#9 Kanye West - Yeezus

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I remember when i got my 2nd car in 2005. It was an '02 Honda Accord SE. Leather seats, 4 doors, but it had a wack stereo with a cassette deck. I was having none of this shit, so as soon as I got a $1000 christmas bonus at the newspaper i was working at, i went straight to the speaker shop. I blew my entire bonus on a PHAT speaker system and getting my windows tinted. I remember rolling out of the shop and the first CD i had in the booklet was Kanye's Late Registration (a burned copy of course). I popped it in, "Heard 'Em Say" started bumpin' and i was ROLLIN HARD! This beat was so money...Kanye had been a great producer from the get-go, but he was coming into his own as a rapper. Fast forward to 2013 and he's basically the biggest rapper on the planet. Forget the chill vibes of "Heard 'Em Say"...Adam Levine? Ha...hell no. Kanye's got wayy too much to get off his chest on Yeezus to fuck with Maroon 5. This is a guy on top of the world...literally. And looking at the world through his eyes is nothing short of fascinating

Yeezus is wayyyy more than rap. We see this the minute the album opens, on "On Sight" and Yeezy ain't fuckin around. He's got Daft Punk AND Benji B producing the track with him? The result is some HEAVY synth that's nothing short of cosmic. Think of the club in that new Tron movie where Daft Punk was playing. If you were at some club in the matrix or in outer space somewhere, this is the beat you'd be hearing. 'Ye intersperses a sick soul sample and just goes off on a tirade, highlighted by gems like:

How much do I not give a fuck?
Let me show you right now 'fore you give it upOk..I see where this is going. Right into another Daft Punk collabo on "Black Skinhead." A track filled with HUGE drum hits that he dropped a dark and often times terrifying interactive video for. This is not just some regular-ass album release. This is next-level shit. We see him just not giving a fuck by dropping perhaps the most disputed lyric of the year:

I keep it 300, like the Romans
300 bitches, where the Trojans?Can't tell you how many fan boys and girls were FURIOUS at this one. "It wasn't the Romans in that movie! It was the Spartans!" But man, Kanye delivers it with such emphasis. He doesn't stutter for a second and he's so wrapped up in the beat. It's like the brilliant thespian who skips a line and you don't even notice, you're just enamored with the performance. He got everyone talking with this slip-up, or was it?

Everything seemed so calculated with this album and it was genius stroke after genius stroke. The first taste we got of the record was the global premier of the "New Slaves" video. A cryptic map on his website showed the locations of this video projection in major cities around the world. I was in San Francisco at the time and trekked down to 2nd & Mission at 11pm with a buddy and a flask. This was some guerilla shit for sure. These surly dudes showed up with a full-size pickup truck and what looked like a 200 pound projector. The surly dudes pulled up the projector with all their weight to position it and they beamed Kanye up on a high rise in the financial district that was maybe 300 yards away. This was surreal. The video played three times in a row while the music blared on a single massive speaker. By the 3rd time, we were rappin' along. Sharing booze, dancing in the street. It was so dope. As it ended, i yelled out a scream "let's go to the next one!" and we trekked over to Union Square for the 1145 showing. THIS is what being a star is about these days. How you gonna top what the last guy did?! And there was nothing that felt contrived about it. You could feel Kanye's emotion on the Big Brother-like projection of his head against a building

In fact, this is the quality that sets Kanye apart, nothing feels fake. If you've seen interviews with the guy, he has SO much emotion. He truly believes in everything he says. THIS is art. Dude can say shit like "I Am a God" and it ain't tongue in cheek at all. He knows the masses are hanging on his every word, just licking their chops waiting to derive meaning from it, waiting to break it down. THIS is the lens through which he looks at the world. He's the face on the side of the building and you either soak it all up and act like you belong there with every inch of your body, or you don't cease the spotlight and become just another singer. But don't think that the spotlight doesn't get to him. It pisses him off. The ravenous media attention and countless organizations calling for his head infuriate him and it makes his expression that much more real and defining

For all the anger, for all the lines like "Put my fist in her like a civil rights sign," there's beautiful prose and social commentary with the impeccable Nina Simone sampled on "Blood on the Leaves." He goes straight for the jugular with the provocative subject matter and puts difficult conversations at the forefront. "Blood on the Leaves" is a masterpiece. Do yourself a favor and read the annotations on Rap Genius, especially the words on the production of this song. There's no issue this man is not ready to bring up. And I'm just scratching the surface. I could write into the night on this album. We could sit here and talk about Kanye's ability to elevate a talent like Justin Vernon to the top of the indie rock world. We could re-hash his words in the countless interviews and rants, but there's no way i could do it as well as the users on Rap Genius already have done (in fact, to bring authenticity and the right frames of reference to this post, i've collaborated with Kanye's top scholar on RG to make many of the annotations you're reading right now.) The annotated Yeezus is some of the richest content on the entire site. Dissecting every stanza, every beat, every move of this album, for the monumental accomplishment that it is. Even Lou Reed thinks so. LOU FUCKING REED! Read his words, crumble your preconceived notion of Mr. West if you don't like him, if only for a moment, to look into what his music and his ART is made of. Cause it's unlike anything that's ever been done and there's much more to come....
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#8 is due up tomorrow!