Kanye West - Delirium and Omnipotence

Artistically summing up Kanye Omari West is a hard, treacherous task. Piecing together the fragments of his sonic mosaic is a bit like trying to reconcile the countless stylistic forays of Beck within the indie landscape, or those of the even more versatile Bjork. Kanye West belongs to that category of musicians who are ostensibly rooted in one scene (in his case, hip-hop at large) but who, step by step, flow into a thousand parallel universes. His discography reveals a restless productive shapeshifting that often projects him well beyond the traditional boundaries of hip-hop. His greatest merit is having assembled a version of hip-hop whose ingredients never seem to run dry. In terms of production and beat-making, West essentially bends the paths laid down by RZA and Jay Z into a spiral through which he channels new flows and new rhythms, naturally paired with pop hooks of great appeal. The choice of samples thus becomes a key element in how his tracks are built. When it comes to digging up old sounds, West is something like the Madlib of mainstream hip-hop. He's a tailor whose garments stand out from the rest thanks to the refinement of the fabric, often precious and occasionally sourced from the most unexpected places. His creativity knows no bounds, and his tracks are underpinned by electronic, rock and, when needed, classical sonorities. All of it delivered with an inspired melodic freshness that rarely feels predictable.

Backing up this evident productive restlessness is a pyrotechnic flaunting of his own abilities. His concerts are full-blown spectacles in which nothing seems impossible. And the lead singles from his albums almost always become an opportunity to indulge in stage extravagance bordering on the absurd. Not least the idea of projecting the video for the track "New Slaves" onto buildings in sixty-six cities around the world, as a herald for the imminent release of his sixth proper solo album. Over the years, Kanye's world has increasingly solidified around the conviction of a certain undefined omnipotence. West sees himself as a God. In his own words, he is the God of rap. A venerable musician, above everything else. A deity who doesn't do compromises, but above all a deity without equal, practically unique in his boundless splendor. His are provocations born not only of a grotesquely inflated ego, but also of careful marketing strategies, perhaps set up purely to cause a stir and keep people talking about him no matter what.
Kanye West's presence on the front pages of Western tabloids has thus become a constant directly proportional to his recording career. And after his first tentative appearances, the Yeezy persona (as his friends and most die-hard fans call him) swiftly reaches the top of the global star system. Kanye is the star to chase at all costs. The man from whose top hat anything can plausibly emerge. But Kanye West is, above all, a tireless producer. A musician capable of inserting himself practically anywhere and enriching his artistic arsenal through the most varied collaborations. Over the past ten years, there's no counting the productions that bear his name front and center. All told, we're talking about more than a thousand appearances across albums, videos, compilations of every kind, remixes, arrangements, samples and whatever else you can think of. In short, Kanye is everywhere. He churns out singles like McDonald's fries and forms groups just for the occasion, as happened in May 2007 with the trio CRS alongside Pharrell and Lupe Fiasco. This total omnipresence is nothing more than confirmation of a boundless, limitless ambition within today's hip-hop landscape.

Growth and Evolution

Born in Atlanta in 1977, at the tender age of three Kanye was forced to move to the more pulsating, darker city of Chicago following his parents' separation. His father, Ray, is a former Black Panther and a sharp, combative journalist during the years of the African-American uprising. His mother, Donda, was a celebrated English professor as well as his manager for his first three albums.
From his teenage years, West showed a clear calling for art in general and for music. It's no coincidence that he attended courses at the American Academy of Art in Chicago and briefly enrolled at Chicago State University, before dropping everything to pursue exclusively his calling for groove, Black music and samplers.
But as we mentioned above, Kanye West is first and foremost an excellent producer, and as far back as 1996, at just nineteen years old, he contributed to eight tracks on rapper Grav's debut album, "Down To Earth", for the noteworthy Correct Records. This marked the start of his parallel career, which would soon see him become an outstanding talent scout and a bold manager (it's no coincidence that he mentored John Legend, GLC, Consequence, Common and countless other up-and-coming talents).

It's 2001, and Kanye is just twenty-four years old. After a string of appearances at local, more or less occasional events, he finally decides to give his career a real direction — a genuine reason to start making music. He moves for a while to the East Coast, primarily to broaden his skills. But his true goal is to win the favor of Roc-A-Fella Records, the famous label founded by Damon Dash, his majesty Jay-Z and Kareem "Biggs" Burke. And it's the first of the three who almost immediately senses the kid's potential, handing him important tasks within a few months, such as personally mentoring the label's young up-and-comers, or handling the instrumentals for individual tracks, as happens for instance on "Bonnie & Clyde", the biggest hit from "Blueprint", Jay-Z's hugely successful album. It's the prelude to an unstoppable rise and to a career so dazzling and versatile that, in the years to come, it would eclipse even his own mentors.

The College Trilogy

Before launching his solo debut album, Kanye unfortunately has to deal with the aftermath of a very serious accident, which forces him to put everything on hold for a long period. That same tragic episode would later be exorcised in the video for "Through The Wire", a sort of postcard of West's private life before and after the crash. College Dropout is released on February 10, 2004, and from the very start a string of stellar collaborations defines every single track. Syleena Johnson, GLC, Consequence, Jay-Z, J. Ivy, Talib Kweli, Common, Twista, Jamie Foxx, Ludacris, Mos Def, Freeway and the Harlem men's choir all enrich the talented American rapper's debut from its very first moments. Also clear is his determination to systematically break away from the superficiality typical of the average lyricist among his peers. With West, anxieties, fears, hopes and personal (and not so personal) dramas slowly come back into "fashion". The idea is to move away from the dull formula of rhymes meant only to describe and glorify burning neighborhoods or sudden, dubious riches acquired perhaps too quickly and with more than a few shady corners. What stands out instead are lyrics aimed at defining something far removed from a pile of jewelry bought to boost Black pride or score high-class women.
On a purely musical level, a mosaic of new colors, new sounds and unprecedented samples takes shape for the hip-hop scene of the time. On College Dropout we find carefully measured choirs, a renewed R&B theatricality, and an urban romanticism able to satisfy even the most seemingly distant tastes.
The album earns no fewer than nine nominations at the 2005 Grammy Awards, and "Jesus Walks", the second single from the record, becomes one of the biggest hits of the American summer.

Having fully come into his own, and armed with an arsenal of samples that broke away from the usual MTV-style black-music mainstream, just a few months later Kanye West rides the wave again, delivering his second album in no time, titled Late Registration. Within a year, an increasingly self-assured Kanye finds his own face on the cover of Time Magazine — further fuel for his ego. Unsurprisingly, then, West spends an entire spring giving reassuring interviews about his future plans: "I want to make a pop album, I want to be pop music, I want that Coldplay/Portishead/Fiona Apple sound, I want...". After all, the premise fits the man perfectly. Words are soon followed by deeds: he brings in Jon Brion (already known for his work with Fiona Apple, Badly Drawn Boy and Rufus Wainwright, but new to hip-hop territory) as co-producer, giving him, strangely enough, a great deal of creative freedom, in keeping with the initial plan of a pop revolution. Brion doesn't hold back, framing the West sound with orchestral flourishes, xylophone, and tracks that close in cascades of synths. Rounding out this hip-pop work are the guests summoned to Kanye West's court: Adam Levine of Maroon 5, Jamie Foxx (here in his Oscar-winning Ray Charles mode) and Brandy provide soul warmth, while Nas, Jay-Z, The Game, Common and Cam'Ron deliver merely ordinary performances over extraordinary backing tracks. Two teams, two aims: pop-soul, and the least predictable side of mainstream rap.
The festivities open with "Heard 'em Say", a duet with Adam Levine, a musical manifesto for a man who rides R&B, pop-soul and hip-hop with disarming ease: the Maroon 5 singer's pop falsetto locks in perfectly with West's slowed-down rappin'. Over a sample of Curtis Mayfield's "Move On Up", Kanye builds the perfect "Touch The Sky", with cinematic '80s funk atmospheres not too far removed from George Clinton. If on "My Way Home" Common takes absolute center stage, playing with samples drawn from Gil Scott-Heron's "Home Is Where The Hatred Is", the spotlight on "Gold Digger" is skillfully split between Jamie Foxx and Kanye West. "Gold Digger" is one of the album's hits, enriched by a vocal intro from Jamie Foxx, who channels Ray Charles's iconic "I've Got A Woman".
More soul and tribal drumming on "Addiction", '80s TV-show soundtracks as wallpaper on the very long "We Major", a dusted-off Otis Redding from his personal sound collection commenting on "Gone", and still more musical gems: "Roses", "Hey Mama" and "Diamonds From Sierra Leone". The first is one of the record's more soft-soul moments, with an almost spoken, whispered voice declaring: "The best medicine is the one for those who have money, Magic Johnson found the cure for Aids, while poor Black people in the neighborhood keep dying, what does that mean? That if my grandmother played in the NBA, she'd still be with us today?". "Hey Mama", built on a sample of Donal Leace's "Today Won't Come Again", brings Kanye West's music close to that of late-period Outkast: both artists' guiding light is Prince, a total auteur, just as Kanye's music and that of the Andre3000/Big Boi duo aim to be total.
"Diamonds From Sierra Leone", presented in two versions plus remix, is a harsh political indictment of the civil war in the African country, fueled by purely economic interests (Sierra Leone being one of the world's largest diamond exporters). Musically, Jay-Z's superb voice sits in perfect harmony with the backing track built from Shirley Bassey's "Diamonds Are Forever" (a song best known to most for the legendary James Bond film).
Kanye West thus puts everyone in their place, confirming himself as the best beatmaker around — but not only that. He also deserves great credit for having restored dignity to lyric-writing. Well past the Public Enemy and old-school era, with West we see a renewed interest in what happens beyond one's own Lexus, and a reminder that the world is still a stage for injustice. Hence the diamond trade and civil war in Sierra Leone, inadequate healthcare, economic inequality, and the rising rate of drug addiction among young people.
Late Registration oozes pop music, black pop music, those beats that animated dancefloors 30 years ago and still animate them today, somewhere between Funkadelic, Prince and soul music.
Mr. West's first great gamble is thus won hands down. The operation is a full success. The quality of the music recalls that of his Outkast brethren, able to reach a cross-section of audiences. Shortly after comes Late Orchestration, the live album recorded at Abbey Road Studios, which uses a lush orchestra to highlight his undeniable stage presence — even if the result, at first glance, comes across as a bit over-the-top and at times excessively self-indulgent.

Closing out the "college trilogy" that began with College Dropout is West's third album in short succession: Graduation. This time, West decides to draw from France's thriving electronic scene. The Daft Punk-esque "Stronger" is the lead single and will become a top-5 hit of the year. It's a small revolutionary track for today's hip-hop universe — as revolutionary as it is backward-looking, carrying the scent of that historic kinship between Afrika Bambaataa and Kraftwerk. For many, hip-hop was born right there, and that's also where Kanye West restarts from, once again — like Afrika Bambaataa before him — dusting off the European dance scene, and once again crafting a cross-genre product that is significant in its own right.
If "Planet Rock" was the symbol and turning point of everything, "Stronger" is the moment of self-awareness for someone who, today, can genuinely be considered the genre's leading figure. By sampling Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", Kanye West not only pays tribute to a landmark of contemporary electronic music, but builds a flawless, unassailable pop gem. You couldn't ask for better, not even by calling in the now-overexposed Timbaland. Then, on that same stretch of sand, amid the usual towels flapping in the wind and the usual idle musings, one reads with some irritation about an improbable chart battle between Kanye West and 50 Cent, with the latter threatening to quit music if he didn't outsell his rival in the first week. Now, with the dust settled, and in the interest of clarity — and above all with the numbers in hand — let's state the facts: 957,000 copies for Graduation versus 691,000 copies for "Curtis", on American soil alone. In the rest of the world, Kanye doubled his rival's sales. If words mean anything, 50 Cent should, in theory, be giving up music — but of course he won't, as shown by the ex-convict's latest paranoid claim: "In his entire career, Kanye West has never sold even half of what I did with just my first album alone. It's clear that Def Jam orchestrated the whole thing, spending money to buy up a huge number of copies to make him look good". We'll let you be the judge.

But Graduation is, unfortunately, a less substantial, less dense, less wide-ranging and musically less rich work than the preceding Late Registration. It's Kanye West's poppiest album, certainly less sharp and clever, but an easier listen. Close to the dispensers of intelligent-but-shelf-bound hip-hop — among recent examples, take Common, for instance, also produced by Kanye himself. The skillfully constructed atmospheres of "Flashing Lights" nod to Craig Armstrong's cinematic sensibility, rich with pathos, even melancholy. The somewhat reflective mood continues with "Can't Tell Me Nothing", musically torn from soul-hip-hop archetypes: gentle rapping and a Black-gospel-style chorus. It stings without really hurting: it stings because, against a vast musical literature built on exactly these rails of bastardized hip-hop and precious pop exercises for slow-flowing MCs with sugary voices, Kanye doesn't fail to clock in here too, crafting for himself a head-nodding track fit for dark nights and arenas lit up by lighters. It's a hip-hop ballad. But perhaps it's with "Champion" that Kanye West truly rediscovers his past, a shimmering dance-pop sample, while "Everything I Am" mirrors who Kanye is at this point in his life and what he wants to become in the future. He wants to make mass music for the masses, listenable hip-hop, and so he inevitably has to dust off jazz and soul. After all, "Everything I Am" is a musical worry-doll, unobtrusive, decidedly easy on anyone's ears, easily decodable, because it's free of those cultural barriers that still keep hip-hop out of reach for many.
In short, if with Late Registration we can talk about hip-pop, here the step forward comes from a maturity and depth typical of adult-rock, so we can speak of adult hip-pop.

Let's turn now to some thoughts on the guests: Mos Def is the life of the party on "Drunk And Hot Girls". A couple of things worth noting: Mos Def is known more for his film and TV work than for his records. From his musical career, what's remembered with some fondness is the split with Talib Kweli on "Black Star". The rest has rightly faded into oblivion. The track itself, though, is a tasty slice of rap-rock: not meant in the Run DMC crossover sense, but rather a sung-spoken rap style set against a delicate backing track, some jazzy musings, few intrusive beats, and obsessive repetitions of the refrain. It's pure relaxation. The other notable feature is Chris Martin of Coldplay, by now a (no-)global figure, a clean-cut symbol of pop music and thus a favorite target for this Kanye West, keen on becoming its new icon. The track is "Homecoming", and Chris Martin throws himself into pure divertissement, improbably rapping as well, offering a male take on what's usually handled by the requisite beautiful Black voice. In the distance you can still hear echoes of a less festive Caribbean reggae (a bit Wyclef Jean, to give you an idea).
So, with Graduation, Kanye West goes big with the single, which will remain lodged somewhere in the genre's history. Still, at times the urge to overdo it prevails, at other times a minimalism that's hard to square with Kanye West the producer, especially since over time he's proven to be one of hip-hop's finest sound architects. Finding him here, on his third album, with backing tracks that are flawless but not very orchestral, not especially layered or complex, is surprising and leaves one a little puzzled. That said, "Stronger" alone is worth an entire career for any hip-hop rookie, and it shouldn't be forgotten.

Omnipotence, delirium and resurgence

What marks Kanye's private life during this period, above all, is the death of his mother Donda, who passed away suddenly following complications from cosmetic surgery, and to whom he dedicates "Hey Mama" (from "Late Registration") during his 2008 Grammy performance. On September 7 of that same year, Kanye performs at the MTV Video Music Awards with his new single "Love Lockdown", the lead single from his fourth studio album, 808's & Heartbreak, which will be released just two months later. Unfortunately, around those same days, West is arrested at Los Angeles airport on vandalism charges after assaulting a paparazzo who was about to photograph him. The scene is promptly caught on camera by another paparazzo, and the resulting video circulates mercilessly online, helping to partially tarnish his image. Fortunately, however, the episode will have no major repercussions on his artistic standing.
Mr. West, ever more the man of rap's resurgence, once again wastes no time hesitating and goes his own way. With hindsight, Graduation will sound even more like a transitional album, perhaps a necessary one, but ultimately uncertain. Up to this point, West deserves great credit for having shown — across his first two albums — how it's possible to combine chart success, Grammys, talent and culture (musical and otherwise), all put to the service of sound. Essential to this has been his starting point: before being a rapper, West is a first-rate musician. And so he can afford to listen to his inner impulses and follow them, even if it means upending everything. Losing one's mother isn't easy, even with boatloads of money: and that's the spark behind 808s & Heartbreak, an album of clear expressive urgency. A concept built on essential feelings and broken hearts, on love and abandonment, where the musical medium bends entirely to inner life, best represented by the artwork itself (grey background, red heart at the center).
Minimalism is the keyword of this new venture. Synths, piano, percussion, beats and vocoder create cold, thin substrates against which soul melodies crash, often tilted toward pathos. West abandons his usual lush production, lighting up only basic notes; he doesn't rap, doesn't sing, he simply runs his voice through Auto-Tune, underscoring the interplay of cold and warmth.
As for the motives and methods behind the operation — which we'll take to be neutral in itself, but which deserves praise at least for its boldness — expressive urgency is synonymous not only with sincerity but also with haste. Take the single "Love Lockdown" itself: a firm beat doubled by piano and weighed down by percussion, repeating in a trance until the final crescendo where the rhythm picks up and gains synth accents, venting a more-than-warranted tension without ever really needing to soar. This excellent calling card — the video is remarkable too — is followed by another striking but qualitatively lesser single, "Heartless". A rap done "the new way", with exotic touches and mediocre lyrics. While the format itself is beyond question (the difference between the two singles is mostly one of substance), listening to the whole album raises more than one doubt about the balance of its elements.
The clash between pathos and detachment staged by melody and sound overshoots the mark on both ends in the long "Say You Will". The contrast between the gloomy synth phrases and West's whiny Auto-Tune is hard to defend, and the track only regains momentum during its instrumental coda. The same goes for "Bad News", where the lifeboat is a duet between violin and an obsessive beat.
There are other tracks that deserve sincere applause: the pop carousel of "Robocop" (perhaps the most colorful piece, with bells and violin phrases), a concentrate of talent and imagination, and its twin "Paranoid". This is the true heart of the album, where everything clicks, closing with the sweet "Street Lights" ("all the street lights glowing, happen to be just like moments passing in front of me"), complete with shoegaze echoes.
The lyrics, necessarily less elaborate but also far less inspired than usual, add and subtract little overall. The notes of "Coldest Winter" — a heartfelt dedication to his mother — carry a more than slight bitterness, given how little we manage to catch of it, only in flashes.

2009 brings the collaboration with Malik Yusef on the album G.O.O.D. Morning, G.O.O.D. Night, split into two acts, "Dusk" and "Dawn". But this is a record almost entirely conceived and produced by Yusef. Oddly, West limits himself to merely supervising the work, shining on the singles "Magic Man", a ballad performed alongside Common and the ever-present John Legend, and the orchestral "Promise Land" with Adam Levine.
This collaboration is followed by a well-deserved and more-than-warranted work break. And Kanye takes the opportunity to indulge a few of his countless whims, such as replacing his lower set of teeth with fixed diamond-shaped teeth.

In October 2010 he then releases the 35-minute short film titled "Runaway", featuring himself and model Selita Ebanks.
This marks the official promotion for his new album, the future landmark of the hip-hop genre, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, set for release on November 22, 2010. Kanye West thus returns to the spotlight more fired-up than ever. After all, success has gone to his head. He makes country-pop princesses cry live on TV, adopts a pornographic cover, and does everything he can to come across as the best around. And who could blame him (!). In the preceding two years, no other artist has been more hounded by the media, by YouTube addicts and by hip-hop purists. Especially by a good portion of the African-American community — the more religious part — which only a few years earlier had hailed him as a hero, an intelligent example of a "progressive" rapper, and now finds itself almost in disbelief, disappointed by West's fascination with neoclassical and Egyptian art and symbolism (read by some as satanic or Masonic), and by the increasingly dark moods he brings to his latest videos and his blog, always full of glossy fashion spreads, luxury accessories, futuristic mansions and beautiful women.
Apparently, though, despite the outsized ego, he really is intelligent, and to all of this West responds purely by giving a masterclass and venting his insatiable curiosity; his pursuit of beauty has led him to make an album that could be the summa of his career, but also of the current American pop landscape, splicing and rebuilding genres and managing to credibly bring together, in the same project, indie-folk prospects like Bon Iver and R&B manufacturing products like Rihanna.
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy isn't just the much-heralded return to more hip-hop territory following the not-so-well-received (but underrated) synth-soul, "sung" turn of 808's & Heartbreak. It's much more: an explosion of colors, sounds and voices, an almost choral work given the number of artists involved, with West weaving the threads without miraculously losing track of the tangled skein. The experience of the previous album (as well as the more pop sensibility that characterized Graduation) hasn't remained an isolated episode and, far from being disowned, serves as a filter for rereading, from a different angle, the rap blueprint of his early days, elevating it to a more universal level that transcends genres and cliques. Its influence is tangible in the minimal melancholy of the single "Runaway" or in that of "Blame Game" (this time the unlikely marriage is between Aphex Twin and John Legend), but also in the industrial distortions of "Hell Of A Life", the funky sinuousness of "Gorgeous" and the dance beat of "Lost In The World", perhaps the most visionary and fascinating moment of the album, with its disorienting, digitized a cappella incipit that flows into a gripping, ecstatic tribalism.
Tribal rhythms and shamanic chants also feature on the first single "Power", almost a meeting point between "Jesus Walks" and "Love Lockdown", the old and the new West, his past — also represented by the celestial atmospheres of "Devil In A New Dress" (where soul vocal samples return as a kind of echo) or by the rap aggression of "Monster" (with rising star Nicki Minaj in a state of grace) — and his future, which here takes the shape of "All Of The Lights", the next single, a carousel of horns and interlocking percussion that recalls certain experiments from late-period Björk, but without giving up a killer chorus.
He may well have sold his soul to the devil, Mr. West, but his music has never sounded as luminous and free as it does on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

The Fusion

In 2011 comes Watch The Throne, alongside his longtime friend and mentor Jay-Z. A dense, dark, insinuating groove, accompanied by the voice of rising soul talent Frank Ocean, opens this much-hyped and repeatedly delayed record, whose gestation and release weren't exactly free of shadows. This isn't the first time Jay-Z and Kanye West have worked together, and yet the idea of an entire album made four-handed immediately piqued fans' curiosity and inevitably loaded the project with huge expectations — expectations that were arguably betrayed the moment the two released their first single months earlier, the excessively lavish and pretentious "H.A.M", ornate as a heavy rococo cabinet and now relegated to a bonus track on the album's deluxe edition, almost as if trying to sidestep the whole misstep. The past few months have been peculiar for both of them, with Kanye West finding himself in the very uncomfortable position of having to follow up the, somewhat unexpectedly, celebrated My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and Jay-Z coming off the massive commercial success of several singles, yet increasingly less revered by music critics.
Perhaps out of caution, then, the album finally sees the light of day almost by surprise, at a point when almost no one was talking about it anymore, released with far less fanfare than one would expect for the two most important and influential names in hip-hop of the last twenty years. Even the initial idea, later dropped, of releasing the album under the name The Throne seemed almost like an attempt to get ahead of things and declare that this record was something independent from the rest of their discographies. It's hard to see it that way, though, when so many of the names involved in making the album are basically the same ones who took part in their most recent solo efforts (many of these tracks come from the same sessions), and when you find the usual string of unpredictable references and reconstructions, from James Brown to Cassius, by way of Phil Manzanera.
Decidedly less colorful and conceptual than West's last effort, and more rigorous than Jay-Z's, Watch The Throne sees the two set themselves up as champions of a certain hip-hop classicism, proudly showing off their Black roots as they rap over an old, worn Otis Redding record (or Curtis Mayfield, on one of the four skippable bonus tracks), as they smear blues grit over a nostalgic, aching "Gotta Have It" (produced by an increasingly restrained Neptunes), or as they turn a loop of children's choirs into an adventurous voodoo ceremony ("Murder To Excellence").
The looming alarm of "Welcome To The Jungle" and the techno-rap tirade of futuristic-club "Who Gon Stop Me", as well as the cybernetic nursery rhyme of "Niggas In Paris", bring us back, however, to an ever more electronic and frantic present, making clear that a record like this also has, whether it likes it or not, the moral duty to conquer the US charts. And it will probably manage to, thanks to the saccharine, patriotic pop of "Made In America" and the sultry rhythms of "That's My Bitch" (where an increasingly US-hungry Elly Jackson elbows her way in), or with a booming, shamelessly catchy "Why I Love You" (perhaps the moment most likely to make purists wince), and above all with a pyrotechnic "Lift Off", which could repeat the success of "All Of The Lights" (this time the leading female name is, somewhat predictably, that of Mrs. Carter, far more convincing here than on her entire last album).
Watch The Throne may not end up being the masterpiece one might have hoped for, but it's a solid, entertaining record; the two artists reaffirm their chemistry and don't compete for the spotlight — in fact, even though the sonic mastermind behind the project is West (and you can tell every time he steps up), it's often Jay-Z's rap that dominates the album and sets the tone for the tracks. The two kings can breathe a sigh of relief, then: they're not wearing brand new clothes, but they're far from naked, and, even if it no longer seems quite so untouchable, the throne still stands firm.

In 2012 comes the compilation album Cruel Summer for G.O.O.D. MUSIC (Getting Out Our Dreams), the label founded by West himself in 2006. Joining him is the usual string of friends, from R. Kelly to Jay-Z, all the way to newcomer Big Sean, Ghostface Killah, Common and DJ Khaled, along with, among others, John Legend and Jadakiss.
Cruel Summer is a collection that passes almost unnoticed, born out of West's collaboration with the same G.O.O.D. roster. A sort of self-indulgent, navel-gazing sonic continuum, with rhymes and samples that never really bite, from which the flimsiness of the flow emerges all too often, highlighting the poor quality of a project that, more than ever here, seems designed only to promote Yeezy's inner circle of friends. Just consider the fleeting hypnotic pull of the much-hyped "Mercy", alongside young Big Sean, to get a clearer picture of what this record is really about.
That said, there's still every reason to expect a great deal from the talented Atlanta rapper. After all, mainstream Black music hasn't been in such good hands since the golden days of the Wu-Tang Clan and Notorious B.I.G.

A rap deity

And the "great deal" arrives with the hugely anticipated Yeezus, West's sixth full-length album. West wants to set himself apart at all costs. He's at the top of mainstream hip-hop, but at the same time he offers the clearest proof of how one can make a clean break from the banality of today's sampling, from stubbornly settling into rhythms chewed over a thousand times, over flows that are by now sterile and toothless. Kanye wants to be the deity other rappers might one day draw inspiration from in some way. His is an ambition that knows no rest, one whose goal remains to astonish and to wound at any cost. So, out with everything. Out with the glossy sheen and the show-off polish. Out with the cover art too.
Yeezus thus comes across as "raw" and electrically charged. You can tell right away. The opener "On Sight" is cyber-rap fired at full blast, interrupted here and there by a children's choir, stark and piercing. West is pissed off, and plays the tribal chief lashing out at everyone and everything ("Black Skinhead"), or hiding in the dark, letting loose blasts of synth and sudden screams, almost glorifying his own immense delirium ("I Am A God").
On one hand, there's an unbridled urge to satisfy an outsized sonic ego. On the other, there's a clear desire to distance himself from the filth of the "former" ghetto through moves that are, in some ways, disorienting and sometimes genuinely effective. In that sense, the pathos built into the melancholic "Hold My Liquor", complete with a backlit eighties guitar riff, says a great deal about West's proven ability to pull out emotionally striking, rhythmically unpredictable solutions.
Daft Punk's production on the first three tracks is noticeable, but not overly so. Much as the presence of fifty-odd collaborators and producers summoned by the Atlanta talent to satisfy his thirst for greatness feels just a touch excessive. At the same time, the lyrics wade through denunciations of racism, loves to keep warm, and the usual self-referential ramblings which, more than ever this time, push right up to the limits of human tolerance — take "I Am A God" itself, where he doesn't hold back from blurting out provocations on this scale: "I just talked to Jesus, he said, 'what up Yeezus?'". Frank Ocean also turns up on the celebrated "New Slaves", slipping in a sample from 1970s Hungarian progressive band Omega. The album moves from the risk of drowning in alcohol (the already mentioned "Hold My Liquor") to the alarmist, dark ride of "Send It Up", complete with a siren in the background, and the musical resurrection of Christ as a metaphor for his own dominance over the contemporary rap scene.
"Bound 2" closes the album, standing clearly apart from the dark, shadowy mood of the rest of the record, blending Motown-style samples with the aim of celebrating Yeezy's love for his forefathers, but above all for his beloved Kim.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, Kanye West knows no sense of proportion. That's just who he is. He's unbelievably full of himself, but he's also damn good. Take it or leave it.

After three years spent on the usual provocations (see the inappropriate remarks about Beck and Bruno Mars, later retracted) and more or less bizarre public appearances, our man returns to make musical waves again in 2016. If Yeezus had introduced the new incarnation of West as an arrogant, shameless (semi)God, the time that passed after that record made clear just how stressful it is to keep up such a reputation: a new album to prepare, fashion shows at regular intervals, deranged tweets served up like daily bread, and even the announcement of a run for the US presidency in 2020.

The gestation of the new record paid the price for all this, turning out to be frantic and chaotic to say the least. Between constant title changes, which we'll spare you out of mercy, and a tracklist that kept mutating right up to release day, The Life Of Pablo radically distills the schizophrenia of today's Kanye West: a work that presents itself not as something finished, but as a hic et nunc snapshot of Mr. West's state of mind. When, some time earlier, he had proclaimed in booming tones that the new record would be "the album of his life," nobody imagined that the phrase might not be metaphorical but literal: "Pablo" is, in fact, the record that best portrays Kanye West's life, both as it was and as it is now. There are no masks or alter egos acting as a filter.
Then again, the antinomy between the inner West - in some ways anchored to the memory of love and a need for spirituality - and the public West, vulgar and insolent, is an irresolvable contrast, almost a kind of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. And so, while on one hand he's capable of confessing his torments in an intimate register, as happens in the splendid trio "Real Friends," "FML" and "Wolves," steeped in nostalgia and fragility, on the other his exuberant streak spills into embarrassing rants on the effervescent "Famous" and "Highlights." And good old Kanye even takes pleasure in mocking those who miss his old-school early style on the brilliant divertissement "I Love Kanye," which, with a healthy dose of irony, hints at the design underlying this pseudo-identity crisis.
The Life Of Pablo is a stew of sounds, a record containing everything and its opposite. Sure, it's confused: how could it not be? One need only read the endless credits list, published seemingly just to flaunt the monumental pile of samples, producers and collaborators Kanye had at his disposal to make it. Of all the possible "lives of Pablo," this is simply the version West had in his head a couple of weeks earlier. And that's exactly what makes it a unique and fascinating work in its immediacy.
All that's left is to confirm that, amid various delusions of omnipotence, on his seventh album Kanye West is still able to get people talking about him - in thoroughly positive terms - for the thing he does best. What more could you want.

Delusions that nonetheless end up "flipping" his personality, pushing him toward a new awareness - no less self-destructive and bizarre in its own way. The world's most celebrated rapper, or thereabouts, spends several months away from his beloved star system and all the garbage that usually surrounds it, between various parties and a lifestyle that's frantic to say the least. After being hospitalized, abandoning social media, and the scorching photos showing him in apparently pitiful conditions, West returns like a bolt from the blue. A single celebratory tweet from Trump is enough to put him back on every front page. A synergy with the Tycoon that obviously sparks debate, though it's hardly surprising to anyone who has followed him since his debut. Yes, because that's just how Kanye is: he loves to provoke, to blurt out statements by listening solely to his gut, and a lot less to his head; he's damn impulsive, sometimes out of line, but he's one of those people who never fakes a supposed friendliness, and above all never gives up his own authenticity, the cursed thought of the moment, regardless of the side effects, the snickering of countless other big names usually soaked to the bone in political correctness and over-the-top support for whichever Democratic candidate happens to be running.

West then decides to retreat to Wyoming. And among the mountains of the most forgotten state in the US, our man pieces together scattered thoughts like irregular impulses in his little head, coming out with a new studio album that's decidedly autobiographical, disorienting from the very choice of title, Ye, complete with a souvenir photo of the snow-capped mountains that took him in. A surreal setting, then, for the celebrated rapper, as far removed as possible from the frothing turmoil he's used to living with, one that practically revitalized him, pushing him into constant reflection on his own self, and on the bipolarity spelled out in black and white on the cover. A condition of extreme solitude, then, though belied by the lavish private party thrown for the lightning-fast album presentation. Still, Kanye lays out a series of digressions on his own existence, on his relationship with his wife, bringing up paternal worries that are, after all, understandable when voiced by an ordinary person, but disorienting when voiced by one of the richest men in the global record industry, a man long accustomed to juggling asses, tits and young models.

West's primary goal, laid out through the lyrics of the seven tracks on the album, is to reconcile with himself, and to abandon once and for all the dark thoughts that have repeatedly led him to contemplate suicide. A worry and a feeling that come through in the opening "I Thought About Killing You," a track that lays out his intentions in a surreal dialogue, which broadens into self-indictment on the following "Yikes," raising a sudden unease in the face of drugs, complete with an invective against addiction, against the intoxication from hallucinogens and opioids that makes him surly with everything and everyone. The melodic hook is the kind that stays with you, and the impact is the kind that floors you. This is West at his best: blunt, schizophrenic but not overly so, concise and straight to the point like never before in his recent output; icing on the cake is a dry beat sampling the magnificent "Kothbiro" by Kenya's Black Savage: a gem dug up with a fine-tooth comb, highlighting the sharp ear that has always set him apart. A very different theme is tackled on "All Mine," where the "drama" of fidelity fuels impulses that are sometimes uncontrollable, metaphorized by a worn-out, bare-bones verse, just showy enough to rile up the guests on duty: Ty Dolla $ign and Ant Clemons.

We find the former again on "Wouldn't Leave," this time alongside Jeremih and Canada's PARTYNEXTDOOR. A track dedicated to his wife Kim, with West cast as the repentant lover, guilty of making heavy, ill-advised public statements about their relationship. It's a melancholy neo-soul ballad, gospel-tinged and inspired by the intimate folk of his friend Vernon. The various samples of "Hey Young World" by Slick Rick and "Children Get Together" by the collective The Edwin Hawkins Singers carry forward the contact between West and his spiritual side, featuring Kid Cudi and Charlie Wilson, two friends Kanye has collaborated with on various occasions. The intro lifted wholesale from Shirley Ann Lee's "Someday" ("Some day, some day / Some day I'll, I wanna wear a starry crown") is the leitmotif of the following "Ghost Town," where a certain choral optimism returns, cut short in the central refrain sung in a thoroughly laid-back way by Cudi, setting up the soft, fatherly "Violent Crimes"; Kanye reveals himself as a doting, even prudish father ("Until you have a daughter, that's what I call karma / And you pray to god she don't grow breasts too soon"), pushing this naive concern over a few organ notes that sketch out a soul-preacher climax decidedly out of step with the times. Ye thus presents itself as a rushed, hasty work, yet one with some thrilling moments. It is certainly not the all-consuming, meticulous Kanye of the past. And the almost "lo-fi" production confirms as much. But this is a West who manages to be visceral, sincere and "ruthless" despite everything. Take it or leave it.

During his cathartic retreat in Wyoming, Kanye West doesn't just focus on making his brief but, all things considered, satisfying Ye. He also devotes himself to producing albums for a few colleagues: the acclaimed Daytona for the combative Pusha T (now head of his GOOD Music label), the controversial Nasir for rap heavyweight Nas, and the second album by model, actress and singer Teyana Taylor, titled K.T.S.E. All records that share the same feature: just seven tracks on the tracklist.

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