Chaining too many years in a row of stardom to depending on how old you are these things. Or Kanye West has gone crazy on his new album, Jesus is King or, as he believes, it all boils down to the fact that he knows something we don't. Kanye West has become a formidable example of the postmodern artifact, understood as a reality of multiple interpretations subject to a nonexistent absolute truth. If we start with the most basic, the questions we can ask about the rapper do not present too much of a challenge. It is when we start adding layers of analysis that the challenge begins:
- Is Jesus is King Kanye West's new album? Yes, although it is also the name of his new movie.
- Is Jesus is King your ninth studio job? The answer depends on whether those strange seven cuts published a month ago on iTunes and Spotify under the Yandhi name do they deserve the album designation or not?
- Is Jesus is King, (27 minutes of Christian rap and gospel) a tease? Such a question takes very little time to deflate if we subject it to a reality located in a higher sphere:
- Does it matter what the new Kanye West album is or isn't? In fact:
- Is Kanye West a musician? Answer to all questions: yes and no.
After the first listening of Jesus is King, there is only one possible reaction:
Already? Really? This is all?
It bears repeating: Kanye West, 42, has scored a record with a total duration of twenty-seven minutes. The shortest of their albums. It is almost offensive to common sense to try to attack a rigorous analysis, even more so when most of those twenty-seven minutes are poor writing and praises to the Lord. And yet:
jesus is king
After two first introductory cuts, the first rap crack (Follow God) sounds good, early Kanye eight albums ago. But it only lasts minute seventeen seconds. On Closed on Sunday the policy of a fast food chain of not opening on Sundays to let those days belong to the family and the Lord is praised, and is used as a metaphor for one of the several guidelines for behavior that Mr. Kanye West recommends us to follow ( In essence, the entire album is a string of ethical and moral recommendations: leave Instagram, get together as a family and pray, take care of your daughters, follow Jesus and obey:
I kneel before the King on the throne
my life is yours, I am no longer me
Everything we need It is the song that sounds best thanks to the predominant trap rhythm. Unfortunately, it lasts two minutes and offers only one striking idea: "What would have happened if Eva had made apple juice?" On Water all of Kanye West's lines begin with the word Jesus, either to say that he is our savior or to ask him for favors. On God is we meet a nice sampled rhythm of the 1979 song of the same name performed by James Cleveland. More importantly, in this cut we have what is probably the reason for this album:
Every time I look up, I see the goodness of God
Which shows how miraculous it is
I can't keep it to myself, I can't sit here and be still
I'll tell everyone until the whole world is healed
En hands on, the minimalism in the production (present in almost all the songs) already becomes boring. In the next song use this gospel, minimalism accompanied by preaching becomes unbearable. Especially if we take into account that we are about to finish listening to an album in which the only thing that has been done is revolve around an idea that was already clear to us in the title: Jesus is King. Just in case someone hadn't gotten the concept, the last song is called jesus is lord. And it's more of the same.
Is Kanye West running for election in 2020?
It is not that Kanye West has suddenly become an orthodox Christian for us (among his greatest classics we already find on his first album the phenomenal jesus walks). The problem here is not in the what but in the how. It is enough to see his long promotional interview with Zane Lowe and listen to an intervention made by the rapper himself and for which the translation is not necessary: I am unquestionably, undoubtedly the greatest human artist of all time. It's just a fact.
The problem here is that there seems to be no room for calm, repose or half measures in Kanye West's head.
The question in this headline is a good summary of the picture: it's real and it's among one of the most popular Google searches in the US. Indeed, in his day Kanye West announced that he was serious about being president of the United States. Within a week, he was gone. Today, for example, has confessed to being a porn addict. And so everything.
For years (and coinciding with the decline of his imprint in the music industry) in the Kanye West universe it has become almost impossible to discern what the Chicago rapper really thinks. Absolutely everything he says and does is geared towards achieving money-holders psynergy.
Kanye West, the artist who had no problem comparing himself to Steve Jobs and Leonardo Da Vinci (among others), has been on the other side for a long time. Gone are the days of The College Dropout y late registration (Kanye West's best albums). In the year 2019, the rapper and producer is best known for his sneakers Yeezy (the price of the cheapest pair does not fall below two hundred dollars), his support for Donald Trump (whom he claims to love and treats as a "hero") and appearances with his wife, Kim Kardashian (reality show included).
It has been more than two decades since rap put Kanye West on the map, and it seems that the creator of Jesus he has already squeezed out of it all that he needed. The move now is to make the release of a new job an anecdote and the album itself an icon. And not precisely because of its musical quality, but because of all the noise around it.
Kanye West seems to have decided to play the card of complexity, not depth; a complexity based on execute a hodgepodge of shrieks and confused movements oriented in all directions and trusting that the public will take the bait: "Ah, with geniuses you know."
Many more paragraphs would be necessary to explain the full context of the atmosphere in which Kanye West now surprises us with one of the rarest albums in the history of hip hop. If that Jesus is King can be considered as such. Without going any further, three years ago, Kanye West entered the Los Angeles hospital's mental health unit and his own emotional stability is a problem that still today he says worries his wife.
What is real and what is not?
Are we supposed to believe (and buy) the Christian message of a guy who last year drove the clubs crazy with a song whose chorus was "What a bitch you are, I love it", and where you heard quips like "I'm a fucking sick, I like to fuck fast» (I love it, along with Lil Pump). Why does one get the feeling that Kanye West thinks he can laugh at the whole world?
If there is something to be recognized for Kanye West, it is that he has known how to anticipate (or manufacture) future trends at certain moments in his artistic career. That said, one of the most interesting phenomena of the current music scene (and especially of American rap) is none other than that of the proliferation of singles or singles that do not belong to any record.
The only valid interpretation we can think of for Jesus is King collides head-on with this phenomenon. Maybe this is what Kanye West knows and the rest don't: What if Kanye West is convinced that, given current consumer trends, the album no longer has a reason to exist? what if jesus is king is not more than a hollow icon with which to celebrate the death of the album?