The Life Of Pablo, as well as all the madness surrounding its release, can be appropriately summed up by Kanye’s line, “Name one genius that ain’t crazy!”. We genuinely don’t know what goes on inside of Kanye’s head, and frankly, we aren’t sure if anyone does; but what we do know is that he really is a genius of the artistic kind. With each album he's released, he's proven to be one of the most consistently innovative artists of our time, and his standards of quality and creativity are nearly unparalleled. His music is far from conventional, and, if you’re willing to appreciate a work of art here, Pablo will leave you more than satisfied. In short, Pablo is a beautiful, schizophrenic mess. The album progresses in an unrestricted, train-of-thought manner that cuts so sporadically from sample to sample, high to low, and euphoria to dysphoria, that you very well might lose track of what song you’re on. Vocally, Kanye often elects for an organic-sounding, free-flowing method, and, even taking some of the shock-value lines into account, we’re still loving the style a lot. “Ultralight Beam” might be an even better intro to an album than “Dark Fantasy” was, and when Kanye said that Pablo would be a gospel album, he makes it clear right away that he wasn’t lying. The entire song has a holy feel to it, and we're hailing Chance The Rapper's feature here as the best on the album as a whole. In terms of the project as a whole, though, “Ultralight Beam” stands alone, for we don’t really dive into Pablo's sound until the “Father Stretch My Hands” parts, which include vocals from Kid Cudi and a phenomenal verse from new label artist Desiigner. Meanwhile—regardless of its controversial lyric—“Famous” is certainly one of the album’s new hits, and it jumps nicely in between Kanye's heated verses and Rihanna’s gorgeous vocals before transitioning into a glorious, blissful sample. “Highlights”, “Waves”, and the new version of “Facts” are a few more surefire hits, but we're still enjoying the darker tracks like “FML” and “Wolves” just as much. Taking everything into account, there really isn’t a song on Pablo that you should pass up. The mixed reviews might make you skeptical of the project as a whole, but we encourage you to give it a chance, if only because the amount of thought and creativity injected here is an insane amount. Whether you think Kanye's a god or a lunatic, it's a fact that he's building one of the most interesting legacies of any artist out, and The Life Of Pablo helps puts him higher up in the running of greatest, most fascinating artists of our time. Stream The Life Of Pablo in full on TIDAL now.
Kanye West