Kanye West's new 2018 album

Or motivational speech collection, whichever.

my album is 7 songs

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 19, 2018

June 1st

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 19, 2018

Or should I say 'albums'?

me and Cudi album June 8th

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 19, 2018

collab album, watch the stoned

Not quite!

it's called Kids See Ghost. That's the name of our group

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 19, 2018

Kudi back

Kanye's insistence that Cudi is talented has me much more concerned for his judgment and mental health than any of his tweets

did anyone hear Cudi's rock album?

I’ve been too traumatized by the TLOP rollout to not assume that this is gonna become another epic exercise in goalpost-moving.

7 tracks is pretty great. Immediately makes it seem different than anything he has done. On the other hand, Pablo still seems pretty bad to me.

xp otm but @ least a june release means he wont be rushed to coincide w an snl performance

7 tracks can only mean one thing...a song-by-song cover album of The Blue Nile's Hats

7 dub versions of Day and Night by Kid Cudi

hope it's still called Turbo Grafx 16

^^^ otm

I hope it's actually called 7 songs but is 5 tracks long

lmao he's posting videos from the Dilbert guy on Twitter

new album gonna be called "Late MAGAstration"

808s & Bad Takes

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Professor

Watch the Pee Tape

Iirc Kanye’s mother death and Cudi’s father death had a deep impact on them... maybe that’s what the title implies?

I secretly hope this album is actually good instead of being a piece of shit like Pablo was.

I hope it's called 5 Songs and has no songs.

I'm guessing the lyrics will be even more shit than usual, but I'm hoping for productions as insane as on Yeezus.

At this point I'm spending all my hope on the Nas album.

i like all his albums, looking forward to this

The last Nas album was good!

Kanye is kinda the Notary
Morrissey of rap, makes sense this is happening

Lol the Notary Morrissey

Kanye still hasn’t done anything lately that’s as bad as ruining “Father Stretch My Hands Pt 1” with the stupidest verse of his life

— BUM CHILLUPS (@edsbs) April 23, 2018

fuck kanye

he's such a ridiculous person.

Like, it's such a transparent ploy for mentally unstable celebrities these days: "I like trump now! Gimme attention!"

^^^

yeah and it still works, which sucks

7 songs and a june release date makes me think of Yeezus. i feel very good about this

DJTeezus

will kanye ever realize that he's not an individualist genius, he's a vector for his tastes with a knack for plainspoken interiority? (no)

I'm kinda excited for the Nas record, just to have him working with one producer

http://people.com/music/kanye-west-seems-on-edge-hard-to-deal/

:\

xp who's the producer?

Kanye

whaaat now I'm hyped too!

"Please never use the word erratic to describe a person who is economically and psychologically empowered"

he sure is on drugs :/

You really shouldn’t use the phrase “on drugs” to describe a person who is economically and psychologically empowered

he's bipolar

hey i'm pretty uncomfortable with the cavalier way people are diagnosing kanye in this thread!

but if someone knows something i don't then that's fine too, maybe i'm overreacting

What? Huge celebrity goes on stupid rambling Twitter rant and we're just supposed to send hopes and prayers?

ok i’m overreacting nm

lol kanye makes people say the dumbest shit i swear, mission accomplish ye

Pretty big space between 'hopes and prayers' and diagnosing him as 'bipolar' tbh, but ymmv

Hooboy.

oh, fucking hell

kanye fucking sucks incidentally

Here is a pic of him with a maga hat with some folks apparently throwing neonazi signs ... already seeing this image of his face as an avatar for far right twitter accounts

https://bit.ly/2r0F4fK

cocaine's a hell of a drug

He's always been like this though. This is Kanyeuniversity.com without ever having to pretend like he understands the proleteriat.

pretty sure the source of the speculation is at least as far back as the 5150 from two years ago

Always been chill with white supremacy ...?

Xpost

i don't think lyor cohen is doing a neonazi sign

i think lyor cohen is just lame

Wait that's Lyon Cohen .... my head hurts

Anyways the OK sign is widel recognized as an alt right thing but of course it's possible that this is not the reference, but its proximity to the maga hat ... idk, feels bad man

only when he formally declares that George W. Bush cares about black people will the cycle be complete

Plus a follow-up tweet about meeting with Peter Thiel...

Cheat sheet: This is Lucian Grainge (CEO of Universal Music, biggest music label in the world) and Lyor Cohen (head of music at YouTube, the biggest video site in the world) pic.twitter.com/7VNo8ZtNjH

— Joan E. Solsman (@joan_e) April 25, 2018

"that was some weird shit" - george w. bush, again

His internal struggle with white acceptance is a common theme in his music and life, is it not? Looking at this through a MAGA-world lens, it's not surprising that it reads as more in your face, pro-white supremacy in this context.

no no matter what you say i will not admit that kanye has been like this all along and the context has merely shifted!!!!

xxxxxp

https://assets.vogue.com/photos/59a04db26bc89b160b6f8dd6/master/pass/00-lede-lyor-cohen-sag-harbour-book-party.jpg

i mean i think it's just his 'i'm next to a rapper pose' (which is also y'know suspect)

also don't think widely recognised is the right term for something only recognised by very online people

That's cool. Hope you vote blue!

ok!

Pretty big space between 'hopes and prayers' and diagnosing him as 'bipolar' tbh, but ymmv

i mean i think it's just his 'i'm next to a rapper pose' (which is also y'know suspect)

Elroy Cohen has been standing next to rappers (and helping them get paid by white ppl) since Chance was minus nine years old

My hope for him and his family is that he gets treatment. And flappy bird otm. And the space isn’t big at all if you’ve ever cared about someone with it.
― El Tomboto, Wednesday, April 25, 2018 1:16 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i get this, i guess i am often very uncomfortable with the way people casually talk about other people's mental health online (and irl) but have a hard time expressing why

Kanye is cancelled

maga hat is a bad look even if you are being a contrarian asshole

lyor cohen's probably one of the top 5 most important ppl in the history of the rap biz

no to mention on the red hatters responding to his stupid tweets , like those fucking assholes were so fucking thirsty for this kind of validation and there it is xp

i get this, i guess i am often very uncomfortable with the way people casually talk about other people's mental health online (and irl) but have a hard time expressing why

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), Wednesday, April 25, 2018 1:24 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

because it's often just an excuse to shit on people, it's often just concern trolling

sorry, don't mean to put words in your mouth. those are just my dumb social media mediated thoughts

Kanye West does not care about black people

i mean that’s def part of it brimstead

A piece on the hand signal. I always looks at it as this bit of trolling that backfired because it started as “we're gonna troll the left into thinking this non-racist thing is racist” which led to it effectively becoming a racist signal after photos of noted white supremacists doing it.

https://theoutline.com/post/1428/the-ok-sign-is-becoming-an-alt-right-symbol?zd=2&zi=cr7zx3w5

fuck kanye

― Dan I., Monday, April 23, 2018 7:50 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

With all those production credits coming up, wonder if anyone will distance themselves (Nas et al).

gotta say though lmao @ all the #MAGA idiots whining about the media "suddenly" attacking Kanye for this as though his bizarre and erratic opinions haven't been a talking point for a decade now

Aren't those maga idiots the same people that told Lebron to shut up and dribble ?

Xpost Yeah the “Bill Cosby innocent!” thing isn’t that long ago.

We've arrived at the shithead singularity

https://i.imgur.com/ZYjnUnx.png

sad, but not surprising, to see all this

important point of distinction: the alt right internet anime nazis have always been OK with kanye, it's the republican white soccer mom contingent that really hates him

I wasn't aware that kanye was hated by any particular group, he's always seemed broadly popular to me

he is not

or at least he hasn't been for a long time

every album since Late Registration has been less popular than the one before it

Kayne going full MAGA is a good example of what living in Calabasas will do to a person.

he's always seemed broadly popular to me

― k3vin k., Wednesday, April 25, 2018 5:48 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

really? people love to hate Kanye

he's not like idk Bruno mars or whoever who is "broadly popular"

kanye is the opposite of broadly popular among non-internet music geeks

So yeah I’ll admit it seems silly to think that Lyon Cohen has been red pilled but ... wait is that a silly thought tho? I’ve heard terrifying things about Dude

every album since Late Registration has been less popular than the one before it

And yeah Kanye has produced extremely polarized opinions since the start of his career.

hmmm by popular I guess I meant respected; I'm under the impression that he is seen by most as a serious artist (if, obviously, a huge jackass). I haven't really met anyone in the last 10 years, certainly not any normies, who dislike him

Twisted Fantasy?

sold 400,000 less than 808s

he's "respected" by millenials who don't know any better and ilxors with bad taste

Kayne going full MAGA is a good example of what living in Calabasas will do to a person.

I keep thinking this too -- from "No More Parties in L.A." on.

Now Kim's on twitter talking about him no longer being in the sunken place. Unplug the internet for the night, plz.

lol 'dragon energy'

Kanye will never run in the race of popular opinion and we know that and that’s why I love him and respect him and in a few years when someone else says the same exact thing but they aren’t labeled the way he is and you will all praise them! Kanye is years ahead of his time

— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) April 25, 2018

I think I’ve figured out why Kanye and Jay aren’t friends anymore

heavy heavy denial going on in the ye subreddit today

Lmao Jack Posobiec is now the top rated comment on most of his recent tweets, great work Yeezy

Plenty has changed here homie. This ain’t #Calabasas dude. #Chicago is on the rise. You left 17 years ago. Come home & see.

— GLC The Ism (@GLCTHEISM) April 25, 2018

In other more IMPORTANT news… My Dog farted.

— ICE T (@FINALLEVEL) April 25, 2018

I love how easy it is to imagine Ice T saying that aloud

Chance is cancelled

The same goes for all the intersectional groups of the left that say you HAVE to be a democrat. That isn't true. Be free, think for yourself. https://t.co/01jMdg6ETa

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) April 26, 2018

chance's overly diplomatic shtick really bit him in the ass here

chance can do no wrong

uh

I didn't read his tweet as intending to be diplomatic

Chance development is unexpected

janelle monáe otm

Janelle Monáe said everything that needed to be said regarding Kanye’s views pic.twitter.com/1yXEPJcnVb

— Chris (@chrstnavelli) April 25, 2018

Twisted Fantasy?

sold 400,000 less than 808s

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, April 25, 2018 6:09 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that is shocking to me. i just remember how that was when the love for him went into overdrive... but i was among millennials and music geeks

it had the p4k 10.0 hype among indie rock music nerds but didn't have hits in the way his previous albums did

2018 eats it in so many ways

not a lot of this is surprising to me. sad though

This is all 100% Obama saying he was a jackass and Trump meeting with him, he's a narcissist

Back in 2010 I didn't have very many music-nerd type friends and yeah pretty much everyone around me couldn't stand kanye even after mbdtf came out. The whole interrupting-Taylor-swift fiasco had wrecked his popularity for years. I don't think that album had any radio hits either, just a lot of niche internet love

1.3 million sold = niche internet love, apparently

it had the p4k 10.0 hype among indie rock music nerds but didn't have hits in the way his previous albums did

― ufo, Wednesday, April 25, 2018 10:29 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Power, Monster, Runaway, and All of the Lights weren't hits? I'm not being facetious, I just remember hearing all of those constantly for the better part of a year. And I wasn't into that record, it was all by osmosis.

i mean i think it's just his 'i'm next to a rapper pose' (which is also y'know suspect)

his label was '300'

its more corny than suspect but whatever

kanye's best chart performances in the 2010s have either been collabs ("otis," "paris," "mercy") or songs that involved rihanna ("fourfiveseconds," "all of the lights"). "bound 2" did ok too

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanye_West_singles_discography#As_lead_artist

the long-term influence of 808s can't be overstated, though, particularly given the way it was derided at the time

anyway this all has been pretty depressing

except for janelle's statement. she's the best

the singles from MBDTF weren't anywhere near as dominant here (i'm Australian, but the US charts tell a similar story) as the hits from his previous albums had been

in 2013 Black Skinhead did feel inescapable here but I think that was just due to it getting a ton of alt radio play, it didn't chart particularly well

If I hear Kanye on the radio it's always Gold digger or Through the Wire or Can't Tell me Nothin

Can't Tell Me Nothin outlasting some of the other Graduation singles seems kind of baffling to me.

anyway this all has been pretty depressing

― maura, Thursday, April 26, 2018 12:02 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

except for janelle's statement. she's the best

― maura, Thursday, April 26, 2018 12:03 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Maura otm

Late Registration is one of my favourite albums, but omg kanye can get fucked

Kim Karadashian West? That must be his wife? Is she in the music biz too?
I went to her Twitter page (60 million followers!), and if anybody is interested,
I guess she has a "$15 Secret for Avoiding Stretch Marks"

Or he could get help, but another thing I realized yesterday is that nobody rich & famous gets good medical care, unless they find themselves in a regular old hospital.

You'll have us waiting then. But, please, hope I'll have my heart blown away?? I just need some rap beats...

Or he could get help, but another thing I realized yesterday is that nobody rich & famous gets good medical care, unless they find themselves in a regular old hospital.

he could get some fentanyl tho, i hear that stuff's great

I wouldn't assume that Kanye hasn't gotten help.

maga hat is a bad look even if you are being a contrarian asshole

― marcos, Wednesday, April 25, 2018

it's a tacky color

Twisted Fantasy?

sold 400,000 less than 808s

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Not a good gauge as most everyone's sales have cratered since the late 2000s.

Is ILX really having an argument about whether Kanye West is popular?

Beyonce's only two top tens this decade as a lead artist are "Formation" and "Drunk in Love"; no one will deny she's "popular" in any sense.

I'd say Kanye West is more popular than CZARFACE but not as popular as Joey Bada$$

But is he as popular as J Cole?

probably not.

Cole kinda cannibalized the audience who missed the old Kanye, the chop-up-the-soul Kanye.

lol

I mean, he was going into a meeting with the head of Universal and the head of YouTube programming, presumably to talk about his upcoming releases, and I can imagine him thinking "What can I do to demonstrate the attention I can get at any moment? What if I get Donald Trump to retweet me while I'm in the meeting?"

It's like when DJ Kahled put out on Snapchat the address of CAA when he was going to meet with them, to demonstrate how he could a mass of people to show up for him.

Cole kinda cannibalized the audience who missed the old Kanye, the chop-up-the-soul Kanye.

― 808s & Deep States (voodoo chili)

otm

Not a good gauge as most everyone's sales have cratered since the late 2000s.[

it's true, popular music is not as popular as it used to be!

but there were only 2 years between 808s and Twisted Fantasy, and the gap between 2008 and 2010 w/r/t the music industry doesn't seem as drastic as idk 2001 to 2003 or 2004 to 2007. but numbers don't lie

like hips!

Spotify is a music, podcast, and video streaming service launched on 7 October 2008.

there ya go. and spotify/streams weren't counted by Billboard until fairly recently right? like, within the last 3-4 years?

yeah album-equivalent is a pretty recent post-2010 development

But Spotify didn't launch in the US till 2011.

i was about to make that point

I can only go on the anecdotal examples of my friends and co-workers, who generally are only as racist to the extent all white people are racist, and I feel like they've all hated Kanye for like a decade now. Maybe it's a generational thing, it does feel like a lot of the breathless "Kanye can do no wrong" hypemanning that's been going on online for several years now up until recently has been driven by younger critics.

there's something very gross about a guy like Ben Shapiro (who wrote articles like "Rap is Crap") becoming a Kanye stan overnight

there's something very gross about a guy like Ben Shapiro.

cool that bestselling hiphop has its own Morrissey

new song is up
http://www.kanyewest.com

Straight trollin'

https://genius.com/14432967

The rap genius annotation for his poopy di scoop verse is a sight to behold

has anyone seen kanye and father john misty in the same room at the same time

another new song playing on POWER 106 FM on a loop http://www.power106.com

it's really stupid

Yeah the power 106 fm song is godawful, though it at least sounds like a one-off loosie

The production on Lift Yourself is at least pretty great

Song is freaking hilarious.

Yeah, poopy di scoop has sorta made my day! lol

But sure, the whole thing makes you seriously wonder about his mental health.

i like poopy di scoop makes me think of gertrude stein for some reason

also makes me think of a saying of dave bry's (a kanye fan btw), as ppl have been criticizing kanye's "dumb" lyrics lately:

"If you have a dumb idea, figure out how to make it dumber."

I've stolen this advice from Dave Bry and passed it to everyone I've managed.

— Chris Schonberger (@cschonberger) October 15, 2017

was m@tt saying kayne wasn't as popular as joey badass a joke or what lol

i forgive chance

WTF did I listen to and why

oh, T.I. paws

Something so irksome about seeing white people up in arms cause Chance said black people don't have to be democrats, even in the context of Kanye's bullshit.

He didn't have to apologise because of timing or whatever shit, he had to apologise because the same paternalism that drives that line of thinking, is of the same kind that gives white racists more power over the things that come out of black mouths, than black people.

i like poopy di scoop makes me think of gertrude stein for some reason

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Saturday, April 28, 2018 12:13 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Out of poopy comes di scoop, out of scoop comes diddy whoop. Out of whoop comes di scoop, out of di poop, poop di scoop di scoop di whoop.

was m@tt saying kayne wasn't as popular as joey badass a joke or what lol

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Saturday, April 28, 2018 2:19 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lol the Czarface reference wasn't enough of a tell?

Tsrodobo otm

he’s not wrong but in the context of ye’s bullshit it sucked!

admittedly this is the thread where things suck

Yeah it def sucks, my thesis is that almost literally everything about this sucks

Song reminds me of limewire days where you thought you downloaded a song you wanted and then it ended being something else.

Lyrics to the other song:

I know Obama was Heaven-sent
But ever since Trump won it proved that I could be President

Yeah you can, at what cost though?
Don't that go against the teachings that Ye taught for?

Yo T.I.P, I hear your side and everybody talk though
But ain't goin' against the grain everything I fought for?

Prolly so, Ye, but where you tryna go with this?
It's some shit you don't align with and don't go against

You just readin' the headlines, you don't see the fine print
You on some choosin'-side shit, I'm on some unified shit

It's bigger than your selfish agenda
If your election ain't gon' stop police from murderin' niggas

Bruh, I never ever stopped fightin' for the people
Actually wearin' the hat'll show people that we're equal

You gotta see the finer point of the people
What makes you feel equal makes them feel evil

See that's the problem with this damn nation
All Blacks gotta be Democrats, man, we ain't made it off the plantation

Fuck what you choose as your political party
You representin' dudes who seem crude and cold-hearted
With blatant disregard for the people who put you niggas in
So don't you feel an obligation to them?

I feel an obligation to show people new ideas
And if you wanna hear 'em, here go two right here
Make America Great Again, had a negative reception
I took it, wore it, rocked it, gave it a new direction
Added empathy, care and love and affection
And y'all simply questionin' my methods

What you willin' to lose for the point to be proved?
This is stubborn selfish bullshit, even for you
You wore a dusty ass hat to represent the same views
As white supremacy, man, we expect better from you
All them times you sounded crazy, we defended you, homie
Now just be down and we depend on you, homie
That's why it's important to know what direction you're goin' now
'Cause everything that you built can be destroyed and torn down

You think I ain't concerned about how I effect the past?
I mean I had stayed in my closet about a year and a half
Then one day I was like, "Fuck it, I'ma do me"
I was in the sunken place and then I found the new me
Not worried 'bout some image that I gotta keep up
Lot of people agree with me, but they're too scared to speak up

The greater good of the people is first
Have you considered all the damage and the people you hurt?
You had a bad idea, and you're makin' it worse
Shit's just as bad as Catholic preachers rapin' in church

Y'all been leadin' with hate
I just be approaching it different
Like a gang truce
I know everybody emotional
Is it better if I rap about crack? Huh? 'Cause it's cultural?
Or how about I'ma shoot you, or fuck your bitch?
Or how about this gucci, because I'm fuckin' rich

?Dear to god? for the lack of respect
Started to make a scene like Donny cut you a check
Toyin' with hot lava, better be careful with that
What's it mean to gain the world if you ain't standin' for shit?

Okay I gotta say it, Ye, you sound high as a bitch
Yeah, genocide and slavery, we should just try and forget
All that free thought shit find a better defense
But if Ye's stuck in his way, he can leave it at that, Fuck it

Alright T.I.P., we could be rappin' about this all day, man, why don't we just cut the beat off and let the people talk?

So Kanye really wants to run for president... seems he’s at least self-aware enough to be in on the joke but this shit is still wack.

cool that he's ripping off Joyner Lucas now

My theory is he has been seriously approached by the Republicans to run for governor or something so he’s trying to fit it into his “controversial” persona, he knows how irksome it is deep down so he asks TI to challenge it and he answers in a political manner, not openly supporting Trump but the idea of ““unity” behind MAGA. Still this is all stupid and terrible.

I think I prefer poopity scoop

Song reminds me of limewire days where you thought you downloaded a song you wanted and then it ended being something else.

That's pretty otm for me. Kanye wants to make mp3s great again

Also the production sounds terrible imo

My theory is he has been seriously approached by the Republicans to run for governor or something so he’s trying to fit it into his “controversial” persona, he knows how irksome it is deep down so he asks TI to challenge it and he answers in a political manner, not openly supporting Trump but the idea of ““unity” behind MAGA. Still this is all stupid and terrible.

lol the poop scooping song is a fantastic troll. the way it starts and slowly builds and then "This verse right here" and then kind of deliberately reading these words. it doesn't sound improvised at the mic, more like he wrote the words down, re-arranged the poops and scoops, in a purposeful manner, making it all the funnier. tho i do wonder what the meaning is juxtaposing it with the intro sample.

dig yourself out of the shit?

poop-diddy, whoop-scoop
poop, poop

tho i do wonder what the meaning is juxtaposing it with the intro sample.

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/bipolar-disorder/index.shtml

mobile.twitter.com/kanyewest/status/990263790368256000?s=19

Putting a photo that looks like a mugshot for millions of people to see doesn’t look too forgiving Kanye. It’s actually cold as fuck imho. You could have just called him and tell him you love him.

he should put the photo of the guy who paid for his mum's fatal surgery on the cover.

He seems so unwell and surrounded by vile people who do nothing but profit off him, tho he could be vile too, I don't know

Bruh, I never ever stopped fightin' for the people
Actually wearin' the hat'll show people that we're equal

this lyric is p interesting for those searching for kanye's angle here imo

"interesting"

lolz

i think he sees it as his responsibility to try to bridge a divide

off to an encouraging start there

it's very charitable for ye to release a track where ti pwns him on almost every line

He seems so unwell and surrounded by vile people who do nothing but profit off him

Kim can make her own money without him tbf

xp yeah he gets so thoroughly destroyed on that track that I'm actually kinda intrigued now

Bruh, I never ever stopped fightin' for the people
Actually wearin' the hat'll show people that we're equal

this lyric is p interesting for those searching for kanye's angle here imo

Claiming MAGA like claiming the n-word, hmmmmmmm

poopy scoops >>>>> two ageing rappers reading a text from a shared sheet of paper.

I just read the transcript but somebody please tell me the beat is Cube's "It's A Man's World"

Hahahahahahahahaha

Lmao

He does reference Cubes "Some rappers are heaven sent" line

hahaha

poopy scoops >>>>> two ageing rappers reading a text from a shared sheet of paper.

― human and working on getting beer (longneck)

Not enough >>>>>>>>>>>> in this

I hope SZA is on this album

Kanye is bipolar. He did an interview with Kimmel after dissing him a few years that was a classic manic episode. What’s described in that article is textbook hypomania.

I know people throw shit around casually, but it’s not something that’s a borderline case, it’s always obvious. Charlie Sheen 2011 being another example. There’s a clear seaparation from someone who’s moody or a little more energetic than average.

He gets destroyed by TI on a track of his and you all think it’s an accident and Kanye is a delusional misunderstood artists instead of a businessman of entertainment in the age of meme.

I’m curious as to, um, how substance abuse factors into that. Cuz I’ve known and do know people who from a distance would seem like textbook bipolar cases, but they’re for sure abusing coke and/or whatever amphetamines.

xp

http://www.complex.com/music/2018/04/kanye-west-share-smokepurrp-lift-yourself-remix-shout-out-j-cole

This keeps getting weirder and weirder

This is all so fuckin dumb

hope we get to read a lot of articles about it. then we will be living our best lives

I'm actually more interested in the articles rebutting the first wave of articles which will have, with a week's perspective, clearly failed to truly understand the meaning of scoopity poop

the only good thing to come out of this so far

The replies to this Kanye tweet are amazing pic.twitter.com/3dfSzzV3PF

— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) April 29, 2018

hope we get to read a lot of articles about it. then we will be living our best lives

― she carries a torch. two torches, actually (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Sunday, April 29, 2018 11:59 AM (two hours ago)

^^^

http://people.com/music/emma-gonzalez-dismisses-kanye-west-calling-her-hero-praises-james-shaw-jr/

They did it all wrong Kanye tweet says “tell them I love you” not “tell them “i love you””. They should be texting “Kanye loves me” to the person they hate.

uh huh

i mean obv these new "songs" are mostly trolling but the beats are really sloppy and amateurish and not in an interesting thing, i always felt like the looseness and oddness of some of pablo bordered on just messy bullshit and seems like he's going further that way

I don't know...I like the Four Tops sample.

love the scoobidy poop beat, wished he made a real song

I’m guessing it was a scratch vocal, and the real song will come with the album.

love the scoobidy poop beat, wished he made a real song

― ANU (sisilafami), Monday, April 30, 2018 5:24 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it is a real song

pic.twitter.com/EJ2KN6O20q

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) April 30, 2018

this album is gonna suck so bad

Oh my living fuck this is junior high social studies bullshit

he's never had that much of import to say, I don't know why this is so shocking to people. World class producer, average rapper, below average lyricist.

otm

I mean it’s not exactly a straight line between below average lyricist to signal boosting crypto white supremacy

We're riding an asymptote downward into a negative singularity, culturally speaking.

Wish he’d go back to just caring about THE music instead of being an asshole preacher and focusing 99% of his efforts on marketing his persona instead of doing actual decent beats. MBDTF is overrated and everything since has had like one or two songs with decent beats but nothing worth calling yourself a genius for.

And Kanye thinking he’s Mr. Rogers all of the sudden is some bullshit.

Fred Rogers was a far better human being than Kanye West could ever dream to be. Leave him out of this.

And more culturally impactful to boot.

That’s my point. Mr. Rogers saying we should love one another makes sense. Coming from Kanye it sounds messianic. Like we should thank him for allowing us to spread the love and being the leader of this love revolution. Fuck him.

Mr Rogers didn't need auto tune

We now live in a world in which – going solely by their tweets – Axl Rose is a significantly cooler person than Kanye West.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxwfDlhJIpw&feature=youtu.be&t=3267
54:27 is unbelievable

https://youtu.be/zxwfDlhJIpw should work (click at own risk)

"Use people around you as your therapist" -> never been happier not to be around Kanye

Oh this delusional asshole

3 minutes into this TMZ Live interview of Kanye, and the wheels have come off. "When you hear about slavery for 400 years. For 400 years? That sounds like a choice. You was there for 400 years, and it is all of y'all?" pic.twitter.com/z1vB2c0ZR3

— cristina lópez g. (@crislopezg) May 1, 2018

The idea that so many people took him so seriously for so long never fails to amaze me.

ok even by his standards that's........very bad

slavery is a choice is one of the hottest takes i've ever seen

kanye is such a witless mark, it's so painful to watch

"Use people around you as your therapist" -> never been happier not to be around Kanye

― change display name (Jordan), Tuesday, May 1, 2018 11:15 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hmm has anyone ever left the Kardashian/Jenner circle better off than they were before they entered it?

James Harden

I think it's unfair to blame anyone but Kanye for his slide into whatever this is

slavery is a choice is one of the hottest takes i've ever seen

― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, May 1, 2018 2:41 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol pretty much what I was gonna say. As we nearly drown in a sea of takes, this one still manages to shine out like a beacon of hotness.

I don't think even stormfront dot com has come up with that one yet

http://www.tmz.com/2018/05/01/kanye-west-tmz-live-slavery-trump/

kudos to the TMZ staffer who went at Kanye very well

he's like jumping-on-Oprah's-sofa era Tom Cruise, only much much worse

http://images.thissongissick.com/c_scale-f_auto-w_706-v1474195766-this-song-is-sick-media-image-kanye-west-floating-stage-1474195764239-png.jpg

just saw the video of the staffer - huge fucking props to that guy

yeah i don't know how he could be so poised and on point on the spot like that, i wish i could think that fast, like he took 30 seconds to just cut through all kanye's bullshit so precisely

I mean some people (outside of ilx) were screaming genius when he used Strange Fruit and the reality of lynching to get back at his second string bitches so surely now he will never stop with this kind of stuff.

yeah that was v cool xp

It would be cool if Kanye choked on a bullet after it ricocheted around his skull.

okay that sounded more evil than I meant it to

he needs more Lipo. his face is getting droopy

He also said something like 'TMZ is the hospital to fix the world. Obama was our opioids'

love the tmz staffer

flopsy... let's keep it PG-13, ok?

*empty* skull then, perhaps.

He also said something like 'TMZ is the hospital to fix the world. Obama was our opioids'

he's such an idiot why are we even listening to him? why do we just listen to idiots now?

just read another thing where he said something like if it was him he would have trump for his campaign and Bernie sanders for his principles

Suggest that the "Shut up, Morrissey" t-shirt lady diversify into "Shut up, Kanye" merchandise

Kanye is almost literally living this still-hilarious tweet

STEPHEN A: Skip I want to ADDRESS this issue.
[BAYLESS nods]
You KNOW I am sensitive to the Holocaust
BAYLESS: Absolutely
STEPHEN A: BUT!

— Hannah Barbarendt (@Hegelbon) July 25, 2014

just read another thing where he said something like if it was him he would have trump for his campaign and Bernie sanders for his principles

well trump has no pribciples, and collusion and hacking, etc, certainly turned out to be a canny campaign strategy. See you in prison, ye!

feels like we've been sucked tron style into a compaq presario abandoned at a barstow self storage facility and kanye is a "russian bot".

kanye west? kanrayde eastern bloc morelike amirite

i just think some celebrities, like bieber, simply cannot fathom that even after all the fame and all the money there still appear to be "shouldn't"s

this bathroom emergency cord says "only pull in case of emergency"? then i'm gonna fuckin pull it now, you can't tell me what to do. not realising that the "shouldn't" is there to save you from becoming a monster-baby

since you brought it up though I prefer Bieb's "FUCK Bill Clinton" to this by a factor of infinity

Woke up this morning and realized what Kanye really needs to do is record an improvised duo album with Flea. You know, to truly be free.

I know I know for sure
Ding dang dong dong ding dang dong dong ding dang
I know I know its you
Ditty scoop scoopity poop dip ditty oop

flopsy... let's keep it PG-13, ok?

― flopson, Tuesday, May 1, 2018 10:50 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

appreciate ilx flop community's efforts to police itself

cool

Tune in to today's broadcast for an Infowars exclusive featuring @KanyeWest & @RealCandaceO‼️

➡️ Watch the free video streams at: https://t.co/OQtch0tDED https://t.co/fkXRvp2HEg

— Alex Jones (@RealAlexJones) May 2, 2018

what could possibly go worng

Inevitable...

West/Corgan '20

Our current political era is neatly summed up by Alex Jones approvingly turning Kanye West quotes into memes and stamping them with the Infowars logo, and Roger Stone faving them on Instagram. pic.twitter.com/9GEXdVFwFq

— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) May 2, 2018

Denied by Candace and Kanye. They’re not showing up.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA):

Asked by a Politico writer about West, Waters stated, "Kanye West is a very creative young man. … But we also think that sometimes West talks out of turn and perhaps he needs some assistance in helping him to formulate some of his thoughts. We don't think that he actually means to do harm, but we're not sure he really understands the impact of what he’s saying, at the time that he’s saying it and how that weighs on, particularly the African-American community – and for young people in general."

She continued: "I understand that he is getting pushback from a lot of young people on the internet … but we're hopeful that his creativity will continue to be demonstrated in his work. And I think maybe he should think twice about politics – and maybe not have so much to say."

When you've lost a towering intellect like Waters, you may have finally gone too far.

the xtina single he produced and co-wrote is not good

"Young man"? Dude is 40!

which is half her age

this is fun to read, but also doesnt change the fact that he sucks

Get your tinfoil hats and red string, I’ve got a conspiracy theory: @kanyewest is in the middle of a performance art piece and the clues are right in front of us. A thread:

— Snowcone (@Snowcone965) May 2, 2018

here's a conspiracy theory: maybe we don't have the full context of that conversation and TMZ/everyone/et all are just printing $ w the usual "this guy are crazy"

here's a conspiracy theory: kanye is a dumbass

jackass

I haven't watched it but full context is available here fwiw: http://www.tmz.com/2018/05/02/tmz-live-kanye/

Floppy man take it easy (tie)

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/kanye-west-and-why-the-myth-of-genius-must-die/

Written by the same guy who gave TLOP a 9

you can believe all the things said in that piece and still think that TLOP is a good album

Except that he didn't give TLOP a 9. Pitchfork did.

we all gave pablo the nine we deserved

Written by the same guy who gave TLOP a 9

― frogbs, Thursday, May 3, 2018 8:25 PM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you can believe all the things said in that piece and still think that TLOP is a good album

― 808s & Deep States (voodoo chili), Thursday, May 3, 2018 8:28 PM

you can even read the piece and think he still thinks so

it's a fine piece and Greene is a v good writer

jayson’s great. his piece is p much the only one about kanye in the past week that hasn’t annoyed me with the constant handwringing (cf. the ringer aka the handringer)

if you love then you handwring on it

https://i.imgur.com/zZjuEx5.jpg

It was a great piece. I almost posted on my wall but I'm trying to avoid posting stuff about KW.

To be fair, I didn't agree with the 9.0 - TLOP is where I definitively realized that this wasn't a ride I really needed to be on. The truth of that album is probably better embodied in this piece, from before we knew what TLOP would actually be.

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/796-kanye-west-is-going-to-drop-a-brick-and-its-going-to-hurt/

(And yes, I know I, am out in the wilderness in a minority who believe that TLOP is a handful of flashes of guiltily entertaining/semi-inventive fun surrounded by a ton of chaff.)

Yeah it's pretty uneven

(And yes, I know I, am out in the wilderness in a minority who believe that TLOP is a handful of flashes of guiltily entertaining/semi-inventive fun surrounded by a ton of chaff.)

― The Harsh Tutelage of Michael McDonald (Raymond Cummings), Friday, May 4, 2018 5:16 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no i think you see it clearly raymond

TLOP the only Kanye I don't think I've ever heard. I think I only heard Yeezus once and it sort of bugged me. So in my mind, My Beautiful Dark Twisted So-Called Life was the end of the Kanye ride. FWIW, my daughter, who I don't think has so much as said the name Kanye before yesterday, brought me over to her phone to play what is I guess is his new single, mostly because she thought it was so stupid she wanted me to hear it.

only time I listened to Yeezus I remember one of the tracks cutting into this tight little knotty instrumental bit and thinking that was really fascinating. then the bit kept going and going, until finally I realized that my iPod had glitched out and cut into a Field Music album. which it has never done before or since. I decided to just listen to the rest of that and never really wanted to hear Yeezus again

The Poopity Scoop one or the one of him debating politics with TI?

Yeezus is maybe my favorite thing he's done tbh, particularly the first half. MBDWF has a few great tracks and a lot of whatever. TLOP straight up sucked.

xpost I think it was the Poopity Scoop one. That seems like something that would scan as stupid to her.

She was all, "dad, you've got to hear this?" So I ask, "what?" And she says it's the Kanye West song. And I tell her I am pretty tired of Kanye West. And she says, no, you have to hear this! So I walk over and she holds up her phone and I hear him all "poopity scoop" or whatever and I say, oh, that, yeah, I heard people talking about that. And she was cracking up.

that Pitch piece is very good

Jayson and Mark have always been my favorite Pitchfork writers.

i miss the chop up the soul kanye

ok the p4k piece is very good, sorry yall

we literally all agree it is good

yea I know, I mean w/r/t me pointing out "Lol this guy gave TLOP a 9"

which, IDK...just never got much out of that album

i miss the chop up the soul kanye

― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, May 4, 2018 11:27 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he does this on poopity scoop!

"poopity scoop" ... how can yall even bother

Otm Marcos

Almost
Offed myself reading
That

i miss the chop up the soul kanye

― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, May 4, 2018 11:27 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

he does this on poopity scoop!

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Friday, May 4, 2018 11:43 AM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

true! maybe it's gonna be a throwback

Two scoops of raisin

"Poopity Scoop" (formally known as "Lift Yourself")

Perhaps Zach G and Bonnie Prince Billy will make a video where they're dog park employees cleaning up the grounds

Love the piece but the elephant in the room is that even by his own standards, Kanye is no genius and has never been.

Otm

He's not even top 5 rap producers material imo

Maybe top 5 jackasses?

For the record, I do believe he is a great musical artist, up until Yeezus I did enjoy his records a lot, and maybe he is a great designer I don’t know that stuff. However, everytime he is on the same line as Einstein or Picasso, it just makes me barf.

Also to add to the broader idea of that great piece: I have no statistics to back this up this is really just ime, but I have a feeling that there is huge overlap on that venn diagram between sexual assaulter and people socially perceived as geniuses (can be in smaller spheres than national fame that a Kanye or a Woody are granted)

his shoes look some space macrame ass

Psh, shows you, all genius looks like ass.

TNC: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/05/im-not-black-im-kanye/559763/

great piece

v good indeed, though the praise of the the consistent, amazing, near-peerless quality of [Kanye's] work feels off to me

Is it fair to say that Kanye West is the first black hip-hop artist who truly crossover-ed to a white audience from really early in his career? And that it might be that this audience and his desire to cultivate that very audience might have informed his career in ways that it didn't for other hip-hop artists, past and present?

that's not the case

Little Stevie Wonder wants a word with you

Is it fair to say that Kanye West is the first black hip-hop artist who truly crossover-ed to a white audience from really early in his career?

nah. NWA springs to mind.

literally any hip hop artist who has sold a lot of records has crossed over to a white audience

true, but it took Run DMC three albums to get there

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/He's_the_DJ,_I'm_the_Rapper

hai djp! :)

missed you

Kanye's work has not been consistent in years and if anything it's been way below his peers. The article puts everything in context except the meandering quality of Kanye's latter day musical output.

Might be forgetting that estimations on ilm of his more recent albums tend to be completely out of sync with the critical consensus and probably even more-so with his fans.

also he has no 'peers' except maybe pharell? and of the two of them ye's recent output has been clearly more essench

Yeah interesting to think of Kanye in terms of peers, cause the people that come to mind for me would be like T-Pain, Drake and 50 Cent but all for very different reasons.

World class producer (arranger in particular), even his legacy alone puts him in top 5 of all time. But that didn't mitigate his last couple of albums much, which were full of his marginal flow and unremarkable lyrics. If TNC had been more concise about what he was talking about w/r to his peers, then I'd give him a pass. But instead TNC trots out the hagiographical profile of Kanye, the one that is straight from Ye's mouth. He hints of Ye's 20 year career but doesn't note that the back half, or certainly the last five years, have been troubling on a number of levels. It didn't seem like he watched the interview with Charlamagne, where Kanye seemed nearly delusional and unconvincing.

can people stop saying Ye?

By peers he means hip hop artists I don’t think its complicated.

I admit that I’m having trouble reconciling “peerless talent who has towered above the competition for the past 20 years” with the dude who rapped “MJ’s gone/Our nigga dead” on one of his 2010 singles

maybe "peerless" means "willfully blind" there

I admit that I’m having trouble reconciling “peerless talent who has towered above the competition for the past 20 years” with the dude who rapped “MJ’s gone/Our nigga dead” on one of his 2010 singles

― Embalming is a flirty business (DJP), Tuesday, May 8, 2018 3:04 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

TNC doesn't have trouble doing that and it's fine different strokes for different folks.

1) that line is hilarious and always has been 2) no I don't just consider any other hip hop artist kanye peer when you take into account what a legitimately groundbreaking producer he is, who has opened up many spaces in pop music, tons of hits, tons of range, him being a great artist on his own merit is an on top of that already major legit achievement. Who else is on that level?

you might have to go back to mj tbh

Dre and Jay-Z are absolutely his peers.

lol @ that nonsensical hyperbole

xxp

sorry y'all are wrong here and I'ma chalk it up to not understanding how wildly different being a top artist vs being a top producer is. doing both on the level he has is not trivial

its so freaking besides the point TNC wants to make I can't believe this is being seriously discussed.

I'll grant there's not a lot of rapper/producers that are successful at his level. he's a pretty shitty rapper though.

its so freaking besides the point TNC wants to make I can't believe this is being seriously discussed.

― Van Horn Street, Tuesday, May 8, 2018 3:45 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

its so freaking besides the point TNC wants to make I can't believe this is being seriously discussed.

― Van Horn Street, Tuesday, May 8, 2018 3:45 PM (thirty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

― The Harsh Tutelage of Michael McDonald (Raymond Cummings), Tuesday, May 8, 2018 5:23 PM

Might be forgetting that estimations on ilm of his more recent albums tend to be completely out of sync with the critical consensus and probably even more-so with his fans.

― tsrobodo, Tuesday, May 8, 2018 12:29 AM (sixteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

is ilm not that keen on recent kanye? because irl everyone loves yeezus

Kanye's not yet a monotheistic religion.

coatesism however

I admit that I’m having trouble reconciling “peerless talent who has towered above the competition for the past 20 years” with the dude who rapped “MJ’s gone/Our nigga dead” on one of his 2010 singles

― Embalming is a flirty business (DJP), Tuesday, May 8, 2018 3:04 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

unfortunately not even close to kanye’s worst MJ-related lyric

Yeezus is probably the ultimate litmus test for 'lyrics person' vs 'the voice is just an instrument, I don't hear words' person

(I still love it, it's an incredible collection of producers, and use of them)

Nah you can be that guy and sometimes still balk at lyrics.

I want so badly for Blood on the Leaves to make sense, that beat is incredible. The sentiment of Strange Fruit + the anger in the horns is almost cathartic.

As it plays I can't help but think what kind of vacuous moron takes that of all samples, flips it that well and uses it to make that song?

I think that for me the beats on Yeezus are so incredible that I'll excuse/ignore almost anything. But worse beats on TLOP + even dumber lyrics = can't do it.

the Blood on the Leaves beat is p good (feel like those horn stabs are p rote myself, that pattern's been used to death), the sentiment and lyrics and everything else about it are garbage. thaaaaat's kanye!

Might be forgetting that estimations on ilm of his more recent albums tend to be completely out of sync with the critical consensus and probably even more-so with his fans.

― tsrobodo, Tuesday, May 8, 2018 12:29 AM (sixteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Tuesday, May 8, 2018 4:59 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So, is the ILM consensus more or less positive than these hypothetical salt o' my earth of you ppl everyman fans?

commercial rap stations in my town don't play much kanye and it's probably never that new (save for all day)

there are some great songs on TLOP - Real Friends, 30 Hours, Ultralight Beam, No More Parties in LA, Wolves, Feedback, Fade - and I like the messy double album sprawl feeling of it all. Like I Love Kanye is a track that obviously would never be on a single album, I love weird little bits/castoffs/half-baked ideas like that. Having said all that it's not even close to Yeezus, where the lyrics are wildly offensive, but I think it works as this completely deranged half hour screed. It's just such a thrilling album to listen to.

(feel like those horn stabs are p rote myself, that pattern's been used to death)

At least Hudmo/TNGHT were partly responsible for popularizing it though

Man that Coates piece brought me to the brink of tears multiple times.

xp
Pablo suffers more than anything else from its messiness. A lot of the beat on it would sound better within a thematically consistent album. but I won't argue that there's something of a quality drop off and not enough new ideas to mask it.

the Blood on the Leaves beat is p good (feel like those horn stabs are p rote myself, that pattern's been used to death), the sentiment and lyrics and everything else about it are garbage. thaaaaat's kanye!

The horns by themselves in a vacuum are whatever.

But to me loud angry horn stabs broken up by "...black bodies swinging in the summer breeze" is beyond evocative.

too bad he has to rap about bitches

yeah that contrast is totally undercut by um the things actually being said

........Was that not my entire point ?

My bad it took me that TNC article to truly realize that but boy oh boy isn't Obama a miracle. Talk about about doing well under historical proportions of pressure.

fair point

xp

cool move

Pusha-T revealed in an interview with Angie Martinez, the original artwork for his new album, Daytona, was thrown away at the last minute. Instead, Kanye West, who produced the album, wanted to use a photo that cost $85,000 to license, which he himself offered to pay. “This is what people need to see to go along with this music,” Kanye told Pusha.

The artwork for Daytona has now been revealed and it features a photograph of Whitney Houston’s bathroom. The image dates back to 2006 during which time Houston was at the peak of her drug addiction. The bathroom is littered with drug paraphernalia, including a crack-smoking pipe and spoons covered in white powder.

nice man

super cool

fun to see him getting roasted for these Sketchers ass shoes

approved 700 V2 color way Q4 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/IWAzItCnEK

— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) May 10, 2018

kim’s influence is felt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ietqaglpu_s

these just look like sneakers to me

those shoes look like a shitty marble slab painting

xpost - for $650 they could be your sneakers!

i'd absolutely buy those for $54.99

Pamplemousse sparkling kicks

gonna be streamed from wyoming via an app

Will probably be a good album tbh #maga

I watched horses and a fire for an hour.

sounds like an improvement over TLOP

This is what we deserve, honestly.

30 hours of that would be an improvement over tlop

All these speakers and farm animals make me think that this album is going to be heavily influenced by the KLF.

I hope the fire is for sacrificing Candace Owens.

Uh. UH.

Big excitement: Mic check

"Check 1, check 2. Not even sure who I'm checking this for. Check 1, check 2. ... feeding back like a motherfucker there. "

Chris Rock introducing it. Big crowd around a campfire. Rock says that the new Kanye opus is titled Ye'.

Not too sure about this. I really like the spastic raw qualities of Yeezus and Pablo. This is more reigned in. Lyrically it feels like a post mid-life crisis album, as though Kanye is trying to write his happy ending.

Oh my god, this awful guitar solo thing "I've been trying to make you love me but everything I try just takes you farther from me"

No. Not feeling this at all.

Last song is the best one. They're starting the album over on the livestream.

is there a free live stream for desktops? i'm not buying an app on my phone to hear this

Don't think so. I tried downloading app through desktop and it said it was an IOS thing. But i'm not very tech savvy.

Liking the second listen better. Still feels like a step backwards.

is poopity scoop on the album?

If it's coming out tonight on streaming services I'd rather listen there, it'd be so much more convenient. I bloody hope a real version of poopity scoop is on it!

midnight MDT / 3AM EST?

No poopity scoop. No blatant MAGA shit. Not as horrible as I was afraid it could be. Sort of sad, it's the first album where it feels as though his edge is lost.

the title seems very mid-life crisis MOR to me

How long is it? 20 min like the Pusha t?

wasn't clocking it, but it's short. Guessing under thirty minutes. The last song is the best one, so right when it feels like things might be getting better it's over.

I find the thought of getting flown in a plane to Wyoming for the purpose of kissing the ass of an apologist for an authoritarian as repulsive and embarrassing as any story I've read since 2016. And for what? To rehearse "provocative" and "controversial" again?

What if you were flown in a catapult?

Alf OTM

It's on Spotify and stuff now. And, uh.

The last few tracks kinda hint at a decent midlife crisis record, but the opening tracks emphasize the "crisis" half of that equation and it never really recovers

this album sucks

This guy has been trolling for years but in the past he had some pretty great shit to back it up.

Album feels desperate because it is.

man, the discussion about kanye's mental health has been so utterly shit that he made his cover art a response to it

Kanye is a key interlocutor in this utterly shit discussion. He conflates mental health issues and 'genius' on very a basic level, just for the sake of his own mythology. It's gross really.

surprised FourFiveSeconds is both his and Macca's #1 Spotify track - and quite high (#3 I think) for Rihanna too

Kendrick, very obviously so, a much better example at how a hip-hop artist can use words to really express the horrors of mental health issues.

this first song is the worst shit i've ever heard

This is good

lmao

This is good

sucks

First song is by far the best though, kinda drops off

bruh

lmao

guys its a NEW JERSEY

so is he going to re-edit this post-release like TLOP and make a couple of these sketches into actual songs or

there are some cool things on this but none of them involve Kanye talking or rapping

It's not a good sign when the most interesting things about an album might be the work done by Francis and the Lights.

sucks

― flopson, Friday, June 1, 2018 10:53 AM (twenty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh wow this is bad...
Interesting move to put ALL his good material on Pusha T’s album !

What happened to his production on this and TLOP it feels rough and sounds frankly terrible on headphones. As an aesthetic choice it sounds sloppy as fuck.

This « album » sounds like someone who doesn’t give a flying f anymore...

xp the left channel clipping on violent crimes is very annoying

he'll probably fix it

missing whoop diddy scoop poop already

when more realized songs start happening in the back half it feels like relief at first, like the record is cohering

but that feeling doesn't last long because it turns out the first few songs are the point and everything else is just packaging

"lift yourself" in retrospect feels like one of those movie trailers that gives away the entire plot ahead of time

don't hate this honestly. well, except for the first track, which is one of the worst songs i've ever heard. I probably like 3.5 tracks (no mistakes, violent crimes, all mine, and the 070 shake parts of ghost town), but there's no question that this is the worst Kanye album and it's the first one where there isn't a new idea that he's exploring. TLOP was a much more revealing look into his mind, yeezus did the whole brevity thing a lot more effectively...what is new about this record?

the depths of its badness?

come on, it's badness isn't even that deep

first track seems bad in a new way, but true for the rest

voodoo chili otm, even though i enjoyed listening to it as i woke up this morning, it's so aggressively bland and boring. except the first song

xp the left channel clipping on violent crimes is very annoying

― Tapes 'n Tapes of Osho (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, June 1, 2018 10:46 AM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah jesus how amateurish

I like the raw MPC sample-chop beats on the Pusha T album, but this just sounds like a really shitty and demo-y version of his more involved/opulent production style.

this album sounds like if he stretched out the distorted section of "Runaway" into a whole album and replaced the garbled vocal with garbage lyrics

this album is not good but it is better than the multiple twitter takes I have read about how it ties into the decline of music or whatever

I agree!

an album of music would have to be very very bad to be worse than even the best twitter take

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DenvuMuUcAENQFS.jpg

God I bet the Genius explanations for this bullshit is next level

Kanye has had groaners since day one, but man he is busy going to town RICHARD SCARRY on this one

this is a long twenty minutes

lol whiney

Spottie quote is goldbug

it's like a poor meme

if anyone tried to tell me a decade ago that in 2018 kanye would be sucking up to a republican president and eminem would be dissing the nra in his radio singles i'd really wonder what the hell happened in the years between

someone would hand you a copy of twitter

Mental illness as an excuse for someone’s crap behaviour is the oldest trick in the book. It shouldn’t let anyone off the hook

That rhymes unintentionally. Fuck

it's the first line of your kanye diss track

Lol

His mental illness or state of mind has nothing to do with how utterly bad this album is. It is bad on it own merits.

Saying the album "has some moments" is being charitable when none is due. His rapping sucks, the lyrics are horrible, and the few decent arrangement/production ideas he puts forth are either retreads or half assed.

This thing deserves about a day of scorn on Twitter and then needs to be ignored forever. It's not a grower. There are literally dozens of albums released today and every week that have earned more minutes of your life than this album.

AOTY

haven't listened to it yet

hell yeah

Mental illness as an excuse for someone’s crap behaviour is the oldest trick in the book. It shouldn’t let anyone off the hook

― synonym toast crunch (Ross), Friday, June 1, 2018 1:36 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this isn't what i said at all but ok

Rossa-T went in imo

Eric I wasn’t speaking to anyone directly

Sorry

oh sorry ross, just wasn't sure what else it'd be apropos of itt, s'all good

I was on a tangent I think <3

Carry on

checks out

Kanye shot the album cover on his iPhone on the way to the album listening party 😂🔥❤️🔥🙏🏼🔥

— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) June 1, 2018

xp the left channel clipping on violent crimes is very annoying

― Tapes 'n Tapes of Osho (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, June 1, 2018 10:46 AM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah jesus how amateurish

― The Desus & Mero Chain (upper mississippi sh@kedown), 1. juni 2018 17:26 (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Seeing as Mike Dean is heavily involved in this I don't think "amateurish" will cut it.

Mental illness as an excuse for someone’s crap behaviour is the oldest trick in the book. It shouldn’t let anyone off the hook

― synonym toast crunch (Ross), Friday, June 1, 2018 1:36 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thanks, homie

Yeah I’m tired of seeing that xpost too.

well it sounds like shit or was mastered poorly on purpose

So I came into this record wondering if there'd be any totally left-field samples, as kanye usually includes, and apparently he sampled a song off of Mono No Aware without permission

https://pitchfork.com/news/berlin-label-pan-claims-kanye-sampled-their-song-without-permission/

classic free thinking

that is such a great track, annoyingly good taste from ye there

Overall sounds kinda meh and sloppy. Enjoyed a couple tracks, primarily Wouldn't Leave and Ghost Town.

His vocal pitch shifting on Yikes seems to be a cop from Kendrick. Just feels creatively empty, and try-too-hard. Not a fan of how he frames his mental illness on this. Apt song title.

Am I the only one for whom this is hitting pretty damn hard? At least parts of it. I've dealt with bi-polar issues with both friends and family, and 'I Thought About Killing You' kinda nails that moment where everything comes out in the open. I'm not sure I really want to hear it that much, but I was shocked how much it hits a mood I know.

I really wish Kanye wouldn't confuse hard drugs and prescription medication for mental health diseases and then claim to be some kind of superhero.

I agree, and it really really reminds me of how my uncle used to talk. I used to wish he would stop as well. He kinda has.

His vocal pitch shifting on Yikes seems to be a cop from Kendrick.

To be fair, Kanye vocal pitch shifted like crazy on Blame Game before anyone even really cared about Kendrick.

I really like this record. Can't help but feel like people had their negative takes ready to go before even hearing this thing due to how stupid Kanye has been lately. But I feel like this is album is an honest reflection of his life and mind state at the moment, and it sounds good. It's better than I expected, anyway.

I've seen some discussion about how this feels rushed and like it was put together in a month, and I agree with that. I don't think it's a bad thing though. I do get the feeling that music in 2018 (especially rap tbh) is put together and released with a lot less effort than it once was, but occasionally it can lead to something that feels pure and sincere rather than calculated. His recent mode seems to be acting and creating on impulse and feeling and I actually think that's more interesting at the moment than someone obviously sitting down and being like "okay, so now I'm going to create a concept album about _______", or "I wonder how _____ will be perceived by people and impact my image" or whatever.

Also, this 7 track, 20ish minutes long album thing seems a good creative response to the way people actually listen to and absorb music now. Like, there's no real reason for an album to have 24 tracks in the streaming era except to bolster an artists streaming numbers (looking at Migos). I hope more artists use this format going forward. Most Kanye albums/album cycles have left a legacy, I think this will be the legacy of ye/all the stuff he's helping release this year.

Oh yeah, as someone who doesn’t think much of this release, I welcome the 25 minutes albums trend.

But I feel like this is album is an honest reflection of his life and mind state at the moment,

oh come ON NOW! You can say this about every record written at any point in any country on earth. I'm not trying to pick on you, but it means nothing.

Um. That's not true at all. For instance, I wouldn't say that about The Life of Pablo. That sounded fake and manufactured.

that's PR palaver and you know it

how on earth do you judge the honesty/dishonesty of any work of art? It doesn't matter. Who cares?

i was baffled by someone calling the natalie prass album "calculated" earlier today so glad we're getting this out of the way here as well

Everyone cares! It's hard as fuck, but it's one of the most important jobs of a critic!

There is no simple way to do it, it takes arguments, perhaps personal explanations as to why it rings true, honestly it often just has to be carried through the word-smithery at the most basic level. But if you're a critic and you don't want to talk about honesty, then just give it up. You're wasting everyones time.

Glad to know, thanks!

Hey, I'm just being honest.

Agreed with Seauteau, this record is vmic for Kanye over the past 8 years and that’s the extent on how we should think about this context.

/ But I feel like this is album is an honest reflection of his life and mind state at the moment,/

oh come ON NOW! You can say this about every record written at any point in any country on earth. I'm not trying to pick on you, but it means nothing.

oh come ON NOW! You can say this about every record written at any point in any country on earth. I'm not trying to pick on you, but it means nothing.

Disagree with you here. Firstly, I don't think that all artists aim for that "here's where my mind and life is" thing in their art, so they don't even try to work in that mode. And secondly, I do feel like a lot of modern music is still hyper-calculated in trying to shape an artists' public image while trying to pass itself off as an honest portrayal of the artist. Taylor Swift is the classic example, and I feel like it isn't too difficult to recognise these kinds of albums when they come out. Not saying that calculated always equals bad (I like Taylor), but it's often the least interesting music to me.

I don't think many artists are willing to portray themselves as mentally ill and flawed and human as Kanye makes himself look here. The first track is about suicidal thoughts, there's references everywhere to his bipolar disorder, he worries about the impact of his actions on his wife and child. Despite what you think of Kanye the person and his politics (for the record: his politics are idiotic), there's a level of honesty and introspection here that I think is laudable in an era where brand/image maintenance is one of the most important things a pop star can do to to keep their career going.

Kanye is a key interlocutor in this utterly shit discussion. He conflates mental health issues and 'genius' on very a basic level, just for the sake of his own mythology. It's gross really.

― Van Horn Street

genius is pain

this album is not good but it is better than the multiple twitter takes I have read about how it ties into the decline of music or whatever

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine)

i tend to ask for more out of music than "be better than twitter hot takes"

someone would hand you a copy of twitter

― President Keyes

i wish someone would hand me a copy of twitter so i could burn it

Am enjoying Twitter trash talk on this thread tbh.

sorry but Twitter is my best source of Drake insults so it's indispensable

Disagree with you here. Firstly, I don't think that all artists aim for that "here's where my mind and life is" thing in their art, so they don't even try to work in that mode. And secondly, I do feel like a lot of modern music is still hyper-calculated in trying to shape an artists' public image while trying to pass itself off as an honest portrayal of the artist. Taylor Swift is the classic example, and I feel like it isn't too difficult to recognise these kinds of albums when they come out. Not saying that calculated always equals bad (I like Taylor), but it's often the least interesting music to me.

I don't think many artists are willing to portray themselves as mentally ill and flawed and human as Kanye makes himself look here. The first track is about suicidal thoughts, there's references everywhere to his bipolar disorder, he worries about the impact of his actions on his wife and child. Despite what you think of Kanye the person and his politics (for the record: his politics are idiotic), there's a level of honesty and introspection here that I think is laudable in an era where brand/image maintenance is one of the most important things a pop star can do to to keep their career going.

― triggercut, Frida

uh Kanye's brand/image "maintenance" is to create music that adduces his support for an authoritarian president. And so what? Why should he get credit for shitty beats and rhymes that adduce that support?

like I wrote today on an erstwhile ILMer's wall: "It's not a matter of "divorcing" or "separating art from artist." Kanye has made shit art -- cluttered, nattering, megalomaniacal in a rote manner -- since 2010. I'm quite happy he's released something with which I can find some consensus with colleagues."

uh Kanye's brand/image "maintenance" is to create music that adduces his support for an authoritarian president. And so what? Why should he get credit for shitty beats and rhymes that adduce that support?

I might agree with you if he even mentioned Trump/supporting Trump once on this album, but he doesn't. This record isn't about that at all.

Also, I like that this album has the second instance of Kanye lyrically referencing the 'medulla oblongata' after his feature on Cudi's Make Her Say back in 09. You just know he discovered that word from watching Adam Sandler's The Waterboy (a movie he also referenced on New Slaves) and I like that it still circulates in his mind to this day.

referencing it isn't coming up with a good rhyme about it or finding a beat to complement it.

triggercut makes a compelling case for the record, which is still pretty lousy imo (except the first track). there's no trump stuff on here. i understand if events outside the text make it hard to appreciate or engage with but this album does exist on its own personal terms, it's not a political album.

Kanye would have to be interested in something besides sniffing his own b hole too make a political record

a lot of great art has come from the b hole

Kanye doesn’t need to include Trump to further his cringe habits, ie. any reference to women, or the Russell Simmons line, the mental health stuff, etc. How many records about Kim’s body parts are you willing to listen to?

this album isn't the trainwreck I could have expected, or an unfinished mess like Pablo, it's just dull instead. that alone feels like enough to make it solidly his worst - Pablo was not good but it did have a few gems at the very least and it certainly wasn't dull.

agreed

a 7 song TLOP would be great:

Ultralight Beam
FML
Real Friends
Wolves
30 Hours
No More Parties in LA
Fade

better than the og tlopper

https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2018/06/02/616402658/two-sided-trying-to-hear-kanye-wests-new-album-ye-through-all-the-noise

ugh

like myopic parents desperate for validation

There’s some good commentary on bipolar in there though (take your meds)

didn't dislike this as much as I expected to

I like the NPR article. How can you ignore the mental health issues when it seems relevant to the music? Doesn’t make it good, but it’s not exactly idle speculation.

this has no joints
no one will care about any of these songs a year from now possibly even a month from now

He sounds bored & tired & uninspired

"a lot of great art has come from the b hole"

yeah, like Bobbi starr/ Sasha Grey/ Dana Dearmond/ Mike adriano kinds of art!

yeah i know, they're great

haha this album is such trash

good mourning!

My friend kelly enthused about how amazing this record was which felt weird after reading the mixed reviews here. She said it has some deep mental health reflection but I couldn’t help but think I have Kendrick or angel haze records that nail that anyway.

I wonder if it’s possible both to 1) hold that Kanye’s politics suck and 2) not 100% dismiss his mental health stuff ...

and 3) think this album fails on a musical level and also to interestingly engage in either of those things

Oh yeah lol I’m not even talking about the album thereby ceding your point, more just reacting to the idea that the only explanation for his behavior is narcissism and drugs - which obv may play a role too

This album is such a nullity.

i've got kanye muted everywhere but apparently there's an unapproved sample from "Mono No Aware" on the first track

snoop otm re kanye

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H08xgoXkpa8

shit J Prince shut the Pusha beef down

it's crazy the dude I know from talking on Geto Boys records forever ago still runs shit

The rating is decent but the words are just brutal

But I can admit that after ye ended unceremoniously the third or fourth time, I put on “Family Business,” and I thought about the kid from Chicago who wanted to be the biggest rapper in the world, who now lives in an empty-looking concrete mansion in Calabasas, who has stopped trying.

haha wow that's something, good writing

Artist over the hill makes lame record

That's a fantastic, damning review. The author - one of my favorites - likely had little control over the score, which should've dipped below 7.0 to match the review.

That ended graph should be a formal epitaph but it won't be, sadly.

the bits about kanye always racing against the clock made me think that his next album should be called THE DRAMA OF THE GIFTED CHILD

Since 1985, he’s the #1 writer and producer by songs that charted in the top 5

yes, who can forget those indelible Top 5 hits by It's Alive. six years before they even had an album, too!

wrong thread, shit

the bits about kanye always racing against the clock made me think that his next album should be called THE DRAMA OF THE GIFTED CHILD

― maura, 4. juni 2018 13:55 (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's not because he is a 'gifted child', that kinda of workaholic mania is textbook bi-polar. That part of the review kinda filled me with anger, it's not important to anything having to do with the quality of the album, it's just shitting on a bi-polar guy for being manic.

I feel like I want to write a longer thing about this, but as I've mentioned bi-polarity runs in my family, I've been to the doctor to see if I'm bi-polar (I'm not) and there's still a danger that my own issues with hypo-mania might someday develop into being bi-polar if I don't take care of myself. And I'm stunned of the lack of insight into and care to learn more about the bi-polar issues that this album is portraying. It's a mental illness, I don't get why non-bi-polar people feel it's okay to make fun of, to attack Kanye for not thinking about his illness the way they want to (thinking it's a superpower is something I've heard over and over and over from manic people (and it freaking IS a superpower, I wrote 31 film reviews in 9 days from the Berlin film festival, and I'm just hypo-manic!)) attacking him personally for all these things that relate to bi-polarity.

Hey I’m not sure it’s just the bipolar. If Kanye still does coke that would explain his work ethic as well.

Tho Fred is right in a way. I just finished a record in 4 weeks 8 hours a day, I’m bipolar as well

Kanye’s new album is a soundtrack to the viscerally agitated atmosphere in America right now. It captures the desperate, unnerved flailing of a nation thrown into a conversation on masculinity it doesnt know how to have.

None of what Ive just written is a compliment.

A thread:

— Chimene Suleyman (@chimenesuleyman) June 3, 2018

imagine all the superpower-produced lyrics Kanye must have had to leave off of this record. You can only fit the gems!

engaging with a person's mental illness often means disregarding or dismissing the content of their words. when i go off on one of my paranoid fantasies people who know me are hurt by it, but also know (hopefully) not to take it seriously because it's my illness talking. pitchfork aren't in a position to do that with kanye. their job is to judge his work, not to diagnose or treat his mental illness.

Garvey's review is dead-on, but that's a way weirder editorial score call than the Monae record was

Making a crap piece of creative work and pissing everybody off during an extremely abbreviated time period during the spring is a classic off-meds move imo

The month of May is infamous among doctors & social workers who deal with bipolar disorder, as it happens

He should have named this album Late Diagnosis.

The month of May is infamous among doctors & social workers who deal with bipolar disorder, as it happens

the advent of spring can bring on manic episodes iirc

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bipolar+springtime

engaging with a person's mental illness often means disregarding or dismissing the content of their words. when i go off on one of my paranoid fantasies people who know me are hurt by it, but also know (hopefully) not to take it seriously because it's my illness talking. pitchfork aren't in a position to do that with kanye. their job is to judge his work, not to diagnose or treat his mental illness.

― Arch Bacon (rushomancy), 4. juni 2018 14:59 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Two things: First of all, I agree that the job is to judge the Work, but the part of the reviews that pisses me off are about Kanye the person rather than ye the album - like shitting on him for making the album in a few months, or not being concerned with how the audience will judge it. Large parts of that album are an attack on the person, without engaging with his mental issues at all, even when they seem central to his behaviour. And secondly, it's not at all about 'diagnosing' him. The diagnose is on the cover of the album! 'ye' is undoubtedly a bi-polar Work, a Work about bi-polarity, and not engaging with the bi-polarity is to not engage with the Work. And it's not about accepting all the grossness - again, it runs in my family, I know how unacceptably gross it can be, how much it can hurt - nor should the sexism for instance be excused by the bi-polarity. But the refusal to engage with bi-polarity is a refusal to engage with the Work on it's own terms, and I'm honestly surprised that people just straight up refuse to engage with it. And it quite honestly hurts.

The whole thing hurts. The album made me cry the first I heard it, and it's also kinda awful that it is pretty indisputably the most high-profile Work about bi-polarity ever (right?) and it's so gross and sexist and right-wing. But the complete refusal to engage with the bi-polar aspects really pains as well. Therefore this is probably the last I'll write about it, because I can just sense that I'm not going to convince anyone. But I just honestly think that in five years, this record will be seen as flawed as fuck but, well, Important and trail-blazing. And we'll look back on that review and wonder how we ever thought that was acceptable. Or perhaps I 'hope' that will be the case rather than I think it. Sigh.

I think your argument is diluted by capitalizing Work and saying “bi-polarity” instead of “bipolar disorder”

I listened to YE for the first and last time today, mostly because I figured I should have a sense of things.

I can see how it will be meaningful to certain audiences. But it's somehow got even less to keep me interested than TLOP had.

on listen #2 now, this is god awful

Thanks, Tomboto. You could seriously not have written a more exasperating dismissal. I'm out.

From a FB chat earlier with a friend, and I feel like I've said (some of) this dozens of times but:

"Thanks to the length and streaming popularity this will get him back on the Billboard charts. And it will become a touchstone for a certain audience. But - yeah. I don’t know whether I’m still part of his audience. TLOP kinda is where that started. Yeezus was a mess but there was something interesting about it but that speaks to my issue with Kanye from post-2010 - he became more of an anthropological fascination than someone I really could admire and whose music I could really enjoy."

not intended as a shot at you, Fred, just how I feel xp

Calm down, Fred.

El - that rings so true for me re may

yeezus was interesting and enjoyable, but the doubling-down on the angry misogyny made no sense

there's this weird kanye thing where the more stable his home life appears -- he's married ! he has kids! he loves his wife! -- the nastier the lyrics get

I can't imagine listening to this deliberately again, it's the kind of bleak, joyless document some folks accused the recent Mount Eerie records of being

Listening to it on Spotify, it goes right into "Lift Yourself" after the last track, and it's definitely the only banger, lyrics aside.

Also into that Chimney Suleyman thread above.

that p4k Garvey review is great, especially this line:

Instead, ye reveals that the past month’s flailing attempts at iconoclasm were building up to exactly nothing: It is an album born from chaos for chaos’ sake, an album that can barely be bothered to refer to that chaos with anything more committal than a Kanye shrug.

Good comparison to the recent Mount Eerie records, Simon, though I'd say that's giving Kanye's record way too much credit. this record is just so so so boring.

i mean it's total feeling vs total absence of feeling

otm

Is this the old chestnut that depression is absence of feeling ?

@ Frederik etc. whatever

Bipolarity is a spectrum-- bipolar 1 means manic episodes and severe depression and requires medication, bipolar 2 means hypo-manic episodes and severe depression and there are many different treatments both therapeutic and pharmaceutical, and "bipolar tendencies" (cyclothymic disorder) can mean anything. The very creative act has been neurologically linked to bipolar tendencies-- many, many creative professionals have symptoms of bipolar disorder.

The narrative that I've been reading online ("bipolar man off his meds") doesn't really provide any nuance or understanding to the complexity of the disorder. If Kanye was bipolar 1, he'd probably be medicated, and would probably not be behaving the way he does. If Kanye was bipolar 2, medication would be optional-- many creative professionals who suffer from bipolar 2 (myself possibly included, still working toward a diagnosis) avoid medication, as the medications tend to inhibit creative activity. And if Kanye has cyclothymic disorder, then.. well, who knows.

I am somewhat frustrated that Kanye would choose to so bluntly lead with "I'm bipolar" as the face of this album, without any nuance as to what he might actually be experiencing, or diagnosed with. It feels as if he's clinging to the diagnosis to dissuade any criticality of his bad behaviour, his bad politics, his sub-par product. It feels to me like a misuse of the term. I'm don't feel pressed when people cavalierly describe their behaviour as "depressed" or "OCD" or "borderline" or whatever when they do not actually experience these disorders-- I don't really care. But to lead with the mental illness as if it's a talisman against criticality? very frustrating to me.

I feel Frederik's frustration that people aren't engaging with the "bipolarity" of ye but I don't really think that "an album about bipolarity" is particularly groundbreaking-- there are albums borne out of trauma, out of grief, out of rejection, out of depression-- there are already many songs and albums out there that specifically engage with "bipolarity" (Jimi Hendrix, Amy Winehouse, Nirvana). In general I think it is far more interesting and useful to view ye through the lens that it is being viewed through, especially by Meghan Garvey, as a document of male fragility and male confusion.

booming post

A comparison upthread to A Crow Looks At Me is apt to me. The only criticism I had about that Mount Eerie record was that the premise of the record made it impossible to listen with a critical ear. Music that so bluntly presents itself as the product of personal turmoil (or personal joy) can be frustrating to listen to, for me, at any rate. I felt the same way about Antlers, or "Maybe I'm Amazed", or Black Tie White Noise. It's music that one cannot listen to with any criticality-- even internally!-- without feeling heartless.

Fgti knocked it out the park

wonderful post fgti

Thanks I'll just keep typing some more thoughts because I'm feeling a little hypo-manic myself right now, it's awesome

I had a really productive and interesting conversation last night with a friend of mine who is a goddamn great musician. She makes political work and she expressed frustration to me, last night, about where to stand in terms of grappling with her own privilege within her creative process. She has an audience, she's gorgeous, she's young, she's signed to a label, she's talented, she has great collaborators, she's white, she's straight, etc. She felt, furthermore, confusion about how to reconcile her own politics (and the politics of her music) with the mechanisms of the music industry, that don't align with her beliefs.

I told her that in my estimation, the best way that an artist can acknowledge their own privilege in their work is to not acknowledge it, or fret about it, as Fleet Foxes or tUnE-yArDs or Katy Perry have done so frustratingly, and instead to work it, to flex it, to be as extremely generous in one's work with that privilege. This is why Kanye was flying so high on MBDTF-- and Beyoncé is now-- and Bjork has oftentimes done: millions and millions of dollars spent on blowing our minds. When all that privilege is turned into generosity, it feels shared and productive and positive.

But Kanye is being parsimonious in his production, obfuscating in his methods. It isolates the audience and makes us resentful. I don't want him to spend 80K on a poorly-decided image for the Pusha-T record. I want him to make a fucking music video and have it be great and cost him lots of money and employ a lot of talented people.

What does this have to do with ye? Fretting about one's maleness or richness is not useful for anybody. You're male, you're rich, work it.

What does this have to do with bipolarity? Just that if Kanye is bipolar, and that bipolarity (a series of manic episodes) was what caused him to spend a zillion dollars on MBDTF and its auxiliary product, then I look forward to a future manic state where he takes such risks again. When MBDTF came out, iirc, he celebrated by flying to Saudi Arabia to test drive Ferraris in the desert. Bipolar can be awesome

Another great post, thanks.

Back when someone called Kanye on his Trump love Kanye acknowledged he knew nothing about Trump's policies and why they (and his endorsement) would make people upset. Considering how much work it takes for someone to totally unplug from current events, let alone at the same time Kanye is trying to plug himself into current events, I came away just thinking he was just profoundly ignorant, which no doubt extends to his (perhaps self) diagnosis of being bi polar. No filter + no knowledge is essentially the same shit formula that Trump epitomizes.

imo he is employing the same device as J*rdan P*terson. Kanye becomes aware of how high he is up on the kyriarchy, feels defensive about it, and in response, decides to formulate polemics about how the kyriarchy doesn't exist.

thank you for your insightful posts fgti - i especially think the link between bipolarity and creativity should be examined, given the way diagnoses of all stripes reflect the mores of the times in which they’re established

But fgti, 'ye' IS generous about his bipolarity. There is no defensiveness about it, he revels in it, calls it his superpower. That's exactly why it means so much to me, that he is being open and honest about it all, even the darkest parts, and not defending or explain away any part of it. He is really thinking about killing Kim.

generous doesn't mean permissive imo

Fgti keeps rolling hard. Great post. Good advice to your friend - certainly adopted that outlook myself

Jeff Weiss:

21 Grammy Awards and 21 million albums sold. These statistics exist as evidence for why West claims “I don’t take advice from people less successful than me.” But “Ye” exists as a reminder that even legitimate genius has limitations and everyone can use real friends to remind you of who you used to be and the out-of-touch caricature that you’ve become. A self-serious 23-minute crayon pamphlet of luxurious emptiness, “Ye” limps along as vacant and inert as the Wyoming skyline on its cover.

I don't think Kanye is currently being honest about his mental health at all.

I think Kanye has, in the past, written incredibly affecting songs about his mental health-- notably "Welcome To Heartbreak"-- and especially "Pinocchio Story", which itself sounds (to me) like a man confessing to having a laundry list of borderline symptoms caused by the loneliness of being too famous for anybody to relate to you on a human-to-human level.

What does frustrate me about this entire album and its roll-out and Kanye-discourse (yescourse?) is this. One of the recurring things that came up both in private and group therapy for me is that "it is terrible for the mind to care too much about what other people think of you". For a person in Kanye's position, where your livelihood is dependent upon what-people-think-of-you, and the livelihood-of-hundreds-of-thousands-of-other-people also, the stress of having to always be "on" and always be intelligent and attractive and talented and on the correct side of current race theory suggests to me that you can say bipolar, or borderline, or this or that or the next thing, but it's missing the point. And reviews (just scanning Jeff Weiss now) can say "adolescent", or "fool", or (as Kanye himself has wanted us to) explain away his behaviour as being the result of some kind of bipolar diagnosis

But it's more like this

It is hard to be black in America
There are not a lot of rich black role models for Kanye to be inspired by/look up to (thus his MJ fixation)
It is hard on your mental health to be #1 and have to continue impressing everyone
It is hard on your mental health to be as famous as he is
He is basically worried all the time
Because ultimately musicians are just nerds who are good at a computer program or an instrument

And I try to remind people of these things when they rush in to be expressively "I don't get what the big deal is" about other people who are exceedingly good at being black and rich and talented and in the public eye (Frank, Rihanna, Beyoncé)

Most people don't handle fame and fortune very well.

We need better support systems for rich and famous people.

Not sarcastically, though, and I made this point previously in one of these threads: it seems basically impossible for rich & famous people to get actually good healthcare.

Why?

The armchair psychoanalysis that Ye invites is exactly the kind of shit I can't stand. I understand it's a fine line between discussing mental health in good faith and then fall into stereotyping people, I understand that not everyone is armed with the ability to discuss those complicated personal health issues. It makes the conversation hard and I think some patience is required.

But this is not it. This is mental health issues as capitalist spectacle: tabloids/twitter get to ponder the nitty gritty with I don't know his relationship to Kardashian or the loss of his mother, cultural websites like Complex get their clicks with oohs and aaah of Kanye breakdown, and in the middle of all this Kanye is using the whole thing as a marketing device to collect goodwill post MAGA-baseball cap, paint himself as the genius he think he is ('name one genius that ain't crazy') and most probably making a shit-ton of money out of it. No solutions is given, no help is provided, no discourse can be made, Houston's death and addiction is a suddenly edgy aesthetic, egocentrism is celebrated.

The thing that defeats me the most is that Ye comes on the heel of several great records by black hip-hop artists that engages purposefully with mental health. He can't sit down and check the landscape as to position himself.

On the other hand someone like Fred relates hard to the record in a genuine way so I'm not opposed to be 100% wrong.

I told her that in my estimation, the best way that an artist can acknowledge their own privilege in their work is to not acknowledge it, or fret about it, as Fleet Foxes or tUnE-yArDs or Katy Perry have done so frustratingly, and instead to work it, to flex it, to be as extremely generous in one's work with that privilege. This is why Kanye was flying so high on MBDTF-- and Beyoncé is now-- and Bjork has oftentimes done: millions and millions of dollars spent on blowing our minds. When all that privilege is turned into generosity, it feels shared and productive and positive.

this is besides the bipolar point but a really interesting way of framing this. then again when referring to the privilege of katy perry & tune yards and the privilege of beyonce & kanye, we're talking about entirely different things. it's hard to imagine a katy perry album that uses largesse to address the kind of privilege she was talking about tho in a sense she *did* attempt that... she got her label to pay for her 72 hour streaming therapy session featuring deray and whatever. she wanted to blow our mind, but unfortunately was still katy perry. i do agree tho that fretting about it in the way the artists you mention did leaves everyone unsatisfied, and attempting to thread the needle in some other fashion more along the lines of "use your resources to make dope, highly collaborative music" is more agreeable though also harder.

xp Great post VHS, please list those records, I listen to nothing these days but am interested

@ Tomboto I don't know what you mean by that, rich/famous people have a tonne of support systems but "support systems" don't address the root problem imo, which I still can't really define, but seems to be (loosely) "a toxic relationship between artist and audience"