Music
Is anybody still listening to Kanye West?
Between Twitter spats and terrible lyrics, Ye has become the least anticipated album release of Kanye's career
Kanye West's eighth album, Ye, is his post-#MeToo record. No, come back! I know that sounds naff, and it's not a credit to the rapper either, given how relative his success is with that. Rather, it's a hint there is something interesting to take from this seven-track, 24-minute work, even if the first listens suggest otherwise.
Because, musically, it's good. Yes, good - whereas he's made three albums of such thrilling invention, he remains, despite it all, the world's most fascinating act. On Ye, the skittish beat and pretty melody of "Yikes" are terrific, the sort of track that would have fitted on and improved The Life Of Pablo - his last, messy album. It's a sonic highlight, as is the stop-start clattered rhythm of "All Mine" and the soft R&B background to closer "Violent Crimes". This isn't an album to scare horses and influence peers, like Yeezus did, but it's hard to keep up a significant Twitter presence while also breaking new ground, and West, it seems, is less interested in the latter than he was.
Besides, everyone knows all the attention is now on his lyrics. It would be a waste of time to put the layers and effort he did into, say, "Monster" on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, when all his new listeners are just scanning for bits about his wife, Kim Kardashian. As such, the first song, "I Thought About Killing You", may be about West killing her, or an alter ego, his media persona, or his career, while on "Wouldn't Leave", after a mention of one of his recent outbursts, West raps, "My wife callin', screamin', say, 'We 'bout to lose it all!' Had to calm her down 'cause she couldn't breathe.'" It's cute, in a way. On "No Mistake", the refrain is, "Make no mistake, girl, I still love you." It's the nicest West has been about a woman since he wrote an entire record, 808s & Heartbreak, for his mother.
This, then, is the interest. West and women is a knotty subject. Even leaving aside the famous Taylor Swift lyric, his lines have often leapt beyond the puerile to be outright vulgar and misogynistic. Here, on "Violent Crimes", he addresses his past in the most Matt Damon way possible - saying, essentially, since he became a father to a daughter, he knows how to treat women better. It's a terrible apology that reveals before North's birth he thought of women as lesser beings.
"Father forgive me, I'm scared of the karma / 'Cause now I see women as somethin' to nurture / Not somethin' to conquer" is about as sincere as Dapper Laughs doing a mea culpa tabloid interview he has been to paid to complete - especially when, squeamishly, he then says he hopes his four-year-old doesn't have his wife's body. To be generous, he's trying. To be honest, it's far too late in a career that recently supported the president who grabs pussies. But as I said, this is, at least, West addressing #MeToo - maybe before its next phase, when it may start to address him.
"It's been a shaky ass year" goes "No Mistakes" - and that's the funniest line on Ye, given how much understatement it carries. From that MAGA hat to slavery comments, 2018 has been less rap, more crap for a man who had a breakdown and, from album cover to many lyrics, appears to be using his apparent bipolar disorder as an excuse for, well, everything. But is anybody still interested? It's a strange question, given the column inches he fills, but there is a sizable difference between laughing at a superstar seemingly losing the plot in public and wanting to engage with said superstar the moment they do what made them famous and release music.
As such, Ye is the least anticipated West album of his career - mostly as it comes at a time when, by embracing fairly extreme right-wing platforms, he has lost much of his fanbase, disgusted that the man who once called out a president for not caring about black people has given credence to the current one, who doesn't care about anything other than himself.
But then, listening to Ye, that's why he likes Trump so much. The album is all so drearily introspective, which is the most obvious thing you can write about West, but, frankly, the last thing people want right now. Nothing here in any way properly explores his provocative tweet storm of May 2018 and so what listeners are left with is sort of a West entirely inside himself; a man who barely seems to have noticed half the world now hate him. Or, perhaps, smart enough to know that people forget things fast these days or are easily distracted from a mediocre album by lots of mentions - "I love your titties 'cause they prove I can focus on two things at once!" - of his wife. Where were we?
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