A&E
The Gospel of Kanye: a review of West’s album The Life of Pablo
By Cooper Halpern ’18
March 10, 2016
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The circumstances surrounding the release of Kanye West’s seventh studio album, The Life of Pablo, were unusual to say the least. The musician Kanye West has been overshadowed by the pop-culture icon: with Twitter rants and extravagant fashion productions filling the “Kanye” news cycle, there’s been no room for The Life of Pablo to “pop a wheelie on a zeitgeist,” as West himself once eloquently stated. Thus, West’s first release in almost three years—and the first album since his debut that failed to crack the charts—has gone largely unexamined by society’s main stage.
The ninth track of The Life of Pablo, called “I Love Kanye West,” pretty clearly explains how West wants you to feel about him. A cappella, he raps from the perspective of a disenfranchised Kanye fan, concluding, “I love you, like Kanye loves Kanye.” He’s shockingly self-aware in acknowledging both his egomania and popular opinion surrounding his music.
In describing The Life of Pablo, West said, “This album is actually a Gospel album,” and leading up to its release, he made outrageous claims like, “This is not album of the year. This is album of the life.” Taken together, these self-aggrandizing comments reveal something about the album itself. It’s as though Kanye believes that The Life of Pablo is the Gospel of Kanye, and that he exists as a missionary or even a prophet sent by God, a notion he’s played into by repeatedly comparing himself to the Apostle Paul. The Life of Pablo exists to explain Kanye’s internal complexities and exalt him to savior status.
Kanye’s Gospel in The Life of Pablo is an emotionally and spiritually diverse and sporadic ride. The first words on the album are sung by The Dream when he says, “I’m tryna keep my faith,” setting a religious tone. Likewise, Kanye attempts to keep his faith, though he struggles to, throughout The Life of Pablo.
The album vacillates between explicit religious references on songs like “Ultralight Beam,” “Low Lights” and “Wolves,” and indulgence of sin on songs like “Pt. 2” and “Highlights.” Every iteration of Kanye is present here, from the righteous kid on The College Dropout’s “Jesus Walks” to the lost sinner on Yeezus’s “I’m In It.” Kanye has taken the full range of his personas, thrown them in a blender, and poured them into every song. The album ender, “Fade,” opens with a synthetic echo of “I feel it fade / Your love is fade,” which recurs throughout the song. Kanye enters The Life of Pablo on a hopeful note, and exits on a dark one. There is a clear trajectory in the ablum thematically, as Kanye struggles with finding his way to God while straying from his faith.
Lyrically, Kanye has been sharper, but that’s not what stands out here. He’s never been as clever as technicians like Jay-Z or Kendrick Lamar, but the way he pulls the best out of his peers to build a coherent soundscape is as powerful as ever. Kanye unleashes peak Ty Dolla $ign and Chris Brown on “Real Friends” and “Waves,” respectively, fueling the message he puts forth in the verses with their choruses. He’s also an expert at using smaller pieces in interesting ways. He features relatively little known newcomer Desiigner on both “Pt. 2” and “Freestyle 4,” sounding like Future’s best, an impressive transformation for a rapper with only one previously released song. Kanye has done well by surrounding himself with artists who successfully plug into roles that serve his greater vision. This directorial ability will allow Kanye to extend his shelf life.
Despite its numerous successes, The Life of Pablo has one serious flaw. Every time Kanye attempts to engage in a meta discussion about himself within the album, the quality of the music suffers and breaks the flow of the album. Three of these tracks are “I Love Kanye,” “Siiiiiiiiilver Surffffeeeeer Intermission,” and “Facts (Charlie Heat Version).” They break through the world of the album and engage an aspect of Kanye’s public persona. “I Love Kanye” splits two songs with moving emotional energy, “Freestyle 4” and “Waves,” halting the momentum of the album. “Siiiiiiiiilver Surffffeeeeer Intermission” only serves to back up Kanye’s use of the term “wavy” in his Twitter beef with Wiz Khalifa and has no place musically or thematically. “Facts (Charlie Heat Version)” is perhaps the most unoriginal in style and little more than an Adidas advertisement. The lyrics are repetitive Adidas flexing with a couple of lazy disses, lacking the musical depth of the rest of the album. Without these tracks, it would be a tighter album.
Despite its limitations, The Life of Pablo is immensely playable, musically diverse, and when listened to with a religiously tuned ear, a fascinating inward and outward study of Kanye West as a troubled prophet.