Kanye West's sixth solo album, "Yeezus", starts with a quick jolt of the pilot light, as the Daft Punk effort track entitled "On Sight" aggressively clamps the listener's ears for the first click in the ticking time charge. Kanye revels over a distorted, staticy noise accompanied by begrudged verses that halts only as a juxtaposed choir split right in the heat of things.
While Yeezus awaits its formal arrival June 18, the media frenzy (which, ironically, serves as the subservient to Kanye's "no promo" campaign) has not been deferred. Mr. West fancies himself as the black flower; the most polarizing and impulsive figure in hip-hop culture. An Einstein of the ears but a loose cannon at award shows and in interviews makes Kanye the beloved and the repelled. Consider his deviance from amenity forever promotion for his future music, and a cut of hot diesel dripping into every little flame that starts around his name.
If you never fancied Kanye West before today -- don't expect to after this album. If you salivate for a crate-ransacking, docile, sedated Kanye -- don't expect none of that on "Yeezus" neither. If you're prying for a revolutionary, broadening, entirely new Kanye sound.. you'll still only receive a glass half-full. To be honest, this album isn't appreciating much of anything, barring a few unbeknownst 70's soul samples and Chicago-inspired house and drill music, but nor does the album try to fodder Kanye's ego or fawn at his extreme wealth even more.
Songs on this album take a sharp pivot from standard Top 100 Billboard chart toppers, but don't get it twisted; they do appeal in the same manner. Kanye assigns Chicagoan Chief Keef on the inebria-inspired autotuned track "Hold My Liquor", that could easily stagger chart-topping radio tunes, all the while over melodious shrills, a buzzing, bubbling bass, and churned out by a slick guitar solo. Kanye also hires Justin Vernon of 'Bon Iver' fame to provide wondrous bridges and hooks that slice in right between intense, rapidly-shifting periods of the album, a re-occurring concept of the album that brings the listener back down to Earth after earth-shattering moments.
One of the highlights of the album comes on the fourth track, "New Slaves". This song is an angry jab at the crumbling image of pure America, but it is also a less taxing session of Kanye's shadowboxing parley. The song doesn't have as many beeps and boops and lasers like songs such as "Guilt Trip" or "Send It Up", and it relates a greater hip-hop vibe than most of the album. It is also geared at what hip-hop fans would describe as "conscious rap", as Kanye dabbles between topics of industrial prisons, race, and hedonist slavery. The song then abruptly changes at the grumble of a booming drum roll, and the track ends magnificently with a sample of Hungarian song "Gyöngyhajú lány", and beautifully-provided Frank Ocean vocals.
However, the album's imperfections leak through at many instances on the album. Kanye is no wordsmith - we all know that - but the lyrics on this album are better to be heard, than have read. Or maybe not have been said at all. Some lyrics are so cringeworthy that they could be mistaken for satire. Such is on the track "I Am A God", where Kanye raps "In a French-ass restaurant/Hurry up with my damn croissants".
On song "Blood on the Leaves", Kanye sings a bone-rattling melody over a chilling Nina Simone sample, but picks a hackneyed and regurgitated subject to angst about. The song could have served as a successor to the original sample's subject of lynching, or even a latter-day "Kanye West's 95 Theses". Alternatively, the lyrics cry about a temporary romance and "unholy matrimony" ruined by the "spotlight". The opening track "On Sight" is also a heavy miscalculation. The song contains a melody that could hardly be made out over the muddy mixing of the beat and an ear-wearing crackling backdrop, like a speaker had blown out and the producers decided to roll with it. "Send It Up" is also a song that requires a lengthy procession before a listener could adjust to what sounds like cranes turning their necks on a construction site. Overall, there are plenty of weird sounds that pop up on the album that maybe should have been left out in the recording process.
There are a bundle of conflicting powers on this album. Kanye is the returning entity, of course, but a lot of instruments and added trinkets were drastically stripped down by late-game addition & revered Def Jam founder & producer, Rick Rubin. As a result, the album, in what might have been a very cluttered, crowded product, was restrained in the layering process. Hudson Mohawke is also a prominent contributor to the album, working on most of the album's songs and laying down the horns for standout-beat "Blood on the Leaves". Kanye also seems to be in love with patwah and speedy reggae on this album, shouting out Jamaicans on track 10 "Bound 2", and enlisting the services of reggae-artist Assassin for a verse and hook on track "I'm In It".
These influences bleed through the shirt on closing track "Bound 2". The sample on this song is chipmunked and looped in vintage Kanye and Heatmakerz fashion, quipped with another round of Kanye's signature, quirky verses. The song lacks drums and a bass, and is only amply accommodated by a blaring Charlie Wilson hook over a single-note keyboard press, a decision later revealed to be Rick Rubin's nod, but one could have hoped for more on the album closer.
What everyone expects out of Kanye is not what he is interested in. There is no way of convincing someone to like this new "experimental" music. If you were swayed by his Saturday Night Live performances of New Slaves and Black Skinhead, and was expecting anti-industry, industrial, black punk, new-wave Public Enemy hip-hop, that's really only a part of the album, and certainly not what he was up to. Many also fail to realize that Kanye is a consumer. He enjoys the same cajun that we all eat, and lusts the same cars we wish we could afford. Worshipping Kanye's perfections is just as bad as pointing and hollering whenever he stumbles and trips over a crack in the pavement (or slams his head on a pole), then relegating to what he says in a song or does on camera as token for his contradictions. This album doesn't do Jay-Z or Electric Circus or even tries to make music we've never heard before, but it intrigues, and piques an interest in detractors and admirers equally.
It would be better to realize that Kanye is never going back to making soul-beats for a whole album again. And it would do the album justice if you didn't hate him for it.
Highlights: New Slaves, Hold My Liquor, Bound 2, Blood on the Leaves
A-
Don't be lazy, read it too 
A fckin minus? Are you kidding me 
