"Ye": A Dialogue

Kanye West has long been a polarizing figure, and he's certainly a the height of that right now with his Tweet Storms and takes on politics and race. That's not what we're gonna talk about, though. His latest album, Ye, is itself a polarizing project, with people seemingly firmly in one of two camps: "This is amazing, Kanye is a genius" or "This stinks out loud". And so, we will start a dialogue.

I fall in the middle of the two sides. I'm looking like Larry David when he can't decide between his Jewish friends and the Palestinian goddess and her chicken.

I'm not a massive Kanye stan. I really like his music when it's good. I don't go back and listen to College Dropout once a month like other people do. I find he has usually has at least 3 songs I'll keep in heavy rotation per album. For me, Kanye West music has always been about the production and less about the lyrics and actual rapping from Kanye. I care more about how his voice sounds on a beat than I do about what he's saying. Like on "Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1", I think his voice fits on the track and don't really care that his lyrics consist of, for example, "I just fucked this model, and she just bleached her asshole. If I get bleach on my t-shirt, imma feel like an asshole." Not the best lyrics ever (they're hilarious, so I have to give Kanye that) but the way he says the lyrics just fit on the track. I feel the same way about Future. His voice just feels right on trap beats regardless of the content of the lyrics. Rap has very much shifted toward the importance falling more on production than lyrics.

Ye has fantastic production. It's Kanye's bread and butter. Add in production credits from my guy Francis and the Lights and the beats are MONEY.

*very Stephen A Smith voice*
HOWEVA

Kanye just does some weird shit on this album that make me scratch my head. 

Right off the bat, "I Thought About Killing You" hits with an interesting beat, but Kanye just talking over it was weird. It gets infinitely better at the end when the beat changes and he starts flowing a bit. Francis has a writing credit on this one, so that style makes sense. The end of it ions enough to make up for the first 2/3 of thew song, though. 

"Yikes" turns it up with a good beat and a nice hook. This has been one of the more mentioned tracks I've seen on social media, with the majority opinion being that its actually good. 

"All Mine" has a fairly basic instrumental, utilizing drums and some backing vocals and melodies. But the high-pitched and fast-paced hook just felt off. Francis has production credit on this track, again making sense given the simplicity of the beat.

"Wouldn't Leave" was just a miss for me. I'm not a fan of the beat or the flow or the lyrics. Just a dud.

I like the hook on "No Mistakes", and it works well with he beat. It switches up during Kanye's verse and gets worse as a result. Pretty "meh" song in this reporters view.

The intro for "Ghost Town" reminds me a lot of The Life of Pablo. Kid Cudi sounds good, 070 Shake sounds great and the production is fantastic from West, Mike Dean, Benny Blanco and Francis and the Lights. Kind of like "Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1" or "Waves", my two favorite tracks off TLOP, Kanye's actual rapping is the least enjoyable part of the song. The sampled intro, like Pt. 1, is great. The other artists, like Waves or Pt. 1, really outshine West.

"Violent Crimes" again shows off 070 Shake with a great hook. It's a slow and melodic beat. Much like, "Ghost Town" I get some TLOP vibes from it. It's also the only track that Kanye entirely produced and wrote on his own.

Overall, it's a good album. Not too good, but a solid "Yeah, its good". You have songs like "Ghost Town", "Violent Crimes" and "Yikes" that give off a real Pablo vibe, and since I really enjoyed that album I in turn really like those songs. Everything else is honestly forgettable.

At the end of the day, Kanye West is a master producer and it shows in his body of work. As long as you doing expect too much lyrically or in regards to flow, you might like this album. The only times I found myself physically making weird faces and wondering what was happening were the moments when Kanye's voice just didn't fit on the beat. As long as he can fit his voice to an instrumental and he stays a production genius, he'll be fine.

My overall score is 3.6 Balls. Not as good as TLOP but the three songs I already mentioned are real goddamn nice. Those three will get added to playlists, and the others will be forgotten about.

This has been "Ye": A Dialogue.