Kanye West Kanye West - The Life Of Pablo (2.0 Out)

Started by JFK, Nov 23, 2014, in Kanye West Add to Reading List

  1. A R T
    Posts: 14,468
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    Joined: Jul 14, 2015
    Location: トラップ家

    A R T ALLPOSITIVEVIBES | LONG. LIVE.| FutureHive |

    Feb 14, 2016
    The writing reminds me of MBDTF, just not as good
     
    Jun 19, 2025
  2. SHUDEYE
    Posts: 16,688
    Likes: 30,191
    Joined: Mar 16, 2015
    Location: Melbourne, Australia

    SHUDEYE Kerser is the sickest.

    Feb 14, 2016
    Just over halfway through. Haven't been blown away but I've quite enjoyed it
     
    Jun 19, 2025
  3. Narsh
    Posts: 40,221
    Likes: 46,514
    Joined: Jun 11, 2011

    Feb 14, 2016
    its an acid trip straight up. so many ideas being juxtaposed at once

    fAAATHEERR

    IF YUNG METRO DONT TRUST U IMMA s---t YOU

    BEATIFUL MOOORNINGGGG


    I JUST WANNA BE LIBERATED AIAIAIAIIHSDFKSFJSL:J
     
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  4. Narsh
    Posts: 40,221
    Likes: 46,514
    Joined: Jun 11, 2011

    Feb 14, 2016
    havent able to stop playing it tbh onto my 3rd listen now
     
    Jun 19, 2025
  5. Beetrootful
    Posts: 140
    Likes: 84
    Joined: Dec 28, 2015

    Feb 14, 2016
    happy as long as its 8.5+ it really is a great album imo
     
    Jun 19, 2025
  6. Narsh
    Posts: 40,221
    Likes: 46,514
    Joined: Jun 11, 2011

    Feb 14, 2016
    i love the auto tune throughout
     
    Jun 19, 2025
  7. CODEiNE DEMON
    Posts: 17,759
    Likes: 25,206
    Joined: Dec 26, 2014
    Location: Somewhere out in Texas making bread

    CODEiNE DEMON One foot stuck in the tarpit of my ways

    Feb 14, 2016
    Why is it kinda out i just got home
     
    Jun 19, 2025
  8. Narsh
    Posts: 40,221
    Likes: 46,514
    Joined: Jun 11, 2011

    Feb 14, 2016
    if i ever instigateddddddiaiaiaaiimsorrryyyy
     
    Jun 19, 2025
  9. rapmusik
    Posts: 18,561
    Likes: 49,216
    Joined: Feb 15, 2011

    Feb 14, 2016
    I bet me and Ray J would be friends
    If we aint love the same b----
    Yeah he mighta hit it first
    Only problem is I'm rich

    favourite line the whole thing I think

    and young thug does great on high lights
     
    Jun 19, 2025
  10. Narsh
    Posts: 40,221
    Likes: 46,514
    Joined: Jun 11, 2011

    Feb 14, 2016
    mama passed in hollywood, if youask, lost my soul :emoji_slight_frown:
     
    Jun 19, 2025
  11. Narsh
    Posts: 40,221
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    Joined: Jun 11, 2011

    Feb 14, 2016
    I GOT BROADS IN ATLANTA
     
    Jun 19, 2025
  12. Mike Tyson
    Posts: 20,023
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    Joined: Feb 15, 2011

    Mike Tyson big cuntry's alias

    Feb 14, 2016
    get ur plays up pleb, i'm on my 15th of the tracks 1 to 13 run.

    i don't think i'lll listen to the bonus disc ever, prob just throw the tracks on my february playlist or something.
     
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  13. rapmusik
    Posts: 18,561
    Likes: 49,216
    Joined: Feb 15, 2011

    Feb 14, 2016
    he redoing wolves...

    so likely he's doing more than that since he's delaying it for another week.
     
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  14. Narsh
    Posts: 40,221
    Likes: 46,514
    Joined: Jun 11, 2011

    Feb 14, 2016
    nah b bonus tracks have been a GREAT outro imo

    30 hours --> NMPIL

    the sample of facts is too good

    fade is dope


    max b interludeee
     
    Jun 19, 2025
  15. rapmusik
    Posts: 18,561
    Likes: 49,216
    Joined: Feb 15, 2011

    Feb 14, 2016
    I think I'd listen to 30 Hours more without the long a--- talking bit at the end.
     
    Jun 19, 2025
  16. rapmusik
    Posts: 18,561
    Likes: 49,216
    Joined: Feb 15, 2011

    Feb 14, 2016
    yeah tbh I personally don't mind listening to the whole thing as one album.
     
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  17. AYEKAY1
    Posts: 663
    Likes: 598
    Joined: Feb 10, 2016

    Feb 14, 2016
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/15/a...lo-review.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0


    /

    It’s unlikely we’ll get a song as singular as Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam” anytime soon, so best to linger on it, feel out its grooves and curves, allow it to seep into the pores.

    Mr. West’s recent performance of it on “Saturday Night Live” captured its reverent tone well. He began singing through an Auto-Tune-like effect, an old trick but one that he destabilized, using it to exaggerate his imperfections, rather than mask them. Behind him, a choir delivered stabs of vocal religion. Behind them, a scrim angled up to the sky played what appeared to be heavily pixilated clouds and flames.

    The whole thing was oozy, deliberate. Its intensity came from its measured approach. The juxtaposition between Mr. West’s unsteadiness and the gale force of the choir was pronounced.

    When he ceded center stage, though, the song began to swell. First came a pair of bracing R&B singers: The-Dream, restrained, and Kelly Price, soaring; both deeply grounded. Then, Chance the Rapper, an astonishingly nimble and emotionally mature rapper, delivered a verse c-m sermon while Mr. West stood at the side of the stage, beaming. When he finished, Mr. West retook the center, then lay prostrate on the floor as Kirk Franklin, the gospel maximalist and bridge-builder, emerged to give a benediction.

    It was stirring, a performance of uncommon intensity and vision. And then, the second it was over, Mr. West jumped to his feet, announced that his delayed album was now available for purchase and streaming, and ran across the stage screaming, “Aaaarrrrggghhh,” like a child burning off a candy overdose.

    Mr. West’s many contradictions are old news by this point — he is an activist who is also a capitalist, a penitent and gleeful sinner, a stubborn autodidact and an eager collaborator, a vessel and a pied piper. Is it not clear by now, with the release of his seventh album, “The Life of Pablo” (Def Jam), that these are not contradictions at all?

    Rather, Mr. West — who calls himself a “38-year-old 8-year-old” on this album — has perfected the art of aesthetic and intellectual bricolage, shape-shifting in real time and counting on listeners to keep up. More than on any of his previous albums, “Pablo” reflects that rambling, fearsome energy. This is Tumblr-as-album, the piecing together of divergent fragments to make a cohesive whole.

    “Pablo” doesn’t have the cool rage of “Yeezus,” his last left turn of an album, but it has maintained its sense of propulsion, while somehow echoing the soul-baptized sound that Mr. West made his name with, both as a producer for others and on his debut, “The College Dropout.” These are styles that don’t play well together, but Mr. West’s synthesis is almost seamless.

    Mr. West debuted his latest fashion collection and his new album at Madison Square Garden.

    Many of the highest points on “Pablo” are the disruptive moments — jarring intrusions from guests, or unexpectedly complicated song structures, or the interludes in other people’s voices. All together, the symphonic effect recalls his 2010 masterpiece, “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy,” the album that skyrocketed him beyond simple conversations about his pop effectiveness and instead laid the groundwork for the eccentric part of his career.

    And so, now, you can only measure Kanye West against his own audacity — even the artists whom he’s inspired and influenced don’t operate on his scale.

    Mr. West’s primary subject matter remains himself, both his internal life and his external character. On “Pablo,” there is genuine pathos on “Real Friends” (“When was the last time I remembered a birthday?/When was the last time I wasn’t in a hurry?”) and “No More Parties in LA.” On “30 Hours,” over a frail Arthur Russell sample, he raps about how hard he used to work for love, or something like it. And on “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 2,” he recalls the family problems that steered him off course, and tries to make amends: “Up in the morning, miss you bad/Sorry I ain’t called you back/Same problem my father had.” Also the Christian streak that runs through the work of Chance the Rapper, J. Cole and Kendrick Lamar — the one that Mr. West is a progenitor of, dating back to “Jesus Walks” — is here on “Ultralight Beam” and “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 2.”

    This sort of vulnerability usually comes without self-awareness, but Mr. West can be whispering dark fears one minute, then beating his chest with pride the next — even his exaggerations are intimate acts. Here is a guy who slips a rhyme and hubris exercise like “I Love Kanye” in the middle of his album, an interlude that’s also a rant that’s also a barometer of public opinion that’s also a wink: “What if Kanye made a song about Kanye/Called ‘I Miss the Old Kanye?’/Man that’d be so Kanye.”

    “Facts” is an elongated tirade against Nike, the sneaker company he once collaborated with, before Adidas offered him a boatload of money and creative freedom. The delirious “Highlights,” featuring Young Thug, is a tabloid boast about Mr. West’s extended family — his wife is Kim Kardashian — calling them “the new Jacksons.” And “Famous” is vintage West braggadocio, full of spite and cheek, though the conversation about that song has been limited to its mention of Taylor Swift: “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/Why? I made that b---- famous.”

    The line is both tacky and hilarious, a piece of celeb-slash-fiction that’s both casual boast and extravagant provocation. (Depending on whom you believe, Ms. Swift either did or did not sign off on this line.) Ms. Swift and Mr. West healed their yearslong feud last year, but Mr. West’s willingness to rap about her in this way is a reminder that nothing is more important to him than his right to his excesses.

    That is true in the music on this album, as well. Like many West albums, “Pablo” is a group effort. It’s also a hybrid of approaches. “Facts” suggests he has fully internalized Drake and Future’s “What a Time to Be Alive” (as do the collaborations with the Brooklyn rapper Desiigner, a new signee to Mr. West’s label who raps with the callous distance of Future). “Feedback” and “Fade” show a comfort with accelerated tempos, while the digital steam bath on “Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1” and “30 Hours” accentuates Mr. West’s softer side.

    What’s also striking on “Pablo” is the way in which Mr. West steadily induces others to greatness (to say nothing of getting them to work on his clock). He has Rihanna singing Nina Simone lyrics on “Famous,” André 3000 doing some fuzzy crooning on “30 Hours,” Frank Ocean delivering signature stoic cool on “Wolves.” The verse from Kendrick Lamar on “No More Parties in LA” might be the most striking of the year thus far, were it not for the one Chance the Rapper delivers on “Ultralight Beam,” a master class in texture, content and form.

    There are places on this album where Mr. West raps with that sort of fervor, but more often he is showing restraint. On his earlier albums, he agitated to be heard, and that was reflected in his manic rapping. These days, his anxieties are elsewhere — can he establish himself as a key player in fashion? Can he infiltrate the tech world? Can he make a hotel in his image?

    Now his rapping is sparser, more pointed, less imagistic and more emotional. And when he truly needs to be heard, he can corral a dream team of collaborators. He’s so fluent that he can use others to speak for him, and be understood clear as day.

    :emmittcrying::emmittcrying::emmittcrying:
     
    Jun 19, 2025
  18. Beetrootful
    Posts: 140
    Likes: 84
    Joined: Dec 28, 2015

    Feb 14, 2016
    30 hours GOAT though
     
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  19. Narsh
    Posts: 40,221
    Likes: 46,514
    Joined: Jun 11, 2011

    Feb 14, 2016
    i just wanna be liberated ---> i dont blame you much for wanting to be free

    so goood
     
    Jun 19, 2025
  20. Mike Tyson
    Posts: 20,023
    Likes: 63,071
    Joined: Feb 15, 2011

    Mike Tyson big cuntry's alias

    Feb 14, 2016
    i get that but i don't wanna ruin the experience of the album itself.

    and that 30 hours -> parties is so intentional, it was exactly like that in my Waves copy too and it works so well.
     
    Jun 19, 2025