bought Kanye's album for 15 million and nobody was going to get to hear it. At the time I shared in people's seething rage, but he's become popular hip-hop's resident troll, so now I can laugh at how he too entered the conversation. It's going to be interesting to see him enter hip hop history because of the shit he's pulling. Eventually, Kanye started spazzing out on stage, saying that the album was out. People were freaking out, especially since Tidal didn't update their servers for another hour and a half, so the album wasn't showing up. Eventually it did, however. But even then, Kanye took a television appearance and made it all part of his marketing tool for those who were paying attention.
So what do I think of the album? I think it's analogous to Radiohead's Amnesiac. There you had an album that was more of a collection of ideas than a well sequenced album. Some people didn't give it a fair shot, but really it's a hidden gem and another masterpiece in the bands discography. That's what this is too. If I were to choose an album that perfectly displayed Kanye's mental tangents, it would be The Life of Pablo. It's scatterbrained, sonically all over the place, and exhibits bouts of childish late-period Kanye lyrics, auto tuned singing, harmonious passages, and occasionally straight bars. This is an album that takes the best aspects of 808s and Heartbreak, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and Yeezus and throws everything it has into little under an hour. Because of this, this will really only appeal to people who still like late-period Kanye. It feels like a greatest hits album for albums that don't actually exist. My biggest worry was that the way music had changed in the past 3 years would negatively affect Kanye and he would release something boring and too poppy. This came from me not really loving All Day or Only One, neither of which land on this album. I'm convinced there was an album that was all that but it was scrapped, for the better. I also would hesitate to call this a hip-hop album. My favorite part of listening to a Kanye album is the collaborative process he has with all the artists he brings on board. This is the best example of this process. Really everyone else shines more than Kanye. I think this was the intention. I feel like the recording sessions were all one huge party. Every song feels like a sketch of sorts, scribbled with intensity so as to pack as many ideas into the piece as possible in a short amount of time. If I had to criticize anything, it would be sometimes the songs could have benefitted from another minute. Another Kanye album staple is moments, which this album has plenty of. These are the kinds of things that you'd be in awe of in discussion with friends, like "Remember when Rihanna sang that hook from that Nina Simone song?" or "Remember when Chance the Rapper had the first actual verse on the album and it remains the absolute best single verse on the whole album?" Another strength that sets it apart is this bipolar attitude the album takes. The high moments are almost of pure ecstasy, just completely bombastic and large. The low moments are similar to musical passages on 808s and Heartbreak but on a different scale. The melancholy displayed here isn't of longing or despair, but of complacency. Already I get nostalgic emotions listening to it because the music plays to those aspects of feeling. This is the album's most mature quality to it. Also, the sample flips are of supreme style. The moment on Famous when Swizz Beatz starts ad-libbing over top of a Sister Nancy dancehall track is a top 10 career highlight. Allegedly there's also a sample of a track from Mica Levi's Under the Skin soundtrack, which I have yet to pinpoint but if it's true thats amazing. One final sample that blows me away is the avant grade artist Arthur Russell sample on 30 Hours. This is probably one of Kanye's best sample flips of his career, utilizing an old J Dilla technique of using a sample as a hook by making it sound like it's saying something it's not, which Kanye has done before with Through the Wire. Actually, if I had to make one final comparison to another work, it would be that this is Kanye West's Donuts. Like the J Dilla album, it's loose, a short collection of ideas, and it feels alive. I have no doubt in my mind that Kanye was running up the clock to the very last minute making this album. At times it feels like he's mixing tracks right as you're listening. I wish more works were that organic.
