Kanye West returns with his 7th studio album, The Life of Pablo, the 4th name of the album to be latex on it after So Help Me God, Swish and Waves (The latter causing a brilliant Twitter beef with Wiz Khalifa). Kanye is ever-changing his sound and has rarely ever stuck to one side of music and has never got complacent. This album is certainly a 90 degree turn again, especially after Yeezus which was far out there in terms of experimenting with sounds. But with Kanye, it rarely ever fails, the album will inevitably be critically acclaimed and his fans will love it no matter what.
But the sound of TLOP shocked me somewhat, as I sat in the cinema for the screening of Yeezy Season 3/The Album I started to feel this was just a washed down/soulful Yeezus. But then you start to really listen deep and there's a part of Kanye's soul in every one of these songs, Nori and Saint are name dropped a few times as is Kim K, although none of these are particularly loving towards his wife. The album kicks off with the ultimate gospel anthem Ultra Light Beams featuring the incredibly talented and unique Chance the Rapper. This song creates an incredible atmosphere of emotion and soul, there are so many different layers, from the choir to Kanye's singing to Chance's excellent verse.
Famous featuring Rihanna on one hand doesn't feel quite finished, now as I type this Kanye has took the album off sale again and has claimed to still be working on it, but it's not just this song. There are little bits throughout the album that need lets tweaking here and there and considering this album has been 3 years in the making you have to ask yourself, how could it sound that way? But then again, Kanye pulls through with a humorous side we rarely see from him with the Ray J line to the already infamous line about making Taylor Swift famous.
Ultimately, Kanye's rapping on here is weaker than Yeezus but the songs are stronger as a whole and overall more listenable as a project than Yeezus but less so than most of his discography. However, this is still a stellar album that I have been playing non-stop since it was released and one day, people will stop and look at Kanye's discography and say 'he really was a genius'.
9/10