Yeezus is a strange album. Kanye’s quest to be avant garde continues, taking him to some truly ridiculous, often tasteless, sometimes hilarious places – and I cannot stop listening to it.
The influence of the Euro-electro sounds of Daft Punk (who collaborate on ‘I Am a God’) is evident in the spare electronic beats and distorted synthesised motifs present throughout Yeezus. The sounds are unique, but Kanye’s raps are as over-the-top and mono-thematic as ever. Despite some politically evocative track titles like ‘New Slaves’, ‘Blood on the Leaves’ and ‘On Sight’, Kanye remains primarily concerned with his own importance, sexual prowess and why nobody likes him.
Regardless, every song is beautifully constructed and entrancing, with interesting, lagging beats, moments of silence followed by guttural screams, emotive synth solos and some fantastic samples (the Brenda Lee sample on ‘Bound 2’ is stellar). Yeezus is clearly not just a rap album, spanning electro, goth and even metal elements; in ‘New Slaves’, as the beat builds and Kanye is chanting “God!” in a low, raspy scream, I was almost expecting a double-kick drum to thrash in after the break.
There are also funny moments, like the already-infamous “Hurry up with my damn croissants!” in ‘I Am a God’, or the ridiculous association between sex with an Asian woman and sweet n’ sour sauce in ‘I’m In It’. Kanye pushes some of his lyrical idea to their silliest limits, and even he can’t help but laugh after a particularly drawn-out, graphic line in ‘On Sight’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0QcxWPB59o
Repulsive sentiments towards women are par for the course on a Kanye West album, but I did find his boundary-pushing quite off-putting at times, particularly in ‘Blood on the Leaves’. Looping a sample from the tragic classic ‘Strange Fruit’, the sombre track is haunting and mournful, until you realise Kanye is so cut up because women try to use him for his money and fame. The coupling of “To all my second-string bitches/Try and get a baby” with Billie Holliday’s emotive voice singing of “Black bodies swaying in the southern breeze” is incongruous and irksome. Some of Kanye’s rhymes are also a little uninspiring, he is very fond of rhyming a word with itself, or twisting pronunciations and pausing jarringly so the rhymes fit the lines; nevertheless, this is a great album, inventive and complex. Just don’t listen too closely to the lyrics.
8/10
Reviewer: Frances Bulley