|
Yeezus is a very good album.
|
#
?
Dec 8, 2013 23:37
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 02:29 |
|
|
crankdatbatman posted:Yeezus is a very good album.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2013 00:51
|
|
|
Because I like to listen to it more than once.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2013 01:20
|
|
|
crankdatbatman posted:Because I like to listen to it more than once. You hold such high standards.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2013 03:50
|
|
|
Famicom Bunko posted:You hold such high standards. ugh. Stupid anti intellectuals, judging music merely by how much they like listening to it.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2013 06:27
|
|
|
For people complaining that the album doesn't have any lyrical substance to it, I feel like they're missing a huge theme of the album: Yeezus isn't about political bullshit or croissants or whatever, it's about the stress of becoming a married father. The lyrical themes of the album make more sense when you picture Yeezus as Kanye's wild, hosed up bachelor party before getting married to Kim, and his fears about giving up open sex/drugs/parties and starting up a family. Here's my analysis: On Sight: Not really part of the album's narrative, but more a short "manifesto" for what the album is about (Kanye has pretty much said that this was the intent from interviews). Loud, abrasive synths, and lots of tasteless sex. Most telling is the College Dropout-esque sample outright telling the audience "He'll give us what we need, it may not be what we want", referring to the sound of the record. Black Skinhead: The first half of Yeezus is about Kanye's state of mind, mostly his insecurities and paranoia, and the pressures of fame. The next three songs have this big sense of claustrophobia to them. In this case, his paranoia of people's perceptions of him ("Middle America", "Catholics", "Conservative Baptists"), his personality, his politics, and his relationship with Kim ("They see a black man with a white woman at the top floor they gone come to kill King Kong"). The incorrect historical references ("keep it 300 like the Romans", "burn this poo poo down like the theater Hitler was trapped in") continue the theme of Kanye viewing people's perceptions of him as incorrect. I Am A God: No idea why people think this song is about Ye being an arrogant douche. The oppressive beat and terrified screaming are not the products of someone satisfied with themselves. The production takes the song from Kanye arrogantly proclaiming "I am a god!" to Kanye desperate in the mirror, telling himself "I am a god..." New Slaves: More paranoia, this time at the idea that everyone and everything is conspiring to hold Kanye back. From the fashion industry to his label to the media to White America to the government, Kanye feels assaulted on all sides and defensive ("I'll move my family out the country so you can't see where they stay"). It doesn't matter if these political statements are true or shallow or hypocritical, it's not about that. It's about Kanye's personal worldview. The soaring outro (itself a response to Part 1 of the album, with Kanye saying he'll proving everyone wrong and he can't lose, etc. etc.) represents a shift in the album from Kanye's inner turmoil (all tracks conveniently produced by Daft Punk), to Kanye's outer turmoil with relationships and addictions. Part 2 of Yeezus begins. Hold My Liquor: The first appearance of his conflict between a stable relationship and his addictions to drugs and sex. In this case, alcoholism derailing a relationship. Note the cyclical format of Kanye's one verse. It sounds repetitive and ends exactly where it began, signifying an inability to kick his habits. I'm In It: Kanye's other vice: an addiction to open, consequence-free sex. He's trying to transition into a monogamous relationship, but can't help himself to shallow sexual encounters. The line "got the kids-and-the-wife life but can't wake up from the nightlife" sums up the theme of the record pretty well. Blood on the Leaves: A cautionary tale, based on a friend's experiences with a relationship fueled by drugs that has left its honeymoon period and has turned into an ugly divorce and custody battle. The constant, in-poor-taste racial references in this and I'm In It tie into the racial paranoia introduced in New Slaves. Are Kanye's issues regarding sex and his personal life based on or comparable to racism? Probably not, but to Kanye it is and that's all that matters. Guilt Trip: Presumably after an engagement, Kanye gets cold feet about marriage ("I need to call it off"). The song has him blaming himself for the distance between him and a lover, thinking that the marriage has already disintegrated before it has even begun. Notably, the girl in the relationship (Kim?) never seems to openly express any issues with the relationship, possibly meaning that it's all in Kanye's head, and that his own paranoia and insecurity is sabotaging a perfectly fine relationship with his fiancee. Send It Up: The album's ignorant "club track". But why is it stuck near the end of the album, surrounded by songs like Guilt Trip, Blood On The Leaves, and Bound 2? It represents the climax of the album, Kanye's emotional turning point. The one guest verse on the album is important, with the juxtaposition of King L (a young, vibrant individual representative of Chicago's youth, and the violence and poverty in the slums) and Kanye (an wealthy old man by hip-hop standards, with an established career, heading into a peaceful marriage) showing how Ye is an old man trying to cling on to the last shreds of his youth, accentuated by Kanye's half-hearted lyrics about the club. The intro/outro by Beenie Man is on the topics of memory and letting go of the past. Kanye realizes that he needs to move on from this period in his life and commit to Kim. This leads us to... Bound 2: The epilogue of the album, flash-forwarding us to Kanye's relationship with Kim in progress. He's ambivalent towards it; it's not perfect, but it's not a BOTL-level disaster either and he's committed to making it work. A sequel to the original song "Bound" that it samples, the way the "Bound" sample (and the Charlie Wilson hook) is cut off by a coy "uh huh, honey" is representative of how Kanye/Kim's relationship seems to slide back and forth between happiness and disappointment. The only song featuring Kanye committing himself to the family life is the most subdued, easy-going track on the album, and a return to his pre-808s sound, arguably the last time he was fully happy with his life and wasn't stressing out over his mom/America hating him/bad breakups/etc. In the end, Yeezus is a narrative of Christ's resurrection, filtered and warped through Kanye's egotistical and paranoid mindset. He is beloved, until he makes deliberate career/life choices that causes his followers and allies to turn on him. In this case, an abrupt and polarizing new sound that angers the populace, a sound that he believes he must be the cross-bearer for so that it may become popular in the mainstream. He goes through the wringer as he is crucified by others for his decisions. Yeezus returns, more confident than ever, with the sound people wanted from him all along, in Bound 2. (Interestingly enough, the final line Kanye says before Bound 2 begins is "Yeezus just rose again".) Tellingly, Ye has said that his next album will be lighter in tone and influenced by a more classic hip-hop sound. Sorry to get all SMG on your asses, but I'm really tired of people saying that Kanye threw this album together without any thought towards themes or narrative.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2013 10:46
|
|
|
I changed my mind about Watch the Throne: all of the tracks are amazing except Who Gon Stop Me, which only gets good halfway through and doesn't stay good for long.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2013 18:21
|
|
|
scary ghost dog posted:I changed my mind about Watch the Throne: all of the tracks are amazing except Who Gon Stop Me, which only gets good halfway through and doesn't stay good for long.
|
|
#
?
Dec 9, 2013 20:19
|
|
|
Rageaholic Monkey posted:Who Gon Stop Me is actually one of my favorites on that album. That one and That's My Bitch are what keep me coming back to that album besides the singles, and man, does that album have a lot of great singles! I can't believe Gotta Have It didn't break out more. What a helluva track.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2013 06:59
|
|
|
HorseRenoir posted:For people complaining that the album doesn't have any lyrical substance to it.... Hey, this is great! I'd never really pinpointed it as having as a specific arc or anything, and although this is all obviously speculation I liked it a lot.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2013 16:58
|
|
|
A portrait of Kanye through one-star Amazon reviews. I like how whoever the writer is managed to find a "every one of his albums was great until this one" quote for every release.
|
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2013 18:04
|
|
|
HorseRenoir posted:For people complaining that the album doesn't have any lyrical substance to it, This is either wanky overanalysis, or proof that Kanye is an absolute genius, and either way I love you for it. How does the "Keep it 300, like the Romans" mean that the criticism against him is misdirected though? Have there been any interviews that have called him out specifically on that line?
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2013 21:17
|
|
|
SgtScruffy posted:This is either wanky overanalysis, or proof that Kanye is an absolute genius, and either way I love you for it. It's probably a little of both, but drat I just listened to the record again with this in mind and it blew me away even moreso than before. Thanks HorseRenoir SgtScruffy posted:How does the "Keep it 300, like the Romans" mean that the criticism against him is misdirected though? Have there been any interviews that have called him out specifically on that line? Kanye is conflating history with entertainment (300 the movie not being about Romans at all, Hitler not really dying in a theater but being portrayed as such in Inglorious Basterds) much like the media conflates Kanye the artist with Kanye the man.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2013 22:01
|
|
|
SgtScruffy posted:This is either wanky overanalysis, or proof that Kanye is an absolute genius, and either way I love you for it. Remember how everybody said that I Am A God was more a self-doubt thing and it was being said like Kayne looking into the mirror trying to hype himself up...and in a later interview, he just said "hey, people can call themselves all sorts of things. why can't I call myself a god? that's what I felt like at the time" Some times, you just have to take things as presented.
|
|
#
?
Dec 10, 2013 22:19
|
|
|
It's over analysis to recite the narrative arc of the album verbatim.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2013 00:34
|
|
|
Call Me Charlie posted:Remember how everybody said that I Am A God was more a self-doubt thing and it was being said like Kayne looking into the mirror trying to hype himself up...and in a later interview, he just said "hey, people can call themselves all sorts of things. why can't I call myself a god? that's what I felt like at the time" That's not really a contradiction, though. Through his music he can express stuff about himself without fully realizing it. Also what he says in interviews is as subject to interpretation as what he says on the album itself.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2013 01:47
|
|
|
Splurgerwitzl posted:It's over analysis to recite the narrative arc of the album verbatim. To be fair if someone posted something like that about an Aesop Rock album or something they'd be laughed off the forums.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2013 04:41
|
|
|
Previous Jesus posted:To be fair if someone posted something like that about an Aesop Rock album or something they'd be laughed off the forums. That post was rather sparse on opinions, more heavy on literally quoting the immediate interpretation of the lyrics and giving Kanye credit on certain things where it isn't due (you really think the choice of King L was that self aware??) but it's better than being scared silent.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2013 18:14
|
|
|
I donno, Kanye knows a lot of rappers, the fact that the only two other rappers (not counting the dancehall guys) on Yeezus are young guys from Chicago (and associated with the drill scene too) seems pretty deliberate. Who knows though. Either way I appreciate those longer posts, it is way better than "Wow idiot you think Kanye had time to think about the order of tracks on this album?"-type handwaving. Ultimately I think Kanye obviously cares about his music on a deeper level but that doesn't mean that lines like the sweet and sour sauce one are anything other than him being drunk in the studio and thinking it was funny. Who knows.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2013 18:58
|
|
|
I don't know about that. It's not like it goes from the mic directly onto a CD, I would bet good money he heard that line in every mental state a multi-millionaire is able to achieve and a million times sober. He still let it through but it's no accident or something flippant. You guys act like this year didn't feature R. Kelly and ever other rapper furiously drilling into the bottom of the barrel of cunnilingus puns or that a rapper isn't allowed to screw with the academic historical accuracy of a reference to make a line sound better. Might as well get mad that Jay-Z didn't literally list out what the other 99 problems were in his liner notes.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2013 19:07
|
|
|
I believe Mr. West has an easier time expressing himself with his music than his words, which is why I analyze his music, not his words.
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2013 22:08
|
|
|
Y'all need to read up on your Barthes. The Death of the Author,  .
|
|
#
?
Dec 11, 2013 23:20
|
|
|
Lord Krangdar posted:That's not really a contradiction, though. Through his music he can express stuff about himself without fully realizing it. If Kanye is such a smart, calculating, guy...why wouldn't you take what he said about I Am A God as him taking the trend of 'people saying they feel like something they aren't' to it's most absurd conclusion instead of HorseRenoir posted:I Am A God: No idea why people think this song is about Ye being an arrogant douche. The oppressive beat and terrified screaming are not the products of someone satisfied with themselves. The production takes the song from Kanye arrogantly proclaiming "I am a god!" to Kanye desperate in the mirror, telling himself "I am a god..."
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2013 10:51
|
|
|
Kanye drops the ball quite a bunch but it doesn't matter cuz he's kanye and is generally pretty good at stuff, even dropped stuff. There's a good article on him "learning out loud" i found on this gaga fanblog (i was searching for yeezus concert pics on tumblr and stumbled on it) http://gagajournal.blogspot.com/2013/12/kanye-alive-limits-of-human-personality.html
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2013 15:33
|
|
|
Skip all these words and just call a stan a stan. me included p much
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2013 16:07
|
|
|
If i thought i was a kanye stan but still dont really like/"get" yeezus then what does that make me?
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2013 17:24
|
|
|
Reasonable
|
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2013 17:24
|
|
|
Call Me Charlie posted:If Kanye is such a smart, calculating, guy...why wouldn't you take what he said about I Am A God as him taking the trend of 'people saying they feel like something they aren't' to it's most absurd conclusion instead of Writing songs with some basic subtext beyond the most literal possible interpretation does not make him particularly "calculating". I dunno why people in this thread keep acting like finding simple meanings in Kanye's songs is some kind of ridicilous 12 dimensional chess level of reaching. Like other dude said, the terrified screams in the song don't sound at all like a product of self satisfaction or self aggrandizement. Lord Krangdar fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Dec 12, 2013 |
|
#
?
Dec 12, 2013 19:09
|
|
|
I'm shocked at the praise Yeezus gets. I like it but I didn't think other people would.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2013 01:59
|
|
|
Yeezus is really loving good.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2013 03:12
|
|
|
atrus50 posted:Kanye drops the ball quite a bunch but it doesn't matter cuz he's kanye and is generally pretty good at stuff, even dropped stuff. There's a good article on him "learning out loud" i found on this gaga fanblog (i was searching for yeezus concert pics on tumblr and stumbled on it) http://gagajournal.blogspot.com/2013/12/kanye-alive-limits-of-human-personality.html just wanna second what a great article this is, managed to win over one of my friends who was like "hahaha kanye is a joke, he needs to read books" for months with this.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2013 09:57
|
|
|
Yeah, I initially blew it off but it is a really good article. temple posted:I'm shocked at the praise Yeezus gets. I like it but I didn't think other people would. I'm a stan for sure but a lot of it is just how rude the album is. No singles, no melodies, just abrasive drums and some dancehall dudes. I mean, what rap act has 6 good solo albums? What rap act doesn't eventually just fall into a groove and make the same poo poo over and over for years? Kanye's one of the biggest dudes in the game and has been doing this for more than a decade and he is still making great, original music. Yeezus could have been an album of 2 Chainz features over Mike Will beats and he would've sold a million copies (or whatever dudes sell in 2013) but instead he made Yeezus. That alone is pretty dope IMO.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2013 12:00
|
|
|
atrus50 posted:http://gagajournal.blogspot.com/2013/12/kanye-alive-limits-of-human-personality.html i too kinda dismissed this at first but then i read through it and had to link it to people cuz it says things that i wouldnt be able to word, so i have to say this is a pro click e: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGTtv3yFdco conventionalcat fucked around with this message at 13:39 on Dec 13, 2013 |
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2013 13:18
|
|
|
Kid Gloves posted:could have been an album of 2 Chainz features over Mike Will beats  now youre speaking my language...But seriously though, by all accounts yeezus seems like a pretty capital-g Good album i just dont really enjoy listening to most of the songs. Like, Id be hard-pressed to select a favorite part that isnt the abrupt frank ocean section on new slaves. I guess I like the idea of it way more than the actual product.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2013 14:07
|
|
|
Yo even if you haven't been into her previously (I hate Single Ladies, and the only song of hers that's ever crossed my radar is Crazy in Love) if you loved Yeezus you should probably give Beyonce's new self-titled album a shot, since its darker, minimalistic style and lyrical content in many ways feel like a female answer to Yeezus. If anything, it's way better than her husband's mediocre effort of an album this year.
|
|
#
?
Dec 15, 2013 23:55
|
|
|
re. the "Keep it 300, like the romans" line I'm pretty sure it's a joke. Kanye likes jokes. See also "Prince Williams" in Niggas in Paris. And other purposefully dumb poo poo throughout his entire discography. Anyone who spends hours using it as proof that Kanye is dumb or means something deeper is missing the point, it's funny to make dumb jokes.
|
|
#
?
Dec 17, 2013 22:39
|
|
|
Anyone hitting the Detroit show on Thursday?
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2013 02:11
|
|
|
I haven't followed that Bound 2 video thing but I looked it up on Youtube. I don't know what to think if people believe that video is not doing exactly what Kanye intended it to do. I had to lookup what the "controversy" was because it seemed like he set out to capture a sort of cheesy 80's movie or public access look and succeeded. Maybe I'm not getting whatever hidden meaning there's supposed to be? That article posted earlier is right, people seem to just drop Kanye in the "talentless idiot" box because he is loud. I mean, just compare it to his other videos, dude clearly knows how to execute on an idea.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2013 05:46
|
|
|
^burtle posted:Anyone hitting the Detroit show on Thursday? trying to sell a ticket then buy two more so I can go with a different person than who I have tickets with, but either way I'll be attending. Unfortunately the Palace is pretty lovely for concerts, so that sucks.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2013 18:52
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 4, 2024 02:29 |
|
|
dang y'all tellin me that me getting a tat of "Keeping It 300 Like The Romans" is not actually a good idea?? heckkkkkkkkkkkkkk.
|
|
#
?
Dec 18, 2013 19:32
|
|
