Yeezus
Kanye West just pulled a Beyonce and it is not clear if he knows about it.
Kanye West’s much anticipated and delayed final collaboration with Nike, the Air Yeezy II Red Octobers appeared on the Nike website for purchase earlier today (February 9). Priced at $245, the shoe’s description refers to it as “a modern take on classic features” yet makes no mention of its creator, Kanye West.
Via AllHipHop
Kanye West is not taking any time off just yet. The rap superstar will continue his successful Yeezus Tour with new dates announced for next month. Mr. West will start off the new leg of his trek in University Park, Pennsylvania on February 13. Considering he loves making impromptu speeches during his concerts, this could mean Ye’s self-imposed six month vow of silence may not be happening after all. There also has not been an announcement for which artist, if anyone, will be opening for the “New Slaves ” performer.
Check out the new dates for Kanye West’s
Tour below.
2/13 - University Park, PA – Bryce Jordan Center
2/14 – Baltimore, MD – Baltimore Arena
2/15 – Newark, NJ – Prudential Center
2/17 – Montreal, Quebec – Bell Centre
2/18 - Hamilton, Ontario – Copps Coliseum
2/19 – Albany, NY – Times Union Center
2/21 – Uncasville, CT – Mohegan Sun Arena
2/22 – Atlantic City, NY – Boardwalk Hall
2/23 – Uniondale, NY – Nassau Coliseum
Via All Hip Hop
On June 13th of this year, Kanye West released Yeezus, his sixth studio album. Until this album’s release, in a nine-year career as a solo artist, West sold a combined 13 million albums in the United States alone. Furthermore, he has arguably become one of this generation’s most intriguing and progressive musical artists. All of these plaudits aside — in a manner similar to most every other artist in this generation — West’s career of late has been plagued by a precipitous decline in album sales. Once a traditionally dominant revenue stream, now due to the notion of album piracy becoming commonplace (and a few other key indicators) it is one of many key commercial sources for a successful artist. With this being the case, it is entirely possible that Yeezus — an often cacophonous, aesthetically militant and downright perverse listen — was crafted by a rapper that had finally decided that if the popular notion is that music is meant to be heard, but not sold, then it was time to make an album that met that expectation. In reaching this point, what exactly does this mean for the future of albums? Even further, what does this mean for the barriers (or lack thereof) regarding artistic creativity in popular music in the 21st century?
In its debut week on the market, Yeezus sold 327,000 copies. Week two’s sales figures hit 65,000 copies, an 80% drop from the previous week. As much as Billboard Magazine’s Keith Caulfield attributes the album sales decline to Yeezus’ “untraditional marketing,” it may be that Yeezus fell prey to an unprecedented number of pirate downloads coupled with one of the single greatest cases of “buyer beware” in recent musical history.
When Yeezus leaked on Friday, June 14th, the Washington Post’s Chris Richards described it in truly epic terms: “[Yeezus] didn’t leak online over the weekend. It gushed out into the pop ecosystem like a million barrels of renegade crude — ominous, mesmerizing and of great consequence.” If the standard by which we measure first week rap album sales is Jay Z’s 2013-leading 527,000 buys, it’s entirely possible that a seemingly unprecedented 200,000 potential Yeezus buyers gladly found the album somewhere on the internet for free.
As well, for as many positive reviews that the record received from internet pundits, the average listener offered more jaded feedback. In fact, OkayPlayer’s “Big Ghostface” (known for a provocative writing style that mimics street corner slang) alluded to one of many issues that the less critically attuned ear would have with the album: “Brother Ye on his pro black s**t for this joint namsayin. Son really tryin to make his pro-BLACKest song to the pro-WHITEst music here tho. I cant say I all the way f***s wit this s**t… “
The 21st century reflects a plethora of polarities with which the universe must deal. In fact, it may be in so brashly dealing with these concerns that developed the creative impulse behind the album. However, for an artist who brashly compares himself to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, to have an oft-discussed and intriguing listen that has commercially underwhelmed could be the ultimate definition of a gift and a curse in these polarized times.
These are the amazing truths of the world in which Yeezus creatively resides. Barack Obama is both a black man and the President of the United States. Jay Z released an album that was aided in going platinum even before its digital and physical release date by Samsung bolstering its aspirations for dominating the mobile market bypurchasing one million copies and releasing the album with an app. To celebrate, the rap mogul released a 10-minute long video where he raps about copulating with his pop star wife in a manner similar to having sex with a prostitute, then proceeded to dance with noted performance artist Marina Abramovic. As well, among many issues, global warming is real and while kids have cell phones, they don’t learn cursive in school anymore.
In response, Kanye assumes the role of Jesus Christ entering the temple, assessing the flaws residing within, and promptly tearing it asunder in anger. Rap groupies are apparently scandalous enough to be dealt with via lynching, so much blood on so many leaves. As well, black people are slaves to luxury and are shouted at over a track that is the sonic equivalent of impending revolutionary violence, that demanded an ominous video to be displayed on the sides of buildings throughout the United States. Misogyny, sociopathic allusions, narcissism and outright blasphemy exist in abundance. It indeed is an album where few pop-friendly reasons were given for purchasing, but absolutely everyone had to hear.
Whether a fan of or truly repulsed by Yeezus, it is an undeniably brilliant deconstruction of the overabundance of issues that potentially plague popular music-at-present. To head into the creative process knowing that the goal is more to make statements than sell singles, then the potential of the output is arguably limitless.
If a fan of electronic dance’s marriage with rap, there may be no better produced co-mingling of the two in recent memory than anything Daft Punk or upstart bass-friendly duo TNGHT create on the album. As well, if you find that lyrical simplicity is a wonderful anathema to years of over-intellectual and lyrically dense rap, when Kanye West says “I AM A GOD,” there’s really nothing left to question and nothing else that needs to be said. Miss Kanye’s love of soul samples? “Bound 2" is mellifluous and hearkens back to the days of Kanye being a College Dropout, and not being very angry about much of anything at all.
Insofar as the future? Yeezus finally reset popular music. In being intriguing, dense and well delivered as craftsmanship with artistic merit, it excels. In creating a critical divide and being so far a commercial failure (as compared to likely public expectations), it’s a positive as well, as in so boldly opening the door, the fools (as they always do) will likely rush in first, allowing the cream (aka those who learn from where Yeezus excelled and where it, quite possibly intentionally, fell short insofar as currying favor in the arena of public opinion) to rise to the top. A future where popular music reinvigorates itself and yet again meet a style and function in line with the demands of a radically altered era is entirely likely, a pleasant notion and a logical possibility.
Exec Direc. @ListenVision/ @WLVSRadio | Biz Dev. & Acquisition Consultant@rossbizmgmt | #GDM Global dance music PR@VamosPromo | Music industry muckraker
Kanye West is a child of social networking and hip-hop. And he knows about all kinds of music and popular culture. The guy has a real wide palette to play with. That's all over Yeezus. There are moments of supreme beauty and greatness on this record, and then some of it is the same old shit. But the guy really, really, really is talented. He's really trying to raise the bar. No one's near doing what he's doing, it's not even on the same planet.
People say this album is minimal. And yeah, it's minimal. But the parts are maximal. Take "Blood on the Leaves." There's a lot going on there: horns, piano, bass, drums, electronic effects, all rhythmically matched — towards the end of the track, there's now twice as much sonic material. But Kanye stays unmoved while this mountain of sound grows around him. Such an enormous amount of work went into making this album. Each track is like making a movie.
Actually, the whole album is like a movie, or a novel — each track segues into the next. This is not individual tracks sitting on their own island, all alone.
Very often, he'll have this very monotonous section going and then, suddenly —"BAP! BAP! BAP! BAP!"— he disrupts the whole thing and we're on to something new that's absolutely incredible. That's architecture, that's structure — this guy is seriously smart. He keeps unbalancing you. He'll pile on all this sound and then suddenly pull it away, all the way to complete silence, and then there's a scream or a beautiful melody, right there in your face. That's what I call a sucker punch.
He seems to have insinuated in a recent New York Times interview that My Beautiful Dark, Twisted Fantasy was to make up for stupid shit he'd done. And now, with this album, it's "Now that you like me, I'm going to make you unlike me." It's a dare. It's braggadoccio. Axl Rose has done that too, lots of people have. "I Am a God" — I mean, with a song title like that, he's just begging people to attack him.
But why he starts the album off with that typical synth buzzsaw sound is beyond me, but what a sound it is, all gussied up and processed. I can't figure out why he would do that. It's like farting. It's another dare — I dare you to like this. Very perverse.
Still, I have never thought of music as a challenge — you always figure, the audience is at least as smart as you are. You do this because you like it, you think what you're making is beautiful. And if you think it's beautiful, maybe they'll think it's beautiful. When I did Metal Machine Music, New York Times critic John Rockwell said, "This is really challenging." I never thought of it like that. I thought of it like, "Wow, if you like guitars, this is pure guitar, from beginning to end, in all its variations. And you're not stuck to one beat." That's what I thought. Not, "I'm going to challenge you to listen to something I made." I don't think West means that for a second, either. You make stuff because it's what you do and you love it.
That explains the jump-cuts that are all over this record. Over and over, he sets you up so well — something's just got to happen — and he gives it to you, he hits you with these melodies. (He claims he doesn't have those melodic choruses anymore — that's not true. That melody the strings play at the end of "Guilt Trip," it's so beautiful, it makes me so emotional, it brings tears to my eyes.) But it's real fast cutting — boom, you're in it. Like at the end of "I Am a God," anybody else would have been out, but thenpow, there's that coda with Justin Vernon, "Ain't no way I'm giving up." Un-fucking-believable. It's fantastic. Or that very repetitive part in "Send It Up" that goes on five times as long as it should and then it turns into this amazing thing, a sample of Beenie Man's "Stop Live in a De Pass."
And it works. It works because it's beautiful — you either like it or you don't — there's no reason why it's beautiful. I don't know any musician who sits down and thinks about this. He feels it, and either it moves you too, or it doesn't, and that's that. You can analyze it all you want.
Many lyrics seem like the same old b.s. Maybe because he made up so much of it at the last minute. But it's the energy behind it, the aggression. Usually the Kanye lyrics I like are funny, and he's very funny here. Although he thinks that getting head from nuns and eating Asian pussy with sweet and sour sauce is funny, and it might be, to a 14-year-old — but it has nothing to do with me. Then there's the obligatory endless blowjobs and menages-a-trois.
But it's just ridiculous that people are getting upset about "Put my fist in her like a civil rights sign"? C'mon, he's just having fun. That's no more serious than if he said he's going to drop a bomb on the Vatican. How can you take that seriously?
And then he'll come out with an amazing line like "We could have been somebody." He's paraphrasing that famous Marlon Brando line from On the Waterfront, "I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am, let's face it. It was you, Charlie." Or he says "I'd rather be a dick than a swallower" — but then he does a whole chorus with Frank Ocean. What he says and what he does are often two different things.
"Hold My Liquor" is just heartbreaking, and particularly coming from where it's coming from — listen to that incredibly poignant hook from a tough guy like Chief Keef, wow. At first, West says "I can hold my liquor" and then he says "I can't hold my liquor." This is classic — classic manic-depressive, going back and forth. Or as the great Delmore Schwartz said, "Being a manic depressive is like having brown hair."
"I'm great, I'm terrible, I'm great, I'm terrible." That's all over this record. And then that synthesized guitar solo on the last minute and a half of that song, he just lets it run, and it's devastating, absolutely majestic.
There are more contradictions on "New Slaves," where he says "Fuck you and your Hamptons house." But God only knows how much he's spending wherever he is. He's trying to have it both ways — he's the upstart but he's got it all, so he frowns on it. Some people might say that makes him complicated, but it's not really that complicated. He kind of wants to retain his street cred even though he got so popular. And I think he thinks people are going to think he's become one of them — so he's going to very great lengths to claim that he's not. On "New Slaves," he's accusing everyone of being materialistic but you know, when guys do something like that, it's always like, "But we're the exception. It's all those other people, but weknow better."
"New Slaves" has that line "Y'all throwin' contracts at me/ You know that niggas can't read." Wow, wow,wow. That is an amazing thing to put in a lyric. That's a serious accusation in the middle of this rant at other people: an accusation of himself. As if he's some piece of shit from the street who doesn't know nothing. Yeah, right — your mom was a college English professor.
He starts off cool on that track but he winds up yelling at the top of his voice. I think he maybe had a couple of great lines already written for this song but then when he recorded the vocal, but then he just let loose with it and trusted his instincts. Because I can't imagine actually writing down most of these lines. But that's just me.
But musically, he nails it beyond belief on"New Slaves." It's mainly just voice and one or two synths, very sparse, and then it suddenly breaks out into this incredible melodic… God knows what. Frank Ocean sings this soaring part, then it segues into a moody sample of some Hungarian rock band from the '70s. It literally gives me goosebumps. It's like the visuals at the end of the new Superman movie — just overwhelmingly incredible. I played it over and over.
Some people ask why he's screaming on "I Am a God." It's not like a James Brown scream — it's a real scream of terror. It makes my hair stand on end. He knows they could turn on him in two seconds. By "they" I mean the public, the fickle audience. He could kill Taylor Swift and it would all be over.
The juxtaposition of vocal tones on "Blood on the Leaves" is incredible — that pitched-up sample of Nina Simone singing "Strange Fruit" doing a call-and-response with Kanye's very relaxed Autotuned voice. That is fascinating, aurally, nothing short of spectacular. And holy shit, it's so gorgeous rhythmically, where sometimes the vocal parts are matched and sometimes they clash. He's so sad in this song. He's surrounded by everyone except the one he wants — he had this love ripped away from him, before he even knew it. "I know there ain't nothing wrong with me… something strange is happening." Well, surprise, surprise — welcome to the real world, Kanye.
It's fascinating — it's very poignant, but there's nothing warm about it, sonically — it's really electronic, and after a while, his voice and the synth are virtually the same. But I don't think that's a statement about anything — it's just something he heard, and then he made it so you could hear it too.
At so many points in this album, the music breaks into this melody, and it's glorious — I mean, glorious. He has to know that — why else would you do that? He's not just banging his head against the wall, but he acts as though he is. He doesn't want to seem precious, he wants to keep his cred.
And sometimes it's like a synth orchestra. I've never heard anything like it — I've heard people try to do it but no way, it just comes out tacky. Kanye is there. It's like his video for "Runaway," with the ballet dancers — it was like, look out, this guy is making connections. You could bring one into the other — ballet into hip-hop — they're not actually contradictory, and he knew that, he could see it immediately. He obviously can hear that all styles are the same, somewhere deep in their heart, there's a connection. It's all the same shit, it's all music — that's what makes him great. If you like sound, listen to what he's giving you. Majestic and inspiring.
Here it is. The full stream. Enjoy!
