The Life of Pablo

The Life of Pablo

Isabella Azar, Staff Writer

After changing the title of his album three times Kanye West finally dropped his eighth album/seventh solo album “The Life of Pablo.” West released this album February 14 after his “album listening” at Madison Square Garden which was also the launch of the third season of his fashion line Yeezy.

The album features many artists including rap star Kendrick Lamar and R &B artist Frank Ocean. With eighteen tracks on the album and a run time of almost an hour, fans got as much Kanye as they could want on an album.

A self proclaimed Gospel album, features songs marked as explicit for language. The songs vary in length from the 5:20 sound Ultralight Beam to the 44 second I Love Kanye a track. In the I Love Kanye track, Kanye raps with no beat about the hate that he’s received as an artist with lyrics like, “I hate the new Kanye, the bad mood Kanye, the always rude Kanye,” throughout the song he only rhymes every line with his own name. He pokes fun at how social media says Kanye loves himself more than anything else with the line, “I love you like Kanye loves Kanye,” which he partners with a giggle.

The song that delayed the release of the album, Waves featuring Chris Brown and Kid Cudi, is about the loss of loved ones. After West’s passing of his mother, he fell into a depression. From the loss, a masterpiece resulted in the album 808s & Heartbreak . This newer song is another tribute to his mother inspired by her passing.

Kanye has always been outspoken, including his outburst on the Concert for Hurricane Relief about George W. Bush hating black people as well as announcing his candidacy for president in 2020 during the 2015 VMAs. Confusion and controversy seem to be synonymous with Kanye West, luckily enough for his listeners, good music is too. The album originally announced to be titled “So Help Me God” changed to “Swish,” then to “Waves,” and after a recent Twitter fight with Wiz Khalifa, changed to “The Life of Pablo.”

That wasn’t all the controversy Kanye had up his sleeve. On his track Famous he claims that he made Taylor Swift famous after he went up on stage during the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. He took the microphone and said that Beyoncé had “One of the best videos of all time.”

The lyrics that came from that incident highlight the narcissistic tone to his song. “I feel like me and Taylor might still have Sex. Why? I made that b—- famous,” he raps. Swift made it clear she wasn’t going to deal with Kanye again when she called him out during her Grammy acceptance speech.

Regardless of what the haters say, Kanye put out another strong album and didn’t give us anything less than what we could expect from Yeezus.