Two years later, is The Life of Pablo any better?
I was out with some friends the night it happened.
Kanye West’s ridiculous tweets aimed at everything from Amber Rose’s fidelity to Wiz Khalifa’s cool pants were fun, but did a poor job of masking what had become an irreconcilable botch of an album release.
So Help Me God became SWISH, then SWISH became Waves. Then it became a mystery. Then the release date changed. Then the track list dropped, then changed. Then it was wrong. We had to guess what TLOP meant. Oh, The Life of Pablo. Sure. There was a crazy release concert at Yeezy Season 3 in Madison Square Garden, and I think Lamar Odom was there (shout out to all the students behind me who didn’t say anything about me streaming it during lecture). I was burnt out.
Then I wasn’t.
A nice Saturday night was beginning to take shape. It was near the middle of February, as it is now, and around some party games and some friends, the anxiety of the last few weeks blissfully evaporated.
“It dropped,” a buddy texted me. And I was gone.
My roommate was gone for the weekend, so I had the room to myself. I had already downloaded TIDAL — Jesus, what the fuck was TIDAL? — so I took my shoes off and hit play. Within 30 seconds, “Ultralight Beam” left me holding both my shoe and my tears. Never had I dumped so much energy into an album I hadn’t even heard yet, and that first song, that first sound, was everything I could have imagined and more.
“Ultralight Beam” kicks ass. The rest of the tracklist has given plenty of people pause. The Life of Pablo is one of the most misunderstood albums ever; it’s an introspective audio spectacle that feels like a dud buried among a sea of smash-hit projects that have come to define their creator’s career.
TLOP didn’t have the star power of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, the hilarious rococo of Graduation, or the instant recognizability of Yeezus. “Lowlights” got immediately memed, as did the bleached asshole that made Ye feel so philosophical. But TLOP was — quite literally — Kanye’s least edited and most unadulterated work, and definitely presents the artist at both his absolute weirdest and his absolute most vulnerable. But has time provided a more complimentary context?
I actually took a class on Kanye when I was in college, so let me tell you, any Kanye album discussion quickly turns into a debate (or screaming match) about his cobblestone path of cultural relevance, and the two entities’ dynamic relationship. Kanye gained relevance with The College Dropout and Late Registration, squeezed it tight with Graduation, hid from it in 808s and Heartbreak, then regained it with MBDTF and Yeezus.
In nearly any discussion, though, Kanye is presented as exploitative of this cultural relevance. He sought it out. He has a shoe line and is a part of the biggest reality show of all time, after all. But TLOP is the first album that gave voice to what some suspected all along: the fame was eating him alive.
While listening to it, remember that since this album came out, Kanye has gone dark. He’s completely off social media. When is the last time you saw him in anything but a candid photo on TMZ? He’s been involved in singles here and there, but has undertaken no major projects in the two years since TLOP. The kids are the perfect reason to say goodbye to the limelight, but Kanye gives the impression in this album that he wished it had never been so bright in the first place.
“Father Stretch My Hands” showed Kanye up to his old tricks, and “Pt. 2” allowed him to discuss a different side of that story with the blooming genre of trap music. The claps and high hat slap on the beat, and the triplet trap rap style that’s been critiqued as repetitive in recent years feels much less confined when it’s projected through Kanye’s mouth.
Then there’s “Famous”: the cataclysmic finale of a saga Kanye had no choice but to carry through. And no, I don’t mean anyone forced him. Kanye is as ego-driven as ever in this project, but it’s beginning to weigh on him. The plays at Taylor Swift and Ray J are funny, but again, do little to mask the vulnerability Kanye seems overly desperate to show.
His experimentation extends far beyond trying his hat at the trap game. The middle sections of this album are heavy, heady listen after heavy, heady listen. Few bangers lie in the midsection, but the songs “Waves”, “FML”, “Real Friends” and “Wolves” refuse to be ignored. They’re slow and deliberate, unlike anything else on the album and unlike most songs Kanye has made. They offer the experimentation of 808s, but openly confront something much bigger than a lost love. Listening to them again, a lot of songs off TLOP sound distinctly like Kendrick Lamar’s recent album DAMN. You can’t tell me “Real Friends” doesn’t remind you a bit of “LOVE.”
Real Friends feels more like a grievance to himself than his friends.
I’m a deadbeat cousin, I hate family reunions
Fuck the church up by drinkin’ at the communion
Spillin’ free wine, now my tux is ruined In town for a day, what the fuck we doin’?”
“When was the last time I remembered a birthday?
When was the last time I wasn’t in a hurry?
Fame brings with it many new and exciting joys, but what does it do to the old ones?
That being said, a Kanye West album is never without its perfectection. Not all of his comedy falls flat: “No More Parties in LA” is a masterpiece, and everything that fans could have hoped for in a Kanye-Kendrick union. “30 Hours” still seems like it’s a catchy music video away from being the only thing you hear on the radio for a month.
But the duds will continue to help define the album and its legacy, and that’s not unfair. “I Love Kanye” is funny, but uncomfortable. “Lowlights” is a skip from me. “Silver Surfer” is a joke, and not a good one.
But another few listens begs a bigger question. For an album so undermastered, why was it also so tardy? Why were there still so many moving pieces upon release; songs that had to be cut and re-added several times? My theory is that Kanye had doubts. Not about the quality of the work as a whole; but of the barenaked nature of its troubling message. It’s an explicit call for help, an admission of years of regret, just presented alongside some ironic-but-not self-loathing gallows humor.
Kanye has taken a beating over the years, man. Listen to “The New Workout Plan” off Dropout, then listen to “Wolves”. Listen to “FML”. The rapper we love to hate has turned cold. The memes and overly self-deprecating jokes don’t do much to spare the listener from a feeling of dread for the artist — and his unflappable and comforting self-assurance — they grew up idolizing. It’s a tough realization.
In the end, The Life of Pablo was the most intimate look we’ve ever had at Kanye’s inner conscious, and we weren’t ready for it. That doesn’t make the album bad; and it never did. It never was.
Kanye’s styles were copied by his contemporaries from the second his album was (re)released, as they always are — and whether or not you think this album is great, you definitely think one of its derivatives is. If TLOP is Kanye’s most open-hearted album, it could also be his last. Rumors of Turbo Grafx 16 have all but died out, and rumblings of a new project seem, at best, years away. If this is it, the Kanye we have to hold onto forever is the one we created by despising.
If your mama knew how
You turned out, you too wild
You too wild, you too wild
You too wild, and I need you now
Lost in… my doubt
