Yeezus is an extravagant stunt with the high-art packed in, offering an eccentric, audacious, and gripping experience that's vital and truly unlike anything else.
Styles and genres smash into each other. At first listen it sounds messy, but the more you play it, the more inspired and essential each brutal interruption becomes.
Kanye West doesn’t give the listener a second to realize the album is more a masterly response to a masterpiece than a masterpiece itself. With one sweep of the hand, West brushes away expectations. And then he sticks you squarely across the face.
It’s an album for the books, one that indicates West’s hunger for exploration while always sounding like it could become extraordinarily popular, even for him. This is the level that things could be at.
Faced with making a career defining album, he opted for a palette of uncommercial sounds and ideas that takes his artistry to a level unparalleled in hip-hop (and pop music, for that matter).
On Yeezus, he trades out smooth soul and anthemic choruses for jarring electro, acid house, and industrial grind while delivering some of his most lewd and heart-crushing tales yet.
With every successive album, Kanye West somehow summarises his entire career while simultaneously staying years ahead of the game.
As much as he pushes the envelope aesthetically, Yeezus isn’t quite the hardcore manifesto that early signs indicated.
Despite its surface severity, it’s a lean, immediate record, its brevity a sharp contrast to 2010’s wandering My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
Yeezus is the darkest, most extreme music Kanye has ever cooked up, an extravagantly abrasive album full of grinding electro, pummeling minimalist hip-hop, drone-y wooz and industrial gear-grind.
On Yeezus, West invites us to the decadent, bonkers bachelor party of his dreams; it's an all-id affair where his dick barely stays zipped up inside his black leather jeans.
It’s dark as anything but able to turn uplifting at any moment, synths and drum machines giving way to choral samples as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
Those looking for vintage soul sounds or even full-on raps from start to finish will be thrown several curves here. It’s an album with numerous emotional layers as well.
Yeezus is audacious, ornery and miles outside of what’s expected from Kanye West, and often what’s conventionally accepted in Hip Hop.
A hypnotic and addictive record created by an over-excited, totally unhinged mastermind with almost unlimited resources at his disposal.
‘Yeezus’ is so tight, so bold, that with a few tweaks Kanye could’ve made his rock for the ages. As it is, he’ll have to settle for one of the best records of the year.
Whether West intends to expose his vulnerabilities and imperfections as an artist and as a person is irrelevant: West always goes for the top. Yeezus is no different – and it’s brilliantly flawed for doing so.
If there’s anything Mr. West finds completely alien to his person, it’s restraint, and Yeezus is the perfect, chaotic, and ultimately uncompromising dive into this world.
Electronic music has been pulsing its way through rap, and with his sixth solo effort, Kanye swoops in like an alien Phoenix and mops the floor with everyone in the process.
It’s not quite godlike, but Yeezus certainly feels like it was created by a higher power.
Nasty, brutish, short, and wholly compelling, Yeezus begs only one question: where next?
Noisy, gripping, maddening, potent, audibly the product of, as he put it "giving no fucks at all", Yeezus is the sound of a man just doing his job properly.
Contradiction incarnate, Yeezus is Kanye's most Kanyeish LP yet.
Topped and tailed with pulsating, arresting, noisy and vivid sonic-whippery, and featuring some of the best and worst lines spat into a mic in quite some time ("Hurry up with my damn croissants"), Yeezus is an album sharply detailed and dressed up to attract attention.
With Yeezus clocking in at a short 40 minutes, Kanye achieves his goal of creating a stripped-down, minimalist project; there’s nothing extra or out of place here. More importantly, Kanye makes it abundantly clear that he’s still got a lot to say, and a lot of new ways to say it.
West’s albums have always taken a while to unfold their many, usually extraordinary layers, but even on first listen it’s a hell of a ride.
While it might not be his most enjoyable album, I think time will show it to be his most important.
It's Kanye doing what he does best, but it's also the sound of a rapper pushing himself for all his worth. Ranging from intimidating to wonderfully eye-opening, it's always forthright, and it barely falters.
By laying out his neuroses unvarnished for the world to see, what Kanye has created is the most honest – and yes, at times dislikable – record of his career.
Yeezus ranks as more than a glorified placeholder in West's catalogue, but one can't help feeling that parenthood will compel his muse to even more Olympian levels of bombast and grandiosity.
While it’s easily his most abrasive work and understandably not for everybody, Yeezus is a worthwhile next step.
Yeezus is a challenging album. Usually when people say that, they imply that there will be a reward for closer listening, but I’m not sure that there is with this album.
Ultimately, Yeezus is the least likable album Kanye’s ever made.
It’s certainly his boldest, most provocative record in a career as a bold and provocative musician. Its political backbone will gradually become appreciated and with time and it may even become canonised as Kanye’s most important record.
Ultimately, we’re dealing with a record as messy as Yeezy himself, which is the point.
Although West has made some bold moves with this album, a few weak tracks and the occasional lack of focus on the lyrical front prevent this from achieving the untouchable status that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy did.
It’s a dense, difficult listen, nigh impossible to compare to the rest of Kanye West’s work, and its rewards come slowly.
Yeezus is a good effort, but falls short of the masterpiece we were looking for.
No, ‘Yeezus’ isn’t a great record, but it doesn’t have to be. As with any Kanye recording, he dares to be different and sets a pace for others to follow.
Yeezus is a statement of provocation in the music world, an unsettling and intense album that impresses for being ambitious, but falls short on the expectations of being an overall good record, no matter how dark it might be.
From a production perspective, it's a smash. The beats remain head-spinning. But 'Ye's lyrics feel lazy rather than merely drawled, and he's seeking social-commentary cred that he hasn't earned.
On Yeezus, Chicago rapper and producer Kanye West takes his typically ambitious production down some really dark, noisy passageways.
As a whole, the album is stagnant; at times deeply unpleasant. What could have been a showcase of underground musical ideas, and a chance to elevate his lyrical concerns against a darker-hued backdrop, has been utterly wasted.
I think at this point in time, two years later, we can all accept this is a masterpiece. Just go ahead and change your rating to 100.
My God Complex has taken over, and I know claim this album as MY WORK.
I FEEL LIKE A GOD RIGHT NOW. THIS ALBUM GIVES ME SUCH A HUGE GOD COMPLEX I CAN'T EVEN EXPLAIN.
I AM A GOD. I AM A GOD. YOU CAN NOT FUCK WITH ME. I AM A GOD. I AM A GOD.
Y'all better refer to me as "Eminent God Matthias IV" from now on.
Nobody:
Kanye in I Am A God: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
And yet, this is an 80/100
Fav Track: Black Skinhead
Least Fav Track: I Am A God
Looking back on this album is very conflicting. As wonderful as it is sonically it's hard to look at the current state of Kanye and not to see early signs of his current behaviour in this album. Again, the way I listen to music I am left to consider its creator's morality and the subsequent meltdown that would follow over the next decade. I love the production, it's phenomenal. It pushed the more experimental bare-bones sound into the mainstream but for me, it's always overshadowed by Kanye ... read more
1 | On Sight 2:36 | 89 |
2 | Black Skinhead 3:08 | 93 |
3 | I Am A God 3:51 | 83 |
4 | New Slaves 4:16 | 93 |
5 | Hold My Liquor 5:26 | 91 |
6 | I'm In It 3:54 | 80 |
7 | Blood On The Leaves 6:00 | 89 |
8 | Guilt Trip 4:03 | 83 |
9 | Send It Up 2:58 | 76 |
10 | Bound 2 3:49 | 93 |
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