Why are so many people fond of being mad at Kanye West? Is it his lack of control, his self-absorption, his boastfulness? Complaining about a surfeit of ego in a celebrity performer is like going to Barcelona and bitching that the locals eat dinner too late. We have no shortage of well-trained pop stars who never depart from the promo script, plugging sponsors without being prodded. It’s a tonic to hear a celebrity talk so freely. (In 2010, Jonah Weiner created a profile of West, for Slate, mainly by assembling his tweets—“I jog in Lanvin,” “Fur pillows are hard to actually sleep on”—and the result was far more resonant than the usual hour-in-the-lobby puff piece.) In a recent Times interview, West compared himself to Steve Jobs, called himself a cultural “nucleus,” and then claimed that wearing a kilt proves he isn’t vain. That’s not exactly a coherent argument, but West is so committed to exploring his unfiltered self that he doesn’t mind making mistakes in public. In an age when public-relations firms are trying to annex journalism as yet another branding tool, it’s a form of rebellion to give one weird interview after another, failing once again to project the proper bland professionalism.
After West interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, declaring that Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” video was better than Taylor Swift’s “You Belong with Me” clip, pundits and fans acted as if he had danced the Charleston on Duke Ellington’s coffin. But West’s comment was goofy and accurate, and it added a jolt to a pro-forma industry spectacle. If you chase artists like West off the stage, you’re facing a long and dull show.
On June 10th, West held a messy listening session for his new album, “Yeezus,” on the loading dock at Milk Studios, on West Fourteenth Street. He announced that his new business plan is to “make better music.” Because we’ve come to expect tortured logic from him, it took me a moment to remember that this is the goal of most performers. For a moment, though, it sounded radical.
West wore a gold chain tucked inside a gray T-shirt and sang along to every one of his lyrics. Sports and music luminaries were present, some of them more engaged than others. Jay-Z and Beyoncé stood against a wall; he faced the street while she danced, with increasing enthusiasm. The producers Timbaland and DJ Khaled listened closely, watching West and smiling. The music was played at such a high volume that West defeated the entire idea of a V.I.P. event. It was a rainy night, and anybody with an umbrella could simply stand across the street and hear the album—in fact, probably better than those of us inside, where the music was so loud that it didn’t always register as music.
Heard at normal levels, “Yeezus” becomes an illuminating counterpoint to “Random Access Memories,” the new album by the French duo Daft Punk. (They are friends of West’s, and worked on several of his new songs.) “Random Access Memories” is a celebration of music that Daft Punk loved as kids, a reconstruction of the pop landscape of the late seventies, when albums were often lush and used detail to soothe and entertain. “Yeezus” is also technically breathtaking, but it has the opposite effect: its many flashes are the sonic equivalent of interrogation lamps, not disco balls. “Yeezus” charges out of the gate, sometimes switching sounds and textures without bothering to maintain tempo, then jerking back into position and rattling forward. There’s very little fat. “Yeezus” is a fiercely edited, assaultive, and noisy work, concerned less with grandeur than with intensity. It doesn’t sound like anything else on the charts.
Some critics have already tried to link “Yeezus” to electronic dance music, or E.D.M., but that genre rarely moves in the brashly erratic manner of West’s album. Others, more precisely, have said that its sound echoes aggressive rock acts from the past, such as Nine Inch Nails. West, for his part, recently characterized himself as a “black New Wave artist.” He’s not exactly rejecting forms like hip-hop or E.D.M., but he is daring d.j.s to deal with songs that leap about, dynamically and rhythmically.
“Yeezus” is ambitious, but it’s blessedly free of the longueurs that attend so many Great Albums. Twenty years from now, West’s previous records will remain important, but a new generation may first gravitate to the lean vibrancy of this one. Pop musicians constantly claim not to give a fuck, and West used just those words before he started the playback at Milk Studios. He means it, though, and it could be said that “Yeezus” is his most satisfyingly narcissistic record. We get none of his soggy and insincere apologies (“Runaway”) or hemmed-in spiritual set pieces (“Jesus Walks”). The new album is all id, and that makes it easier to trust.
West has suggested that he may not release a single from “Yeezus,” and from an artistic standpoint the impulse is not perverse. The album is so tonally unified that it comes across as one very long single—an extended thought, coughed up quickly. There are few steady drumbeats, and West can’t seem to resist pausing the sound and then bringing it back from silence; he never wants you to forget that he is standing over the boards. This is music with a lot of empty space: it consists largely of profane rapping over wildly distorted bass lines, which often serve as the only melodic motifs. When synths do appear, they aren’t pretty. On the track “Send It Up,” they have the screeching timbre of an air horn; the blaring sound evokes the Prodigy, the English rave group of the mid-nineties.
There are fewer explicit forays into politics than on West’s previous albums. “New Slaves,” one of the tracks that West performed last month on “Saturday Night Live,” seems to be mostly about his battles with critics, and about the kind of record-label executive who thinks that throwing a free Maybach into a contract can undo other injustices. “Blood on the Leaves” samples Nina Simone’s recording of the politically charged “Strange Fruit,” and turns one of her vocal phrasings into a piercing staccato pulse. Oddly, West’s song has nothing to do with lynching or slavery. It’s addressed to a former lover: “We could’ve been somebody / Thought you’d be different ’bout it / Now I know you naughty.” The track “I’m in It” is mostly a sexual shopping list, and West will soon find out if his Asian fans think that lines like “eating Asian pussy, all I need is sweet-and-sour sauce” are as clever as he thinks they are.
No, the topic here is Kanye. If the album has a centerpiece, it is “I Am a God.” A single sound—a deep bass note or a detuned kick drum, or maybe both—serves as the rhythmic anchor. A queasy synth note enters, just as steady and insistent, and there is an intermittent echoing clang; it’s like the “Law & Order” sound effect, but with a more sinister vibe. There is a long break, featuring screeching and heavy breathing, which some poor d.j. will soon try to remix with a party-friendly beat. But the point of the track lies in its opening lyrics. West complains about massages and cars, culminating with a command that makes me smile every time I hear it: “Hurry up with my damn croissants!” The line, like his tweets, is something that only West could deliver with conviction. He is not a god, but, like one, he generates equal amounts of love and hate. ♦
