Pablo may come just shy of being his greatest achievement (My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy holds onto that distinction), but it’s the grandest distillation of West’s world-swallowing artistic vision, a sum of its superlative elder siblings.
It feels far different from any of the tightly constructed, singular works of West’s past, and from a sonic standpoint, it sounds almost like a greatest-hits collection of nearly every sound and musical idea that he’s cultivated up to this moment.
Most pop stars are content with a me-against-the-world mentality, but The Life Of Pablo posits a mantra more like me-against-myself, expressed as a mainline rush of gospel, rap, soul, house, noise and pop, and full of digressions into the highest highs and lowest lows.
A madcap sense of humor animates all his best work, and The Life of Pablo has a freewheeling energy that is infectious and unique to his discography. Somehow, it comes off as both his most labored-over and unfinished album, full of asterisks and corrections and footnotes.
If The Life of Pablo is about anything, it’s about the absurdity of being Kanye West.
It's a labored-over opus that wishes it were a mixtape, trying hard to curate the vibe of a sprawling mess, and that's because it's made by an artist who feels like a mess and doesn't care to hide it.
The Life of Pablo is an album that needs no introduction.
Pablo could easily be confused for a collaborative album. It’s as if Ye said, “OK, ya’ll tired of hearing me rant? Well listen to how dope the rest of your favorite artists sound when Kanye is conducting.”
After seven manic albums attempting to prove his perfection, Kanye is seeking penance on The Life Of Pablo. Here, he delivers 18 heavenly hymns. It's everything else that needs forgiving.
In its utter madness it somehow forms a coherent picture of Yeezy’s unhinged genius.
A right-now snapshot of a restless, neurotic artist’s ever-evolving psyche. Like the man himself, the album is emotional, explosive, unpredictable, and undeniably thrilling.
A genius - and yes, perhaps a little bit crazy - with an attention to detail like no other, no matter what might slip from his grasp, Kanye West is in full control of every atom of ’The Life Of Pablo’.
Our political leaders may no longer present themselves as gods, but our rappers do. The Life of Pablo proves that sometimes they give us our Taj Mahals too.
As glacially paced, mood-enhancing music, Pablo is a hypnotic slam-dunk and this reviewer will be among those first online if an all-instrumental edition finally surfaces on Vocaroo, because over the long haul ‘Ye the MC here proves as elusive as the proverbial Cheshire Cat.
T.L.O.P. does the perfect job of showcasing what makes Kanye brilliant — excellent production mixed with creative samples and his Quincy Jones-esque ability to get the best work out of some of music’s most talented artists.
The Life Of Pablo is a frustrating but undeniably engaging listen – dazzlingly unpredictable and fleshed out with enough strokes of radiance for us to follow Pablo’s lead and keep the faith.
Kanye West's experimental opus.
A mighty weird “gospel album” wallowing in contradiction, a collection of music that acts as if music itself couldn’t have possibly existed before it.
The Life Of Pablo isn’t the greatest album of ‘life’, ever, or even the best album of Kanye’s career. But at times he’s still the most adventurous artist of his generation. And the most frustrating.
The Life of Pablo is a fucking mess—the scattered, contradictory work of an icon straining to keep up with his own brilliant pace.
The other way to look at the erratic Pablo is as an "instant" LP, one that was mastered at the last minute and debuted via streaming. On that count, it's a fascinating, magazine-like experience with plenty of reasons to give it a free play.
It remains a modern gospel that is undeniably West's own, with a handful of vexatious moments peppered throughout the undeniably visionary ones.
When The Life of Pablo is good, it’s very good indeed. What it isn’t is consistent. Perhaps it’s the sound of a man over-reaching himself. Perhaps it’s a document of a mind coming increasingly unglued.
For a rapper who has excelled in redefining the artform, The Life Of Pablo is a sprawling, uneven and curiously unfinished sounding affair with a dearth of recognisable bangers.
“No, art is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.”
West wants everything, equally we expect everything, so the result is exhilarating in its instability. The Life Of Pablo is bursting at the seams with ideas and talking points.
It is so self-involved it crosses over into self-delusion, marked by such a tangible absence of perspective and objectivity it is as if he has actually lost sight of the elemental basics of his art.
The album is almost workmanlike, a reflection of the artistic process of its creator rather than a grand statement of intent.
Pablo’s failures are not the result of a single narrative, but in the attempted combination of all the narratives of his life. It’s the result of attention spread too many places, of perfectionism turned to over-tinkering, of an artist pushing himself to hit a self-imposed deadline, of working in the limelight rather than in the shadows.
The ultimate feel of the record is more like a mixtape than a completed album, and while the former would be interesting and welcome, as the latter The Life of Pablo is a crushing disappointment.
Sure, The Life of Pablo‘s obscurities and eccentricities make it ripe for endless dissection by West’s fans and followers, but make no mistake: this albums is flawed, it’s problematic, and most of all, it’s no masterpiece.
#1 | / | Dummy |
#1 | / | The Daily Beast |
#1 | / | Time Out London |
#2 | / | Billboard |
#2 | / | Hypebeast |
#2 | / | NME |
#2 | / | Pretty Much Amazing |
#2 | / | Slant Magazine |
#3 | / | BLARE |
#3 | / | Crack Magazine |