Yeezy fans, rejoice ― Kanye West is finally back after dropping his newest album “The Life of Pablo.” After hundreds of promises, and almost as many title changes, the self-proclaimed “greatest artist of all time” delivered his seventh studio album on Feb. 14.
The 18-track album sounds haphazardly thrown together, as the last-minute inclusion of eight more individual tracks would suggest. The first track, “Ultralight Beam,” starts off with a faint sound of small child preaching in a gospel style and keeps the idea of gospel music as a reoccurring theme throughout the chorus. However, at the completion of the nearly five-and-a-half minute song, listeners are left unsatisfied. Apart from the chorus, the song feels stagnant; it doesn’t move anywhere, and the high amounts of Auto-Tune are simply overkill. After all of the hype and numerous months of waiting, this is what Kanye’s “masterpiece” of an album starts off with: a major disappointment.
The first track also doesn’t fit the feel of the album as a whole, with the subsequent tracks doing nothing to complement each other. Each song is wildly different and feels more like a college student’s rap playlist than an actual album. Kanye’s earlier, and better composed, albums such as “Graduation” and “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” flowed well and had tracks that related to one another. The track list is all over the place, from gospel songs to love songs, and even party anthems.
“The Life of Pablo” is a star-studded album, featuring a number of other talented musicians like Chance the Rapper, Andre 3000 and Frank Ocean, all of whom seem to overshadow Kanye on his album. It’s far too overdone. And for a man who likes to make literally everything about himself, it doesn’t make much sense for Kanye to sound more like a back-up singer than the star of the show. The Weeknd’s hook in “FML” is the album’s only redeeming quality and one of the only memorable elements that can be taken from this project.
Kanye’s music is typically riddled with pulsing beats and strange, albeit catchy, lyrics that seem to stick in your head forever; however, this album seems to suggest a change in his artistry. The tracks are less focused on catchy beats and hooks, while Kanye seems to be more preoccupied with the emotional side of his lyrics, as suggested by “Father Stretch My Hands Pt.1.” The emotional lyrics and soulful beat are reminiscent of “Blame Game,” from his 2010 album “My Dark and Twisted Fantasy.” The lyrics indicate that Kanye is reflective of past relationships, and that seems to carry into at least the subsequent track, “Pt.2.”
This album surely won’t garner Kanye any new fans, and it will probably keep Kanye’s haters where they are, but “The Life of Pablo” offers a new side of Kanye, a more emotional side that is a major change from the rapper’s previous work. The songs by themselves are decent, but when thrown together onto a full album, it just doesn’t work. Kanye may think he’s the best thing to happen to the music industry, but this album says otherwise.
