Tag: Kanye West

audio review : Cruel Summer

audio review : Cruel Summer

The hooks on the first two songs are annoying. R Kelly, for one, sounds silly stretching the word “world” out to so many syllables. Neither is as bad as on a song called Higher though, which is practically unbearable. There is “GOOD” music here, but most of it is confined to the actual music. The instrumental beats, even without Kanye West at the helm, thump with artistic flair.

The raps are neither here nor there; there aren’t really any stand-out MCs in Kanye’s clique; though feature verses from Ghostface Killah and Jadakiss serve as pleasant surprises. Song highlights include Don’t Like, an updated version of the Chief Keef song, which isn’t at all appropriate as the ending to an album that represents a record label he’s not signed to, Sin City and The One.

my rating : 3 of 5

2012

audio review : My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy ( album ) … Kanye West

audio review : My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy ( album ) ... Kanye West

With songs eight and nine minutes long, this album goes for grand and epic rather than Dark and Twisted, but it’s all the same in the world of Kanye West. He’s grown from a mere College kid to one of the brightest stars modern pop music has to offer. Conventional verses and choruses aren’t enough. These songs, laced with some of his most ambitious beats, aren’t bound by the rules of standard rap music.

There are choruses and bridges where you don’t expect them to be, rhapsodic alterations in the arrangement of the music itself, guest artists squeezed-in for the hell of it and… What’s with all these lo-fi effects on Kanye’s voice? I don’t know, but, unlike the Autotune vocoder abuse happening on 808s And Heartbreak, it works, giving the album a refreshingly raw and unpolished demo session type of feel.

It’s the old-school hip-hop drums that may never go out of style and Kanye West’s rap skills that keep things interesting between the singing. I’d rather not hear Rihanna’s whiny voice, Nicki Minaj and Rick Ross should be limited to one song each, the interludes should be tracked with the songs they go with, Power is weak and the Yeezy nickname sounds gay, but this still might be the best West album so far.

The annoying skits are long gone, so a good chunk of the album, which includes only eleven actual songs, is consistently on-point. That streak starts with a three-headed Monster featuring Jay-Z. He can also be heard on the next song, So Appalled, where Rza makes a pleasantly surprising feature. Then it’s on to the Devil In A New Dress; a hot chick whose 1970s-inspired theme sounds like vintage Kanye West.

Perhaps the most endearing part of his Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy comes at the end of The Blame Game where a semi-funny Chris Rock engages in a dialogue with what is supposed to be his girlfriend. She sounds either awkwardly copy-and-pasted, retarded or drugged out of her fucking mind, but it’s cute how she says what she says. The background piano music on this song is indeed beautiful.

my rating : 4 of 5

2010

audio review : Late Registration ( album ) … Kanye West

audio review : Late Registration ( album ) ... Kanye West

Following the formula that made his debut album a success story, literally if you let the last track play out, College Dropout Kanye West takes us back to school with an all-new album. Well, it’s not “all” new. A lot of this music has been around for decades. That’s the fact this self-proclaimed hip-hop “legend” in the making has to thank more than anything else. West has a remarkable knack for lacing classic soul samples over modern beats flawlessly enough to create his own brand of ghetto funk, in other words, but the “own” part is up for debate.

You can’t deny the originality of the raps. His skills are still middle-class; compare for example his Drive Slow verse to the Iller one Eminem spit over the same sample for his Slim Shady EP; but he shares his thoughts on these songs with the kind of sloppy honesty you’d (I’d) like to hear on rap albums more often. This semester has him turning his nose up to the freshmen; “since Pac passed away, most you rappers don’t even deserve a track from me,” he boasts as if he’s been on top for a decade; but that’s just what fame and fortune does to some people.

His take of Diamonds isn’t what you may think though. And when he sees a Gold Digger, a young black woman who “ain’t messing with no broke niggas”, he’s using the gritty drive of the drums to egg her on. This is “black” music, after all, Crack Music to drop out of college and register late to, for what he’d describe as “my” people. Even when that segregated unity borderlines sugarcoated racism, the verses aren’t outstanding enough nor is the music not brilliantly distracting enough to strike any serious nerves among the campus back-packers.

my rating : 4 of 5

2005

audio review : Watch The Throne ( album ) … Jay-Z + Kanye West

audio review : Watch The Throne ( album ) ... Jay-Z + Kanye West

A lot of rappers claim to be the King, but Jay-Z and Kanye West have the success and popularity to at least provide some evidence for the claim. It’s a ridiculous claim, especially with Eminem still making records, but it’s also a metaphorical one. Bragging and boasting is embedded in the history of rap. If you can’t pay homage to your own skills, you can always focus on your money and the affluent lifestyle it affords you.

“I only like green faces,” West says in response to claims that he’s racist. Listening to such highbrow lines during one of America’s worst economic declines provides some cool dream-chasing escapism, but it’s not all bragging and boasting. There’s also an underlying theme on this album that seems to promote humanitarianism when it comes to the group of people Kanye West once said George Bush doesn’t care about.

Jay-Z hasn’t made a good album in almost a decade, but instead of being pulled up by the monster he created; Kanye West only produces one song on his own; the album comes across as an underwhelming follow-up to his Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Too many of the beats rely on familiar samples. Most of the breaks; the hooks and bridges often used to time-stretch songs that have only two verses; are mundane.

Not even Jay-Z’s sexy wife is able to Lift Off on a song in which neither rapper raps. Kanye West sings instead. Or is he crying? Jay-Z provides a mere four bars. Such little contribution makes it sound like a Beyoncé demo song she’s only come-up with the chorus for. What’s out of this world is the ending, where the generic beat changes into something enchanting. If only the whole song sounded like that.

A similar thing happens at the end of Niggas In Paris in which Jay-Z continues to borrow bars from his dead comrade; The Notorious BIG; as a Soulja Boy type of thumper beat is replaced by Kanye West zoning-out to holy chords over a rhythmic static track. It’s innovative moments like that I wish there were more of. Instead we get Swizz Beatz, stupid James Brown samples and the dreaded rebirth of Autotune.

my rating : 3 of 5

2011