A fine producer turned finer artist turns his hand away from what made his music profound and entertaining. Kanye West has struggled to maintain the hype. Struggle as you may to accept the fact but Yeeezus serves as the start of the decline. It was twisted to expect a masterful follow-up to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy but still, the thought remains of his earliest works being his best. A trilogy from his debut The College Dropout to Graduation lingers as a passionate struggle for a producer-turned-star to prove himself. Now that he has, there is nothing more to do but isolate the ego and coax it from its cave occasionally hitting on some powerful thought or activity. This is the case for Yeezus, an album which features a few spots and nothing of the same, raw carnage featured earlier.
The evolution was inevitable but could have been managed better. An album ripped to pieces and thrown together in parts of TikTok and online sub-cultures. On Sight is more notable now for its static and heavy patterns. Contemporary classics which discard the vocal work West displays here. He opens solid enough, an expression of winning over complacent spouses and the lack of care when doing so – it is just unfortunate the pace and tempo is all over the place. On Sight is disjointed and brash, a clunky collection of ideas which lashes out at David Grutman. What did electronic music do to West? Who knows but he tries to destroy it here. Again, for Black Skinhead the heavy electronics and percussion paired with cries like that of the wrestler Sting, and little of it feels memorable. Just loud.
Yeezus begins to lose sight of the nervousness West would overhaul and appreciate in his music. Instead, the grand ego which was used to deflect the pain and potential for disaster is now removed for he is too big to fail. I Am A God is the likeliest example – another heavy and unrefined section of bass and drill. Alleged chats with Jesus mark a moment where West views himself as a God. In the sense of his impact on those who listen, he probably is to some. He has as much claim to the cult-like grandeur as many other artists, but it is the way West expresses this – the nightmarish screams which hear him both thankful for his position and haunted by the impact – and gives Yeezus the mixed-bag appeal. String sections paired with the jittering electronics and the tech-heavy horrors are incredible instrumentals, but they lack punchy, powerful lyrics to bring them up to the high bar West set.
Where the heartfelt drive of Blood On The Leaves could have been built further, West takes over once more as he hopes to hone his ego not into a weapon but an indestructible defence. A shame it may be to hear, it was almost inevitable. This is no poor reflection of West and his attitude towards what was making his music worth listening to – but the reliance on those electronic spikes and the sampling throughout is simply a major step down compared to his previous works. Possibilities of grand efforts wasted and filtered through lacklustre lyrics which still hold pockets of worth, just not as much as would be expected off the back of his alleged high point.
