Kanye West
The Life of Pablo
Def Jam / G.O.O.D. Music
YOU'D be hard pushed in 2016 to find anyone unfamiliar with the Kanye caricature; the wilful, egotistical bluster of tabloid clickbait and Ye’s own 140 character soliloquies. Less visible are West’s visionary sense of aesthetics, Miles-Davis-esque talents as a bandleader, and unparalleled sense of public theatre.
Both are in evidence on West’s 7th full length, The Life of Pablo. Fittingly, it’s difficult at first to separate Pablo "the album" from Pablo "the performance". As an event, Pablo has been an exhilarating, frustrating and fairly unprecedented spectacle in a global pop arena that supposedly declared the album dead. Few other artists could have commanded such a global sense of occasion.
Pablo’s problems appear when, as the dust starts to settle, one is left with the album itself. Moments of brilliance abound: Ultralight Beam achieves dizzying genre fusion whilst generously shining its spotlight upon Chicago’s emergent hip-hop star Chance the Rapper; and on I Love Kanye West offers more incisive criticism of his own public image than any of his detractors. Yet, considering the album’s sprawling 18 tracks (some of which sound markedly unfinished and undercooked) one wonders whether Kanye’s bluster and sense of performance for once threaten to overwhelm his considerable talents. Pablo has the moment, but how long does that last?
Jamie Chambers
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