Album of the Week: Jesus Is King — Kanye West
Faith. Politics. Fashion. Music. Controversy. Kanye West’s identity knows no bounds. Yet, his identity has had a costly effect on the critical reception of his musical output. At URY, we are still hopeful that he’ll return to form; is his latest venture into evangelical Christianity an avenue into this?
How do you introduce a man who needs no introduction? Jesus is King is the Trump-loving-Bush-hating-slavery-questioning-Christian’s ninth studio album. Having contributed a number of modern hip-hop classics in the last two decades, he has truly developed the clout needed to claim that he is “the greatest human artist of all time”. However, the question is, does Jesus is King live up to the high bar that he has set with his previous works? Not really.
Kanye is an enigma, so it’s hard to listen to him speak without trying to strip away all of the contradictions and ego. In his recent Big Boy interview, he sounds crazed, unmeasured, willing to dive headfirst into all controversy that comes his way, blunt, and unintelligible at the same time. It’s hard to tell if he genuinely believes all that he’s saying, or if there’s something more cynical going on, or if he just doesn’t give a damn. This is what makes Kanye such a captivating individual.
This entire album rollout feels incredibly unusual, from the constantly set and scrapped release dates to his full commitment to Christianity. His every word has dominated headlines, from stating that his support of Trump was to “break stigma”, or that those involved in his album could not have pre-marital sex, to preventing Pusha-T from rapping about cocaine on his album. This album boasts unconventional artwork and his new merch is such an eyesore it feels like satire; it’s like Kanye is taking shots at himself. There’s no point in making jokes about Kanye because he’s already beaten us to the punch. He seems so incredibly self-aware, yet incredibly delusional all at the same time, so it’s not easy to tell which one of these personas is an act.
Every year, an album is dropped that is completely dwarfed by the context surrounding it. 2016 had Blackstar, 2018 had Iridescence, and now we have Jesus is King. While it sits at a very trim 27 minutes, it is impossible to listen to this album without taking into account months of context. This album was created in the wake of his recently scrapped record Yandhi — after rekindling his connection with God, Kanye realized that Yandhi did not match up with his image anymore. As he puts it himself, ‘Everbody wanted Yandhi, then Jesus Christ did the laundry’.
The opening track ‘Every Hour’ is the closest this album comes to a full-on gospel track, featuring his Sunday Service Choir that he has been performing with every Sunday since January this year. However, this is their only feature, as the rest of the record takes a more traditional hip-hop approach tending towards very religious lyrical content.
The tracks ‘Selah’ and ‘Follow God’ are easily the best two tracks on the album, which coincidentally sound the most like traditional Kanye songs. The bass drum hits halfway through ‘Selah’ followed by these swelling chants of ‘hallelujah’ demonstrate West’s unparalleled production and songwriting abilities, and the power behind this song is incredibly captivating. The melding of harshness and beauty makes this track sound like a lost track off of last year’s Kids See Ghosts project, which is in every way a compliment.
‘Follow God’ begins with a sample that demonstrates Kanye’s ear for great beats, letting it breathe for just a second before Kanye begins to spit masterful cadences as the drums launch. Kanye meditates on his relationship to God and difficulties living a religious life. His flow is unstoppable and on top form, if my local Sunday Service sounded like this every week, the church would be flooded by converts. My only gripe with this track is its length, feeling more like a teaser for something bigger than a finished article.
Even though the music on this album does have very strong gospel influences, such as the incredibly beautiful backing vocals in ‘Water’ which accent the refrain and elevate an otherwise okay track, this track stands in the shadow of better attempts at these types of beats, such as Chance’s Colouring Book or even Kanye’s own The Life of Pablo (especially the stellar ‘Ultralight Beam’, which XXL named as the sixth-greatest album intro of the decade). Whilst singing strictly about his devotion to Christianity in ‘God Is’, it can’t help but feel like he is still making this about himself. The beat does not help either, which holds heavily processed gospel vocals that sound like a rejected Garageband synth sample. The opening vocals are mixed so poorly that it doesn’t take long to start grating on you.
‘Closed on Sunday’ is the biggest head-scratcher on this record. A menacing introduction is completely contradicted by West’s croons of “Closed on Sunday, you my Chick-fil-a”. It comes off as a joke and there’s a chance it might be. His bars, later on, seem to get back on track, making allusions to various Biblical verses. But the closing wail of “CHICK-FIL-A!!!” is so out of place it mimics the sound of his tongue stabbing all the way through his cheek.
‘Use this Gospel’ is a late album highlight, with the instrumentals giving way for a brilliant saxophone solo from legendary jazz artist Kenny G. It is simple, stripped back, yet completely mesmerizing, hinting at the greatness this album could have achieved if there were any more coherence to it.
For a good summary of this album, you need to look no further than his merch line. It’s infinitely worse than the album itself, looking like MS Paint and Word Art’s bastard child, yet its principals are the same. Exploiting his newfound love of God to make money out of tirades of fans and flaunting his past genius is the reason why many keep paying attention. While Jesus is King is passably good, there’s an aftertaste of cynicism which pulls the whole endeavour down a few pegs.
All in all, this album is incredibly brief, and it suffers greatly for it. Some of the tracks don’t even scrape 2 minutes. There are great moments on this project, but it feels more like a selection of sketches that fully fleshed out masterpieces. His move to Christianity comes off as another way to steal the headlines and build up hype, and if this is his aim then he has certainly achieved it. No matter how much time he spends claiming otherwise on this album, the only thing that Kanye really worships is himself.
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