Kanye West has made more than a few notations of Jesus Christ and the effects of religion on his work. Clatter listeners of good faith over the head with obvious trajectory then. A beautiful blue cover and little to love on the inside, Jesus is King marks an obvious step in faith for West as he outlines his ego once more. It is a shame but an inevitable change of pace for the legendary producer-turned-star. One day the fame and faith in his abilities, the big names circling his projects like vultures hoping to stuff themselves before their works a year or two later, would dry up. It would leave an isolated man riffing on his own experiences and those same plucky moments of youthful courage charted two decades before this are slopped out as the makings of a Christ-like figure. Gone is the sense of shock, replaced by a demand to be here and higher than before.
Sunday Service Choir opens the short and shaky procession. He has learned nothing from what came before – the taxing realisations West has lacked in his music bubbles to the surface once more. Every Hour comes and goes with the manic energy of a gospel group processing the loss of one of their flock and the grieving comes through in sparks of optimistic and deflective song. Selah sounds stronger even if it does mark just a list of Bible passages West has been moved by. His religious beliefs have always guided his music but in this instance, it overpowers any creative energy or infliction of unique and entertaining musical effort. Repetitive moments of cheap intertextuality and the rejoicing of hallelujah mark these opening songs as well-mixed but tired lyrical assertions. It is a problem West suffers from on Yeezus and there is little change over six years.
Even West appreciates the difficulty of shops shutting at 4pm on a Sunday. Such is the tale of Closed On Sunday, though presumably, he means the heart and not the Big Tesco down the road. Consider the brevity of the project and it feels more like West is cobbling together some leftovers in the studio than actively participating in a common, running theme projected by the title and his beliefs. Instead, the likes of On God and God Is filter through with the expectation and hope of religious synergy being the guiding light of a project with little to it. Much of this is a lyrical disappointment and the feeling that West would like to be in and out of the project. It is the slow slide into a system of work where he claims his work to be the best but provides no lyrical evidence of this. His mind is still sharp in mixing and feeling new and unruly instrumentals, but it lacks the punch of his best and brightest works.
Twenty-seven minutes is all it took for West to shatter the trust people held in his music. He was already on thin ice throughout the 2010s and never quite reached the peak of his first trilogy of records and the solid work of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. He may claim to have everything he needs but West has never sounded so far from completion. Allegories and Biblical references are scuppered. Adam and Eve, proverbs and the like are all used as cut-and-shut mentions with little depth to their appearances on the likes of Everything We Need. Still, the pull of the West name is strong enough to bring in the likes of Fred Hammond and Ty Dollar $ign, the latter now responsible for the tiresome Vultures. Damaged souls may be in the sights of this near-half-hour, but West has nothing of note to aid the salvation of his listeners.
