Post-Mortem: Life of Pablo by Kanye West
Welcome to the Friday duh 13th edition of Highly Regarded's Post-Mortem series; this week featuring Yeezus himself after dropping The Life of Pablo through the only subscription that will make you an empowered woman of the present day, Tidal, and also, most notably, The Pirate Bay. This album has been getting a lot of hype since it's Yeez's attempt to get back to that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy flow bruh. Does it happen for our holy creator? Does he soar above the heavens on his ego-rocket powered Yeezy Boosts' or, like the ill-fated Icarus, does the sun melt all the ice on his feet? Do the G.O.O.D. Friday's return for good?
Ultralight Beam: 9/10
Setting the tone right to start off the album, Ye draws upon the strength of the Dark Fantasy and gets some quality bars from Chance the Rapper over a stripped down and minimal beat. It's like Yeezy finally realized, like so many hip food joints in the city, people are stupid and sometimes less options is better for the masses nahmean. Just like how there are so many reviews for this album on Amazon/iTunes/wherever else the reviews are aggregated ad nauseam by a bunch of basic bitches and fuckbois, you don't know what to think about it. That's why you come here and get it straight. You get the real talk honesty b. You get the honesty that usually only comes from a doctor when he sayin "I have bad news, and no good news. Which you want first dawg?" here at Highly Regarded. And, honesty, this song is pretty dope. It def makes you nostalgic for anything that is not from Yeezus or 808's and Heartbreaks namsayin? Also, this boy Chance the Rapper? You should be listening to him, like you probs already are. Bruh has got the good-goods and puts it on albums for everyone without getting his rear-end violated by the record company buttstuffers. Not something even the big boys can do all the times, so you gotsta respect the man.
Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1: 6/10
I never been with a girl with a bleached asshole, but Imma have to imagine that ish is dry before you could potentially damage your Guess jacket Yeezy. This track is a solid OK. I think this more has to do with the sequencing of the tracks to get a good flow going, and to be artsy with a Pt 1 and Pt 2 on a single album since...you know...Kanye. This also is where a newbie named Desiigner starts his dollar-value-Future bit on the album. I get the whole helping the new cats in the bodega get their start, but you Kanye, you can afford name brand Future for your magnum hip-hopus. When you gotta add an extra i to designer just to make sure that google actually turns up legit search queries - or google starts asking you if you have some sort of mental deficiency and can't spell designer correctly like you some sort of 20th century Lenny tryna find cute pics of bunny rabbits on the internet - you got some issues.
Pt. 2: 7/10
Slightly better than Pt. 1 since Kanye lays of the autotune (which I autotune-out nahmean?), but he pushes his Miller High Life Future even harder in this song. You know your sound is a problem when you look up lyrics for these songs and people think that it is actually Future on the track instead of whoever this Panda Express motherfucker is. That, and the fact that this kid legit references this motherfucking panda (which is his only song to date that...is a song) while on Ye's track kinda rubs my beard against the grain. You Diet Dirty Sprite, and you gonna refer to your own song on what, to date, is pretty much the only meaningful "featured artist" credit you can put on your wikipedia resume? At least Senor West goes ape on his verses which make this much more bear-able. See what I did there? I bet you laughed.
Famous: 9/10
Obviously the first single is the hottest track on the album, especially because it's Ye saying "hmmmm...lemme just take all my best songs' most memorable parts, and mash them into 3 minutes of excellence nahmean." I mean, he brings RiRi and Swizz Beats and a very My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy beat and unleashes middle fingers in the air and "wake up Mr West"s. Am I listening to College Dropout? Late Registration? Only if.
Feedback: 7/10
This song is one of those tracks that pairs excellent rapping and, again, nails on the chalkboard style beats. This one legitimately sampling a screeching nails-on-chalkboard for the hook, which I had to dock some (very serious and important) points off the top like a hack-barber tryna give you a 2 on the sides. You know that dude who smells a little too much like Steel Reserve to be holding a shaky pair of scissors/clippers to your dome. The dude who holds the power to ensure your D stays unwetted, or for you to be the center of attention in the trap and it's queens. The only thing that saved the whole song is the fact that Kanye channels his inner hood-Oprah and I would pay racks on racks on stacks to watch this dude throwing big booty birds to all the members of the crowd.
Low Lights:5/10
Yeah I don't care about this song. Who is talking? Kanye said he put this on the album for all the moms driving their kids to school and then heading to work. I wish my mah played this ish for me on the way to school when I was growing up. Not this particular track, but the second half of the album.
Highlights: 6/10
This song is adding to the litany of "lights" songs Kanye has put out over the years being preceded by some sort of "interlude," although I don't really count Low Lights as an interlude as much as I consider it a quick commercial break that I can go to the bathroom or cut the next batch nahmean. The rapping is aight, it loses sumsum when Young Thug starts queefing up a verse. I don't understand how dudes who put their voice through those autotune machines still attempt to act tough. That machine is literally vocal menstruation. I don't care if Future fucks my girl in his gucci flip flops because when he says it through autotune the song sounds as if it's being rapped from the perspective of "my girls" vibrator.
Freestyle 4: 6/10
Return of the human typo on this track. This song is just a continuation of ghetto Oprah throwing big booty bitches everywhere to the crowd from Feedback. I'm sorry Ye, but most people (not me) seen Ray J give it to ya girl, and that didn't cause everyone to start slammin holes with reckless abandon, so I'm going to say no, people won't all start jackrabbiting each others uglies becaues they see you & KK gyrating each others grundles on each other. Fuckouttahere.
Kanye tells us how he really feels
I Love Kanye: 5/10
It's kinda unfair to review this song here, because it's essentially a extended skit, which normally I skip in these, but he spits enough here and is tryna "be heavy" about his self-reflection process of creating this album like he some Chipotle CEO who has to figure out how to get expired-"fresh"-meats to not poison people, while still posturing to maintain his position of GOAT of rap/'healthy'-fast food that I have to comment. Meh. There you go. I'm not a braggart (I'm working on it) so I can't put myself into my boys shoes to understand having that kinda self-love, maybe this song will help me see the light of recording self-fellatio and putting it on an album.
Waves: 7/10
One of the better new-Kanye-sound songs. This song melds the best of old and new Ye into one, half-the-length-it-needs-to-be song. He even gets Kid Cudi to hum in the background on this since that's all anyone will listen to him do anymore without rioting in the streets that it ain't no Man on the Moon ish nahmean. The reason this song sounds like the feminine hygiene aisle is because the reigning female welterweight boxing champion, Chris Brown, is back on the track crooning about wanting to have a foe worthy of his powers or some ish b. Hence why this is a 7 instead of 8 nahmean.
FML: 7/10
Is that an alien at the end of this song b? Because it straight up sounded like Yeezus himself transported E-to-the-motherfuckin-T to the booth to phone it home like he misses touchin' dong tips with Elliot. It could be just me, but I think that Kanye sampled some Christopher Nolan-Inception-style BWAAAAAAAHS for the bass in this track. This song is ill, legit until E.T.-Pain starts whining at the end like he gets harassed to much by the space patrol aliens.
Real Friends: 8/10
This is what the masses want Kanye. Not that we hate your HAM-handed songs where you going nuts in the booth, but we want to hear your actual flow. This is the classic Kanye that takes a non-egomaniacallook at his current sitch. I mean, with fame comes family discord. Who do you help out when you have more bread than Jesus feeding the 5000? Some would say help the Jews, but that's who sells Kanye his Jesus pieces, so he already kind of is. Even though I don't normally fuck with people with two first names or the symbol their name reps in their name, but Ty Dolla $ign doesn't completely fuck this song up like I was expecting. Surprisingly prescient of Kanye to write this song without going overboard with the claims of deity-ness and all that ish.
Wolves: 6/10
Little too little too late for me. I guess this track is almost like an intermission or something nahmean. You got just enough time to go pop your corn, make yourself a beverage - really anything you want, wrap a plate in tin foil for me while ya at it - during this song because you won't be missing much. This is like the disappointing sorbet you get in between meals to "cleanse your palette" at fancy stick-firmly-in-ass kinda joints. The type of places that look down on you for wearing a hoodie. The type of place that "doesn't accept WIC." Wack places nahmean? Talk about elitist. But this is Ye, who I believe actually is the only synonym in the dictionary for 'elitist' so that kinda makes sense. Makes more sense than why he thinks him and TSwift are gonna board the train to Slamville.
30 Hours: 8/10
All chest no legs. Fuck leg day and all that it stands for, I hear ya Ye. Just like Real Friends this song feels more like a human beings with feelings and emotions and shit that sometimes Kanye can seem devoid of due to his iron fisting rule on the hip-hop crown. The smooth rhymes in the verses lend this an airy sense to the track like you finally got taken to Kanye's cloud nine or, judging by the lyrics, down to his 3rd or 4rth layer of Dante's Inferno, since the song is about his drive from Chi-raq to LA in order to break into the game. The only thing crimping my enjoyability to this song is saying that Andre 3000 is a featured artist. The man says 30 hours roughly 10-15 times. Were you expecting me to expand on that? Because that's what Andre is called for to do on this song. And if I didn't just say "Andre 3000 is in this song" I doubt you would've even know he's involved with the album at all because his voice is all chopped to shit making him unrecognizable. On top of that I get very confused at the end because I always thinking my 2 phones buzzing but it's Yeezus himself saying "I DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT STUDIO RULEZ, BRUH. IMMA TAKE MY CALL THAT IS NOT IMPORTANT."
No More Parties in LA: 10/10
The second biggest banger on the album brings the ruckus in No More Parties in LA. I'm pretty sure that if there was a study conducted, there would be a direct correlation between how many times Mr. West samples Ghostface's "shake that body, party that body" from Mighty Healthy, to how good the Kanye track is going to be. A Kanye hit is like a math equation. "Shake that body" + "Put your middle fingers in the air" + bears on album cover = #1 hit. It's science. Go tell Bill O'Reilly. Kendrick Lamar lends his rhymes to this beat that only adds to the bangerishness of the track. Espousing the birds who use the knowledge that some rappers never got nothing from the ladies before he became the newest cat with stacks on the boulevard to commit the classic hoe-trap of"accidentally" housing a bun in the oven. Luckily, I am neither rich nor a rapper, so I don't have to worry about this in my day-to-day, but I feel for the brothers this constant threat affects nahmean. An anonymous man on the internet can have empathy can't he? Fuckouttamyface b.
Facts: 8/10
I will have to admit, Kanye really steps up the game on this last half of the album. It's like he purposefully sold a nasty-cut-to-shit batch of lean to start the album, get people ragged, then start peddling the fire to get us to remember why we always scored our hip-hop fixes from him. This song is grimey yo. I feel dirty listening to that bass b. It's like standing underneath the exit spout at the Hershey factory dumping all the excess chocolate into whatever the closest body of water is nahmean. Listening to this song is similar to rooting for Steph Curry to nail 3's waaay longer than anyone should be taking shots. You almost feel guilty. Almost namsayin.
Fade: 7/10
This song feels like it should be playing on loop in some Brooklyn hipster rave at 3am, except at the Yeezy 3am Rave, you don't wanna stomp all the mustache-waxed fuckboys that keep you from enjoying your night because they ain't allowed in. No plaid allowed. No bitchassness tolerated. Nahmean? There isn't much technically rapping being tossed around on this beat since it's mainly for the grindations of clubs, but this ish is groovy. This that type of song make you get excited to get those street tacos from Jose after last call. You know it's so close you can taste it. Everything was dope about this song until....Post Malone...Now don't get me wrong, I am white, but Pastey Malone - AKA the blight iverson AKA Bieber's Backup AKA toomanyfuckouttaherestocount - stanks. I'm sorry. It's not just cuz the boy is devoid of pigmentation b. Have you listened to his auditory assault on the radio? Why the fuck we focusing on ISIS when we have that garbage playing through peeps 5.1s? Same type of damage being caused to the masses bruh. He probably convinced a good many people "dang yo. western culture must be the devil is this guy gets 160 mil+ views on 'white iverson.'"
Final Score: 7.2/10
This album is in a similar boat as A$AP Ferg's ASAP (reviewed last week here) where I would highly recommend a listen or 10 because this is King Yeezy opening up Yeezy Season for everyone to get ready for what 2016 will hold in store. There are some low lights (you see what I did there?), but there are some ROOF TEARER OFFERS nahmean? If I could nominate halves of albums, I would posit this as a contender for the Grammy of Half-Album of the Year, and there wouldn't be that much competition because...this is Yeezus we talking bout. We get back to that oh-too-good funk of Late Registration, the lines of College Dropout, all wrapped up in a warm blanket of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Bruh all I want to do is make myself a big cup of hot chocolate, a bag of gigante jet puffed marshmallows, and turn one of those marshmallows into a dank marshMELLOW pipe nahhhhhhhmean? Of course you do.
That's it for this week's Post-Mortem, I know you enjoyed it so come by next week when I'll be changing up the vibe for y'all who don't solely listen to them hip-beats!
B
St. Yeezus