rolling donda thread

http://www.highsnobiety.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/kanye-west-entourage-fashion-week-paris.jpg

Not bad!

Lol

The Abstract Mindstate album is pretty good

Trout Mask Replica is finally on spotify. If you need to party with a good album considering Donda didn’t drop.

the idea of a modern kanye album that's 24 tracks does not inspire confidence at all

lol there is apparently a 12 minute track on this

What I liked about the Jesus album continues here, based on the (much better) second listening party: lyrically he gets to move past the tired models + luxury brands + porn-y double entendres. Clean Kanye > Dirty Kanye.

lol apparently his Soldier Field listening part has to end by Chicago ordinance in 36 minutes and he…. still hasn’t shown up. what a grifter.

reading he brought out marilyn manson??? uh wtf

uh yeah, apparently, love* to hear the stans spin this one tomorrow.

* - actually no I won’t at all

also DaBaby, jfc

dababy is one thing but bringing out marilyn manson is an extremely dumbass move even by kanye's terrible standards

oh def Manson is infinitely worse, no denying that, just saying that DaBaby is also an, uh, interesting choice at this particular moment in time

bringing out dababy is like, regular kanye level of dumbass move

Im not disagreeing with you? Just pointing out an additional, if far less reprehensible, bonehead move.

yeah i'm not disagreeing either sorry if that was unclear

LMFAO HAHAHAHAHA😂

Larry Hoover Jr: Please FREE my Dad who was a GD, gang leader. He has ZERO gang affiliations now. I promise 😇

Kanye: * Plays a song that's dedicated to GD gang, where they shout out Larry Hoover & talk about violence * 😈#DONDA #IRONY #HILAROUS #DISCIPLES pic.twitter.com/1QnPGbBMIm

— Pharrell Season (@PharrellSeason) August 27, 2021

^^ Couple minutes on the album of the son of the Gangster Disciples’ leader requesting that his dad be let out of prison. Followed by a full-on Gangster Disciples anthem.

cutting the verse with the line making fun of yr maga hat shit, dropping in dababy and having marilyn manson prominently feature in yr party sends a hell of a rough message

— zack’s Premium Tweets™️ (@yrfriendzack) August 27, 2021

LOL Kanye sampled “I am the globglogabgalab” pic.twitter.com/8GyId7FMMv

— 👾 (@small_follower) August 27, 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MnrVBKkESI

You know, guys, I just don’t think this album will spawn many think pieces

Having marilyn manson onstage is disgusting.

grifters gonna grift:

Fans are still waiting for the official release of Kanye’s long-awaited album. But without the album, Kanye has already earned millions as expectations continue to rise.

So far, Kanye has already hosted two listening events for the album in Atlanta, and tonight is hosting a third listening event in his hometown of Chicago. According to Billboard last month, about 42,000 fans filled Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium for their first listening event and paid $ 25 to $ 100 for tickets. Two weeks later, another event took place, with sources close to Ye revealing about $ 7 million in face-to-face merchandise sales.

I mean, where have we seen all this before? Touring around to gather the rabid fanbase in the middle of a pandemic to feed his ego, bringing out "shocking" guests to align himself with who he perceives as "victims" instead of the perpetrators they are. Rabid fans that will absolutely excuse every single misstep and unforgiveable fuckup and twist their logic into pretzels about why it's actually "goo:. This dude is exhausting and I wish the Manson thing would put off sites like Pitchfork from furiously reporting on his every move.

Call me crazy, but I have a hunch Kanye burns through piles of money, and the people behind Kanye, Inc. are probably in a constant rush to refill the coffers.

And yes, Kanye's music is indeed goo.

I'm sure he does, renting out an NFL stadium for your mid-life crisis bachelor pad can't be cheap, which is why the grift keeps rolling.

xp - lol

"you'll be my favorite prom queen/even when we're in dad shoes and mom jeans"

"Will you shut up?/I can't hear myself drink"

"we used to do the freak like seven days a week/best collab since Taco Bell and KFC"

real lyrical gems on this

"cussin' at your baby momma/that's why they call it 'custody'"

there’s no way the lyrical content on this album will be anything but inane garbage

― bezos did the dub (voodoo chili), Wednesday, July 21, 2021 8:19 AM (one month ago) bookmarkflaglink

(watching a youtube of the show)

his beats are so reliant on like three-chord synth pad patterns over spare boom bap patterns with a lot of altered/filters gospel vocal samples or choirs, so repetitive

the part where he set himself on fire was pretty cool

"cussin' at your baby momma/that's why they call it 'custody'"

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, 27 August 2021 14:52 (fifty minutes ago) link

C'mon this is kinda funny

The Manson thing is awful. Kanye thinks he is taking a stand against “cancel culture,” but Manson’s offense isn’t that he said something politically incorrect. He is a serial predator.

He’s such an absolute dumbass.

Having marilyn manson onstage is disgusting.

― treeship., Friday, August 27, 2021 6:49 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

?

You said it well

Ah ok. Sorry.

Yeah, it's absolutely fucking gross.

Kanye **might** be potentially getting ahead of a movement of art made as implicit protest to liberal moral panics — like a parallel to the ca. 1984-1991 rap and heavy metal made as implicit protest to conservative moral panics. Time will tell if that's actually going to be a thing (let's all hope not), but if it comes to pass, this will be a pretty prescient moment

I could totally see Kanye getting Roman Polanski to direct a video

And he will say that he is being “Christian” by embracing sinners.

Lee Renaldo from Sonic Youth went to this, posted a photo on Instagram

lol

isn't it just a pic of a tv?

ah might be i was on my phone didn't look closely

still wasn't expecting any overlap there haha

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5P24B-s7ks

Comment from the hiphopheads subreddit, completely agree:

I think Marilyn Manson is the final drop even for hardcore fans as me. Trump before, slavery, crying for abortion, i took it as some mental crazy weirdness and I was sorry for him. But with Manson as publicity act, its weird as fuck.
I loved Kanye cause he was real, or at least i though he was. But this is not realness, making publicity act on listening party for album for your deceased mother with accused rapist.
I mean, event inviting DaBaby is the least gangsta thing to do, its least real thing to do, its just publicity act and I hate it. The show could be fantastic without them, it destroyed completely my mood for the album. And i think I am done with Kanye.

trying to be edgy is a best case scenario here... hasn't he fretted about being "#metoo'd" himself more than once

yeah i would expect it's more like he thinks manson has been unfairly persecuted by the media like he has

i think it's that and he is trying to make a statement about forgiving sinners, like jesus did.

yeah that makes sense

jesus already did that why do we need kanye to do it again for us

the scumbags in the music industry (& beyond) aligning as some sort of bloc - at least in a more public & explicitly ideological way than they already have - is something i've dreaded for a while. so i hope it's just the jesus thing. but it could be both. the choice of sinners is telling either way

beside the point but those lyrics make me think i've been too hard on mid-to-late-period eminem. which is something

jesus didn't slut shame either

kanye is unlike jesus in a lot of ways. no argument from me.

album is gonna end with a 10 minute Louie CK standup routine about cancel culture

that would be more coherent than anything i'd expect from it

well it's gonna be against a backdrop of Bill Cosby repeating the words "Spanish Fly"

lol

i thought the staging was kind of cool at this thing. menacing.

kim made a good ghost bride.

but yeah, that is neither here nor there. the manson stunt is misguided at best and sort of makes me nauseous, especially considering that this is an album he is dedicating to his mother.

jesus already did that why do we need kanye to do it again for us

idk if you’ve noticed but kanye has a fairly high opinion of himself

anyway he instagrammed yesterday that he’s holding up the album because dababy’s managers won’t clear his verse.

gotta think they’re trying to protect him from himself and there’s some vile shit in there

he instagrammed yesterday that he’s holding up the album because dababy’s managers won’t clear his verse

Well, there's something called Donda on Spotify.

1 hour 48 min i am not looking forward to this

9 minute track "jesus lord" then 12 minute "jesus lord pt 2" lmao

listening now lol.

"donda chant" is weird and makes this seem like a joke.

also jay is back? his verse on "jail" seems to set the stage for the album thematically. he criticizes the "red cap" but echoes a lot of other kanye talking points about the media trying to prevent people from speaking their mind honestly.

Well, there's something called Donda on Spotify.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Sunday, August 29, 2021 7:28 AM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

there’s a grayed-out track called “jail pt 2” on it too

ridiculous to drop it five days early before the rights are cleared, after so many delays

the cover art is just a black square too. which might be the final art, but this also might be another teaser.

Moon is actually a really beautiful song

Well, given that my son is a fan I know what we’re doing today

going to the woods and keeping him off the grid?

even after all the shit he pulls, people just absolutely cannot stop themselves from racing to give him streams and clicks this morning.

currently sitting at 3.81 on RYM with nearly 3000 ratings, no fucking way. everyone reviewing this comes off like an insane person

On vacation in an area without much internet connection so I’ll have to wait to listen to this… I’m just glad he’s not making 22-minute records anymore

But 1 hour and 48 minutes? Oh boy

can't get back to sleep so i am going to hope this is enough of a drag to get me back asleep

"jail pt 2" is available now it looks like

Well, given that my son is a fan I know what we’re doing today

lol mine listened to the entire thing this morning and has given it a thumbs-up — says it might be his 3rd-favorite Kanye album. I let him play me his favorite tracks in the car when we were just out running out doing some errands, and they weren't bad. I liked "Off the Grid" and "Come to Life" all right.

"god breathed" sounds like a yeezus outtake and this choir outro that goes for way too long

(cranky old men of ilxor being forced to listen to Kanye by their kids is very 2021)

ah on "off the grid" he's gone back to the mbdtf issue of verses that last forever (both his & guests) with no justification like this track would have been ok at half the length

it feels like he's at least trying again, it's nowhere near as tossed off as jesus is king but the level of quality he's reaching is still just the weaker parts of life of pablo

kanye swearing a bunch but only releasing the censored version is such a goofy move

ok "junya" is straight up dreadful

"believe what i say" is pretty decent but kanye's lack of sense for song structure hurts it

like there's certainly potential for a hit there but the structure's really rough with the second verse that goes forever & buju banton's weird interlude

lmao that he really kept the globgogabgalab bit in "remote control", feels like something from a youtube poop

"jesus lord" is a real drag

After most of a first listen “Hurricane” is a keeper for me

"tell the vision" is just a posthumous pop smoke verse over a single piano line & it does not work

There’s a song here that sounds suspiciously like R.E.M.’s “At Your Most Beautiful.”

Gave a quick glance, against all odds I did enjoy two tracks (“believe what I say” (probably the only song that has single potential) and “moon” (which makes me realize I actually like Kid Cudi more than I thought))

this indeed was enough of a drag to make me sleepy

maybe I'm not clicking on the right tracks but everything on here seems blatantly unfinished, it's full of trainwreck moments and the mastering/production is straight up awful. on the end of "Pure Souls" the organ starts clipping bad, it's like Youtubecore shit. I feel like I'm listening to Viper the Rapper! how is this a finished album?? is it really better than the last two? what are the good bits supposed to be?

it seems like this is front-loaded with the good stuff. the run from Jail through Hurricane is good, in my view.

john berger, in his biography of picasso, said that at a certain point picasso fell in love with the "process" over the product. he felt that he was an artist. whatever he created, even half-assedly, was art. art became a state of being, more than a practice, for picasso. so the discipline that allowed him to make something like "guernica," by the 50s was just not something he was interested in. instead, he made a lot of tossed-off things, often turning out multiple "finished" painting a day. and because he was picasso, selling them for 🤑.

i think kanye in a similar phase of his career. like picasso, he thinks that he is the thing that is important, not the work.

is hurricane the one with the weeknd? that one is indeed good, at least the parts where ye isn’t vocalizing

i tried what y'all are saying are the high points.
Believe What I Say doesn't add much to That Thing and mostly just made me want to listen to that
Moon is uninspired
Hurricane is fucking Weeknd, you could've warned me
Come to Life is a good example of Kanye's fourth-xerox faded reproduction gospel that for some reason people really like but now it has the added benefit of sounding more like coldplay
i'm good thanks

Agree, I ended up listening to That Thing instead.

Apparently he is claiming Universal put it up without his permission and that they blocked “Jail 2”?

uh oh

i assumed he did it himself impulsively -- gave the green light without any album art or anything.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hTSvEgEdjs

Four times in my life I downloaded leaks of albums and wound up being utterly convinced they were fake. One was Human After All, the other three were Kanye

how does this stack up to the version from the Apple event? Did he make a lot of changes?

my understanding is it's a little different to the most recent event, and there's more significant changes from the earlier events, but i have no interest in digging through all the different versions

i got tired of it 20 tracks in last night and went back to bed so it was a success in that regard

"come to life" is actually decent

"jail pt 2" just being an alternate version of "jail" with dababy & manson instead of jay-z and the exact same kanye verse & beat etc. is so stupid

guessing all the pt 2s are the same deal this is ridiculous

they were indeed all the same deal

overall it's a chaotic bloated mess of an album, a few decent ideas here and there but none really polished effectively. his second worst only ahead of jesus is king.

i like this to a surprising degree but fuck kanye

"jail pt 2" just being an alternate version of "jail" with dababy & manson instead of jay-z and the exact same kanye verse & beat etc. is so stupid

I figured “Jesus Lord Pt. 2” (which could be Ye’s “Junior Dad” if not for the lyrics) wouldn’t include the Larry Hoover Jr. monologue, to stand alone as either a pop or gospel single, but no.

i think jesus is king is underrated

just throwing it out there. this is my view.

I agree. It removed things I like least about his other albums (bottle-service misogyny, big samples).

if you removed all the bloat & cut this down to the best 30-40 minutes it would still only be about his third worst album instead of second worst

he's really stagnated creatively, the last few albums have all just been lesser regurgitations of the sound palette from life of pablo

first listen: not a disaster like his last two albums. kanye's raps are still the weakest.

The last Kanye I heard was Life of Pablo. You're all hypocrites and money changers in need of a good whipping.

if you removed all the bloat & cut this down to the best 30-40 minutes it would still only be about his third worst album instead of second worst

yea I mean there's a decent album in here somewhere but instead this comes off like nearly 2 hours of demos that's still a few months away from being a completed product. the auto tune sounds like shit, Kanye's raps almost never scan properly, there are audio artifacts everywhere, the samples are always awkward, and there's so much compression on everything. it sounds like the shit blasting out of the boom box at the parties I was at 12 years ago, random hip-hop downloaded off Limewire with audio tags everywhere. also I find a lot of the religious/tribute to his mother kinda gross, it reminds me of when R. Kelly dedicated a song to his Mom and then immediately followed it up with "Sex Me".

now having said all that its a bit fascinating, there's some inexplicable, Tommy Wiseau-esque shit on here. but it's more The Neighbors than The Room

this doesn't personally strike me as incredibly unfinished but maybe i have to hear it with headphones

it's better than pablo imo

I don't know anyone can even give him streams or clicks at this point, fuck this guy completely and I'm not desperate enough to hear a terrible album that I want to feed his ego in the least.

(i am personally not streaming this)

yeah i admittedly streamed the first few songs on YouTube but felt too gross (and wasn't good enough tbqh) to continue

there are plenty of people out there with no moral compunctions about giving him their fraction of cents, so i figure my cent fractions are just a drop in the bucket

Soulseek my brothers and sisters

finding a download of this album is already too much effort expended for what i heard

yeah I mean, I'm not casting stones here. it's just the massive whiplash you see online, esp on twitter, with people posting "fuck this guy" for months but suddenly live tweeting the album the second it dropped on streaming services.

the same exact people? or do you mean the general rhetoric as you've seen it

i also feel like a crazy person bc this is the best-sounding kanye record i’ve heard in like a decade

decade plus i mean

Honestly, I have enough music in my life, new and old, that I have no problem ignoring this the same way I've skipped his last few records. Even my teens are like "fuck Kanye."

the same exact people? or do you mean the general rhetoric as you've seen it

Both I guess, but yes sometimes the exact same people. I follow two different people who were absolutely trashing him during the Chicago listening party thing ("fuck this guy", "stop feeding his attention" etc etc), but both of them were live tweeting their reactions Friday morning.

Everyone on that app wants to be part of "the conversation" and "the conversation" is increasingly a toilet

I don't see the lie.

Leaving professional music writing after nearly 20 years is, in many ways, absolutely heartbreaking. But I gotta say, this tirefire dropping on a weekend and I don't have to think about it, have an opinion on it, or even listen to it ... chef's kiss

What makes me sad about this is how much oxygen it sucks away from artists who actually have something interesting to saw and work hard to make the music the best it can be.

Quality/content aside, what if West brought out, say, L’Rain instead of Marilyn effing Manson

Interesting to say

xp to whiney, i was trying to get the head of NPR music out to see a Sun-Ra tribute show that he was really quite excited about and he had to cancel at the last minute because of the britney conservator story. he was not happy.

its kind of understandable though, a decade of unparalleled greatness followed by a dramatic and very public downfall is just a naturally intriguing story. everyone loves a comeback story. its the same reason why sportswriters could not shut the fuck up about Tiger Woods even when he was badly missing the cut by like 10 strokes. I think Tiger's a scumbag but him winning the Masters two years ago was legitimately one of the coolest things to ever happen in sports. and while what he's been doing lately sucks it at least sucks in kind of an interesting way. that said nobody would give a fuck about this album if anyone else had done it which is why I'll probably never listen to it again.

looks like 'donda' is heading towards the biggest album debut of the year so far

.@kanyewest's #DONDA headed for #1 debut on the US albums chart with 300K+ first week, headed for biggest 2021 debut. More updates through the week (via @HITSDD).

— chart data (@chartdata) August 30, 2021

carti sounds so awesome on “off the grid”

a decade of unparalleled greatness

2004-2014, pretty good

most greatness went perpendicular

I don't necessarily agree with that myself, I've always felt Kanye was wildly overrated, just saying a lotta people really like everything he did up to Yeezus at least

I would take Kendrick 10-20 over kanye 04-14
i would take TI 03-13 over kanye 04-14
hell, i would take TMBG 88-98 over Kanye 04-14

Kanye means a lot to people the way the Beatles mean a lot to people. When he first emerged, he stood out for his frankness and vulnerability in a rap scene dominated by machismo. Also the first few albums were just addictively listenable and felt fresh and inventive. A lot has happened since then but it’s no surprise to me that people are still invested in his music.

i still think going from graduation to 808s is one of the most impressive swerves in any musician's discography

Honestly i think being in high school at that time is part of it. There are many millennials who grew up with Kanye. For these listeners I think the cockiness plays different. Like at least on the first four albums, the “narcissism” was a guy who was clearly insecure, and open about his insecurities, choosing to believe in himself anyway, which is powerful. M

This quality turned rancid after his mom died though. For whatever reason, it seemed like he needed to believe he was a mozart level genius or else he was worthless. He raps about being the best of all time and also about thinking of suicide, very often in the same song. He has an unstable sense of self. Sometimes he turns this into thrilling art but honestly it is not that unique. It is a very recognizable form of mental illness.

What I would like for kanye is not for him to make any more great records, but for him to feel at peace with himself so he no longer needs these narcissistic fantasies. It’s the same thing I would want for anyone similarly struggling.

Like the erratic contrarianism, the grandiosity, the sick attention-grabbing stunts like inviting marilyn manson onstage, it definitely is all coming from a pretty fucked up place. That’s why it’s hard for me to just write him off as an asshole. I feel like that’s why he still has fans. Although some people might just like the spectacle.

i like this record and that feels really pointless bc the conversation around kanye is so poisonous and it's totally something he invited on himself

"pure souls" is so awesome though

his production has gotten so boring

synth pad synth pad synth pad synth pad kick snare patter *lion king ass grandiose singing for like 3-4 minutes* *a rap finally*

like jfc you don't have to repeat every fucking singing line like 27 times before you move on to the next part

this shit is not live to me at all, it's the opposite of everything i value in hip hop

been listening in fits and starts. the pop smoke moment is completely embarrassing. he didn't even bother trying to mix it into the rest of the song. it was clearly a voice note from pop's phone, complete with background noise and a very tinny drill beat that completely clashes with the main instrumental. the verse itself probably never should've seen the light of day, but of course v*ctor and co. will never turn down a check.

hell, i would take TMBG 88-98 over Kanye 04-14

TMBG 04-14 even :)

Of course you'd say that.

xxp this is why I find it odd that it's just taken as a given that "Kanye is the best hip-hop producer of all time". what exactly does "producer" mean in that context? because from a technical perspective, even back on MBDTF, it seems clear sometimes that he's doing things in a really clumsy way, just time-stretching stuff and leaving everything brickwalled so it sounds the same on $5 headphones as it would on a big setup. if they're talking about the sounds he uses and how he combines certain things, that I get, but is that "production"?

the overblown, wall of sound of mbdtf was an artistic choice, like it or not.

producer in hip-hop generally means "person who creates the instrumental backing track"

Genuine question: is he considered the greatest producer in hip-hop?

Genuine question: is he considered the greatest producer in hip-hop?

By idiots, sure.

Sorely missing an interpolation of this track at the end of the album as a quasi-callback to "Fade"/Pablo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUlRx5IU1dM

^that on repeat for 1h 48 mins >>>>>>>>>>> this album

kanye sucks but not nearly to the degree that i'm not still going to listen to anything new he puts out out of morbid curiosity, or delete his back catalogue from my library, etc

the only thing this album has over pablo is it doesn't have the real wtf misogynist lyrical moments that pablo did, which were some of his worst (or maybe it does and i didn't pay enough attention, that's possible, but either way they're not the same jarring presence). nothing on this comes close to the best stuff on pablo - "ultralight beam", "30 hours", "fade", "highlights", "no more parties in la", etc. and i don't really rate pablo much at all

Genuine question: is he considered the greatest producer in hip-hop?

By idiots, sure.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Monday, August 30, 2021 3:31 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i don't deal in this kind of hyperbole but i think the guy that produced "drive slow" was/is very good at what he does

it’s not worth engaging the trolls who come out and say he was “never good” or whatever

Two points before I leave this thread:

1. Kanye was definitely great once upon a time, he got lost in the way and he’s a fucking burned out asshole nowadays, but he was a great producer and an artist with a vision a decade ago.

2. I only listened once to this album albeit skipping pretty much half of the tracks after a minute. I don’t want to support him but got morbid. Immediatly regret it as I don’t want to be involved in most of the conversations in here or other forums regarding this album. People have been in heavy denial because they think the old kanye is still somewhere in there. I think this is the final nail in the coffin for me.

godspeed

been listening in fits and starts. the pop smoke moment is completely embarrassing. he didn't even bother trying to mix it into the rest of the song. it was clearly a voice note from pop's phone, complete with background noise and a very tinny drill beat that completely clashes with the main instrumental. the verse itself probably never should've seen the light of day, but of course v*ctor and co. will never turn down a check.

there's a more complete though still pointless & embarrassing version on the posthumous pop smoke album this year which only makes the one on this album seem even more confusing

even though it's basically panning it the p4k review comes across as way too generous to this lol

it got interesting for a bit when you focused on style, fashion, stadium events etc., but once manson & co hit the stage - turned out there's hardly any substance

You’ll notice: P4K FINALLY rated him below a 7.0.

this is why I find it odd that it's just taken as a given that "Kanye is the best hip-hop producer of all time".

i don't even think he's top 10

lol I forgot they gave Jesus is King a 7.2, what a joke

no fan but Donda is better than JiK

I actually like jesus is king more than this, i think. People were understandably turned off by the MAGA stuff when that dropped, which led people to say, insanely, that it was worse than ye.

synth pad synth pad synth pad synth pad kick snare patter *lion king ass grandiose singing for like 3-4 minutes* *a rap finally*

You can dismissively describe anything that way though.

People were understandably turned off by the MAGA stuff when that dropped

MAGA, Jesus, bad couture, Musk-like behaviour...take your pick

His production work for Pusha and Nas in recent years has been great and has also made it hard to resist not listening to any of his albums since Pablo but somehow I'm managing

He found a way out of the materialism+misogyny that was so constant (the “meet me in the bathroom stall” verse of even one of his best songs). That’s the stuff I could never get past with him. The lack of status symbols and negging on the last two albums have kept them from having those lowest low points (sweet and sour, bleached asshole, etc.).

You can dismissively describe anything that way though.

― treeship., Tuesday, August 31, 2021 9:30 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

No you can't

U Pussy. U really wore that trump hat too. You did a-lot of corny shit in ur career and got a pass. Bitch ass nigga apologize to Taylor swift @kanyewest

— Soulja Boy (Draco) (@souljaboy) August 31, 2021

ye is just kinda boring but it's still more listenable than the two since

just toning down the misogyny from his very worst moments and adding in a bunch of inane even by his standards religious stuff isn't really much of an improvement

& the music itself has really declined too of course

haven’t listened to this yet but life of pablo is awesome, i didnt realize there we’re ppl who dont like it

iirc pablo did not appreciate having his life aired out like that

i pretty much loved life of pablo, dumb lyrics and all

I love pablo.

That’s just the waaaaave.

i always forget that ilm doesn’t like any kanye after graduation/808s. weird

pablo is like 2/3rds decent but has some of his worst lyrics and the sequencing is dreadful, a real incoherent mess. was really the beginning of the end

mbdtf is overrated elsewhere but still good, just really could have used an editor, some very bloated track lengths

yeezus is a classic

i tried to resequence tlop into something good again recently and there's just no way to make it work at all idk

lol i think the sequencing of pablo (at least before it falls off the rails post “wolves”) is really kinetic and great, each song flows into the other, sets up a rise and fall of anticipation where i can’t really imagine say “famous” without “feedback” following

Yeezus and Pablo are my faves, easily.

I couldn't get into Kanye until Yeezus and that one hit me like a ton of bricks. It brought his prior work into focus for me and Pablo had a similarly loose production style that I liked. I'm done with him though. I was curious if he would move past the Trump shit and own up to mistakes (silly, I know), but instead he brings more shit-bags to the party. Pure troll.

I bought Late Registration when it came out and could not understand what the big deal was. The hype around Graduation convinced me to try that one... nope. Sold both of them back. I listened to Yeezus nonstop for a long time. It might be the last big major current superstar thing that felt Important to me.

sequencing of Pablo is fine to me. maybe im just used to it

Pablo is pretty uneven imo. Def some filler, was tired of panda -2 months before pablo came out, got super tired of BEAUTIFUL MORNING bc the bar I was going to for awhile kept playing it & draining it of its magic. Idk I think it’s got good parts but. Chance convincing him to keep “Waves” on it for example. What the hell

Some heaters tho for sure in that era. “Real friends” especially. “Fade” of course. No more parties in LA. Was the lil pump song this cycle?

"waves" was extremely half-baked yeah, there were some ideas there but they weren't developed enough at all. other real duds: "freestyle 4", "fml", "facts", "low lights"

"father stretch my hands" and "famous" also kanye at his most obnoxious. "father stretch my hands" kinda emblematic of the album as a whole - there's a ton of ideas thrown together & while some of it is inspired the execution is pretty rough

"i love it" (the lil pump song) was ye-era

says a lot that the discussion in this thread is currently focused on anything but the topic

i revisited mbdtf today. “so appalled” is like a tour through the worst rap verses of all time + an ok pusha verse

idk how ppl can make it through that and “hell of a life” and think “wow what a masterpiece”

says a lot that the discussion in this thread is currently focused on anything but the topic

― octobeard, Wednesday, September 1, 2021 12:31 AM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

album is radioactive

so many tracks on mbdtf are "why the hell does this go for six minutes"

the only longer track on it i don't feel that way about is "monster"

like cut at least two minutes off "gorgeous", probably cut "so appalled" completely, at least a minute from "devil in a new dress", the idea of the "runaway" outro is way cooler in theory than in practice, the chris rock skit on "blame game" sucks

& kanye is at his most obnoxious on "hell of a life" & "blame game" even if they sound great

i had nearly forgotten the jay verse on monster is the most hilarious thing that’s ever happened

this is why I find it odd that it's just taken as a given that "Kanye is the best hip-hop producer of all time".

i don't even think he's top 10

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), mardi 31 août 2021 15:43 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah this is crazy. Thinking about it, he could make it into a top10, MAYBE (and barely)... but how could anyone who likes/knows hiphop think he's the best ever (except himself, obviously !) ??

He was the first guy sampling..Daft Punk..for the rap kids

other real duds: "freestyle 4", "fml", "facts", "low lights"

“low lights” is great! wtf!

feels weird to consider “facts” as part of the album, it’s clearly a slapped on bonus track. it does suck, true. and he did put in on the album.

the other two are lyrical disasters carried by excellent samples. he still had amazing instincts behind the boards, but was leaning into the absolute worst parts of his persona. nothing on donda approaches them, musically.

whatever the intention was, whether "30 hours" & onwards is bonus tracks or not, it was a bizarre structural decision & those tracks are still part of the album even if not part of the core sequence really

"low lights" is just a pointless interlude idk it adds nothing at all to me, easy skip

there was potential with the "freestyle 4" beat but his performance ruins it.

nothing about "fml" is very good but that long intro portion is especially bad. the whole thing is too many half-formed ideas strung together even before you get to the lyrics

idk the last 6-7 songs on pablo are easy to separate for me, since nearly all of them were pre-release singles or odds and ends. including them felt more like a business decision than anything else to me, and that decision is much less egregious than the array of reduxes that close out the new one

maybe if he weren’t constrained by the cd format, kanye would’ve tossed all the good friday tracks onto the end of mbdtf

the best pablo tracklist i've come up with is this:

ultralight beam
no more parties in la
famous
feedback
fade
highlights
saint pablo
real friends
only one
(silence / throw any of the interludes in here if you want)
30 hours (bonus track)

but it still really feels like less than the sum of its parts idk

i really love "30 hours"

xxxxxpost - i mean now you'll see list of greatest rap producers without, for example, marley marl who pioneered sampling drums

kanye isn't even the best producer on his own records - mike dean's credits are amazing, scarface - the diary is better than any kanye album ever made, all that rap-a-lot stuff was so influential

I mean I think part of it is Kanye acts more like a "eccentric rock genius" a la Brian Wilson or Phil Spector or whoever and will always get mainstream attention as being so-called genius...whereas someone as great as Ant Banks, just a dude who made amazing rap records...there's no storyline there

I definitely agree with one point here, Kanye's lyrics being just bad instead of bad and gross is a big improvement. I just remembered Chris Rock's bit on MBDTF and fuck 10 years later I'm still cringing

relistening to bits of this there are definitely some good tracks on it, like "Moon" is legitimately one of the prettiest things he's ever done, though its no coincidence that Kanye himself doesn't appear on the track at all. I mean who knows what he even had to do with it. that said the Trump thing kind of ruined this guy forever for me, not just Kanye's own MAGA phase but also the way Trump demonstrated how these kind of insane narcissists who are unlikeable but still say entertaining shit in public can have legitimately awful effects on society. it makes me feel bad that I'm paying any attention to him at all.

anybody post this yet?

no pic.twitter.com/dgpSUOYASB

— IsItBetterThanPeppaPig (@PeppaPig6point5) August 31, 2021

not sure i am going to spend a lot of time digging into the new one but "junya" seems obviously good, a carti song with church organ

the young thug record seems pretty great too. 'off the grid' is a good concept. 'jesus lord'

there's a fresh aesthetic here i think, the sort of spaced out production. just bogged down in negative feeling and lack of editing or direction, kinda just takes up space. like when you go in someone's unfurnished house but they have a huge tv

the organ sounds on this are generally pretty good. that was true of jesus is king, too

kinda just takes up space. like when you go in someone's unfurnished house but they have a huge tv

Brilliant analogy....like an NBA rookie's new McMansion

"junya" seems obviously good, a carti song with church organ

his carti imitation sucks though

life if Pablo > mbdtf imho

that is the most ridiculous opinion I've seen in a while and I don't even like MBDTF that much anymore

Life of Pablo is as close as you can get to a moron shitting directly into your ears and people are all "man this slaps, how groundbreaking"

the new one is closer & there's still a large fanboy contingent that's all "man this slaps, how groundbreaking"

Life of Pablo is as close as you can get to a moron shitting directly into your ears and people are all "man this slaps, how groundbreaking"

― a gentle push against my Wonder Bread face (DJP), Thursday, September 2, 2021 10:22 AM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lmao

the funny thing is he can still make cool beats, the Abstract Mindstate album is totally slept on this year, i guess a two middle aged backpack rappers isn't really going to get attention, but if you want the old kanye/chop up the soul kanye, these beats are so much liver than anything he's done in recent memory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfdV0cywXDk

like just classic backpacker shit he was so good at

even this song, which is a little closer to the darker, more pretentious recent kanye - it's so much more developed than anything on donda, like it feels like an actual completed song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_g3lhvdFYk

yea I mean half the tracks on this album you keep waiting for the song to start, only to look at the time and realize this is the actual song. whether this was intentional or just him dumping out everything he had because he didn't wanna put in the work to finish the album, who knows, but if you have to answer that question then it's not worth spending 2 hours on. like 23 minutes of this are "Part 2" tracks which are nearly indistinguishable from the "Part 1"s. the fact that so many people are taking this seriously is kind of a testament to how much of a curve this dude gets graded on

yeah somehow still when he produces for others the results generally end up much more focused and polished than his recent solo material

idk maybe just having someone else he's working for who can reject anything particularly bizarre/unfinished makes a big difference. also i guess there's deliberate stylistic decisions that differ between his solo material where he's going wild experimenting with everything, and his production work where he's usually committing himself to a particular style

on his work for other artists, he likely doesn't put the pressure on himself to make the greatest beat of all time by the greatest genius to ever live

i would imagine it's a combo of both, but it's pretty glaring how much better he is for other people now

voodoo - that "greatest genius" kind of gets as what i think really rankles me about the whole cult of kanye. since forever the media and critical establishment always seems to think that hip hop is something that need to be "transcended" and kanye's sophomoric "art" antics have always played into that

like i love Public Enemy, but are they ultimately better than EPMD? Big Daddy Kane? I don't know but they certainly scanned closer to a rock music ideal of confrontational music than people who were just making classic hip hop tracks

Been listening to one of Mike Dean's two instrumental albums from last year, which (not surprisingly) has some of the Kanye textures without anything getting in their way.

surprised at how good watch the throne sounds to me rn. production's awesome and nowhere near blown-out as mbdtf. kanye verses all rancid. jay pretty good

The thing about talking Kanye now is being sufficiently scorched earth but also not tipping into total “fuck this guy” territory — not that there’s anything wrong with the latter, I just feel like as an intellectual exercise it’s fun to be precise. Anyway I like this: https://www.theringer.com/2021/9/2/22654013/kanye-west-donda-discography-revisionism-legacy

Though it doesn’t really dig into the music much

Was just coming to post that link. It's a very good piece.

saw that when you tweeted it very good writing

His self-importance serves you, not him; his self-importance is killing him but letting you witness the glitziest self-immolation you’ll ever see.

This seems factually wrong. During the Yeezus era, when people loved his music, he was in a deep hole financially and psychologically. Lyrically and musically on that album, he comes across as bitter and aggrieved and the album features some of his most misogynistic moments.

Today he is worth over a billion dollars and says that Christianity has helped him overcome opioid addiction among other challenges. To be fair, he often still seems scattered and sometimes grandiose, but the bile that fueled him in the Yeezus era is mostly gone. He doesn’t seem to be in the worst place of his life psychologically.

Musically he is not on top of his game (what is he, 45?). Politically his instincts have been atrocious. But the spectacle of his unraveling was more of a thing in the days when he made good music. Honestly the media liked him better when he seemed to be on the very edge and that probably contributes to his sense that they are trying to “enslave” him, as he often says.

That post itself is Kanye level disingenuous. Congratulations

i agree that the new abstract mindstate beats aren't bad but the whole album feels so knowingly retro that it flirted with ersatz. my favorite kanye of the past decade is probably DAYTONA followed by his nas album.

that nas album was terrible

i think a lot of the beats on the abstract record are great. daytona obv is the best thing, i'm more in voodoo's camp on the nas

abstract isn't like a major record or anything but i found it charming, corny in places but i didn't find it ersatz, just two 49 year old rappers coming back and rapping like they used to 25 years ago because that's how they rap

for me it was just cool to hear kanye doing some more old kanye shit

oh KTSE by Teyana Taylor that was good too

Pure Souls is good

Jail and Pure Souls are the best ones. Jesus Lord is almost good but Kanye's flow is garbage and ruins it.

😳😳😳😳😳😳 “DRAKE ATE HIS LUNCH ANYWAY” OUCH https://t.co/kRKgk7c3oW pic.twitter.com/1c6WjB9HaQ

— THE KID MERO 🇩🇴 (@THEKIDMERO) September 14, 2021

okay that might be the very last person who I thought would enter into this

"Nobody flies in the entire world of hip-hop just to croak one syllable, just so you can say that everybody was on it." so is this why he wanted TR-i on it?

lol nice

Article says 88 Keys got Rundgren involved not Kanye

lol I love that Rundgren played a passive role in this. It reminds of the Paul McCartney Kanye story.

"I had no idea what was going to happen. I didn’t want it to be at his house or my house, because it could be awkward if one of us wanted to leave. So we met on neutral ground -- a cottage at the Beverly Hills Hotel -- and I showed up with a guitar and my roadie, and we had a keyboard and a bass," McCartney recalls, before revealing how West spent some of his time during that session.

"I was sitting around, strumming the guitar -- that’s normally how I start a song -- and Kanye was looking at his iPad, basically scrolling through images of (his wife) Kim (Kardashian West)," McCartney says. "So we were telling stories, and at one point I told him how 'Let It Be' came from a dream about my mother, who had died years before, where she said, 'Don’t worry, just let it be.'"

"He said, 'I’m going to write a song about my mother,' so I sat down at this little Wurlitzer keyboard and started playing some chords, and he started singing," he continues. "I thought, 'Oh, are we going to finish this?' but that was that. And it became 'Only One.'"

McCartney went on to collaborate with West -- and others including Theophilus London and Allan Kingdom -- on "All Day" in 2015. West and McCartney also teamed up with Rihanna for "FourFiveSeconds" the same year. The process of collaborating in that way was new for the former Beatles member, but something he was thrilled to participate in.

"It’s this modern process that I was happy to open myself up to -- you’ve got loads of stuff, and the skill is to distill it. I was sitting around, just strumming a little groove and nobody said, 'Let’s make a song of that,'" he says. "But months later I got a song with Rihanna on it and I said, 'Where am I?' I didn’t recognize it because they changed the key. I thought that record was great."

“Tell Mr. Sinatra it was an honor working with him!”

“Yeah, for him, too. NEXT!”

drake's album was worse, though

it’s funny that the pitchfork score for this is lower than both ‘Jesus is kind’ and ‘ye’ which are both way worse

i guess it depends on what you look for in an album. this is overly long and feels unstructured. but the highs are much higher.

jesus lord would have been really powerful if he removed that self-serving section from larry hoover jr. from the end -- a voicemail of him thanking ye for advocating for his father in the oval office. it just feels like a cheap point -- see? that oval office visiti was good actually! -- and it mars the main subject of the song, which is about feeling lost and needing a source of hope

i feel like his need to publicly talk about his mother, still, is somewhat odd. especially because the way he brings her in is not really about her but about him. and it feels sort of sad, kind of -- like, he is talking about how his mom loved him unconditionally almost as a way of demanding that the american public do that too.

i think sometimes people feel embarrassed for kanye listening to stuff like that which is why they don't like the music.

jesus lord would have been really powerful if he removed that self-serving section from larry hoover jr. from the end

Funny, when I saw there was a “Jesus Lord 2,” I figured that would be a single version without the Hoover part, but nope, there it is again. Love the hook on that song, could listen to it for 10 minutes straight. It could be a new gospel standard if not for the rest. Less a fan of the verses.

Yeah, I know Drake is ridiculous but give me that LP over this one

The best thing about Donda is probably guest verses. Maybe it’d feel different if the production was sharper? But also maybe not

Love the hook on that song, could listen to it for 10 minutes straight.

seems like the direction he's headed

I just had this bizarre vision of this song being performed live with Korn at the Grammies

Sorry: "Hurricane" specifically

ima fix donda:

keep my spirit alive
remote control
ok ok pt2
off the grid
junya pt2
hurricane
moon
pure souls
lord i need you
come to life
jesus lord pt2

“Ye is like this encompassing thing of fashion, bars, beats, production, videos and this..

& then u get Rocky dressing better than me

Tyler better videos

Drake more records

J Cole more backpack

Kendrick better bars

.. So i literally had to go Thanos”

- Kanye West pic.twitter.com/umktDgpD1P

— Hero (@HopHeroes) November 5, 2021

lol is anyone going to dare listen to the deluxe version he just put out which has 5 new tracks and a totally new sequence

“life of the party” is a good song

i dunno if i'm going to listen to the deluxe version of a very long album but i quite like donda.

... So i literally had to go Thanos”

haven’t heard a note of anything on this album but is Kanye saying he fucked a space skeleton?

"go thanos" not "do thanos"

Iirc Thanos was in love with Death, who was in fact a space skeleton

Thanos himself is thicc

I thought he meant Theranos at first

Big show tonight!

more like don'tda

this church choir is incredible, wow

this is awesome so far

ums, please don’t take this as a dig at you because scrolling through Twitter for the last thirty minutes inspired this post before I can and saw yours, but….

*sigh*

It’s all so disappointing, yet entirely fucking predictable, that all he has to do is come out and competently play some old songs and people immediately erase the Trump supporting, the slavery excusing and the giving Marilyn Manson a platform. I mean, for fuck’s sake, he was just giving Manson airtime a couple months ago. Can we maybe not with the redemption arc before he even shows one fucking ounce of understanding about the harm he’s done by platforming a scumbag and caping for actual fascists?

“before I came and saw yours”

Drake alone is so dry

better than being damp i guess

It’s just so disappointing how easily we as a culture allow people to skate on doing and saying absolutely heinous shit with no accountability because… tHE bAnGErS.

What is drake doing this is so bad lol

And it’s not like this is just another show that people are vibing on, this is a massive, Amazon sponsored and advertised to the nines EVENT. It’s just so gross.

ay jon I get it I've been critical of him but tbh I'm kinda too in the bag right now to really talk serious

drake was shockingly bad

The mixing sounded bad during parts of the livestream, on top of both of them singing over their own tracks. Can't knock the design, though. It's still streaming on Amazon through the weekend.

xp - I wasn't really expecting you, or anyone itt, to defend it. I was just annoyed that this was popping up everywhere last night and I get that he's still going to perform and that he's still got fans. It just doesn't mean that Amazon needs to signal boost him when there are so many other artists out there who could use that kind of exposure and aren't supporting fascists and sexual predators.

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/kanye-west-publicist-pressed-georgia-election-worker-confess-bogus-fraud-charges-2021-12-10/?fbclid=IwAR1TOdBVuwHXx3ZY5_OdvKo2DxNPw64mzi5j5i1MeO-lRu1d5cRQ11SkYhM

Did this come up in the livestream?

yeah during the q&a

People just really fucking love a comeback story when it involves a major celebrity. I mean look at how Tiger Woods' profile somehow increased as his life and golf game started to crumble.
Or Dave Chappelle becoming more and more popular even as he morphs into the most insufferable dude on the planet. Once you reach a certain level it's fucking hard for people to turn their backs. Look how much shit had to come out before people started abandoning R. Kelly! Donda is garbage but it sure as hell is better than his last two, so whatever, redemption arc completed. I admit I still find myself somewhat interested in what he's up to, but also fuck this guy forever

I'm not sure Donda is that much better than the last two tbh

it would be if I could edit a full hour out of it

What the fuck at that story

More related to that story ^^:

‘So many of these firms work for major GOP organizations and they are not doing this for [Kanye] out of the goodness of their hearts.’ https://t.co/eR6zhegs32

— Trip Gabriel (@tripgabriel) December 17, 2021

I’d suspected that all along. Especially since I think Kanye himself said something about him talking to Jared Kushner on a regular basis.

I have no doubt that Kush and the Trump Administration were trying to set him up as a straw candidate to try to take votes away from the Democrats.

guess who’s going to jail tonight?!

guess who’s going to jail tonight?!