Kanye West The Life Of Pablo Def Jam, available via tidal.com

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For a man who made his name as a record producer, Kanye West is devilishly good at playing the fame game.

He is married to Kim Kardashian, perhaps the most photographed person on the planet. He cannot open his mouth, or name a child, without attracting controversy.

He can fill cinemas around the world by mashing up an album launch with a fashion show. And on Monday, when a few hours were in danger of elapsing without a story about him, he announced that he was $50 million in debt and asked Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg for a loan. Of a billion dollars.

If there was a prize for the worst noise in 21st-century music, Kanye West would be worth two places on the shortlist. One would be for his Auto-Tuned voice, the other for him rapping about his favourite subject, Kanye

Awards loom large in his thinking, but the ceremony has not yet been devised that would do justice to his abilities.

If there was a prize for the worst noise in 21st-century music, Kanye would be worth two places on the shortlist.

One would be for his Auto-Tuned voice, which is whiny and inhuman, the opposite of soulful. The other would be for the sound of Kanye rapping about his favourite subject: Kanye.

There’s a track on his seventh studio album entitled I Love Kanye. There’s a track devoted to discussing a brand of trainer co-designed by Kanye.

And there’s a track in which six consecutive lines end with his own name. If you take the view that popular music needs bigger ego trips, this is the record for you.

Kanye loves to show us how important he is, and here he has done it by changing his mind like a tinpot tyrant.

The album has gone through at least three changes of name: it started out as So Help Me God, but Kanye probably decided that, if anything, it was God who needed help from him.

It has also been through several track listings, culminating in a reshuffle that bumped it up from ten tracks to 18.

To go with his colossal ego, Kanye does have talent, as he showed a decade ago with Late Registration. And there are signs of it here.

Kanye does have talent and there are signs of it here but for the most part this album is a drizzle of tedium

The opening track, Ultralight Beam, tries to deconstruct gospel music, with mixed success, but the idea is audacious and the production is bracingly sharp.

Hours, which is a touching look back at an old flame – the point being that the young Kanye would spend 30 hours driving back from Los Angeles to be with his girl in Chicago.

Vivid and intimate, it’s the acceptable face of musical memoir, with a lovely little pulse doing the job of a bassline.

The next track, No More Parties In LA, comes close to the swaggering neo-soul of Gold Digger before being asphyxiated by one of Kanye’s rants.

This rather sums up the whole album. Kanye’s brilliance as a soundscaper is reduced to the odd flash of light in a drizzle of tedium.

His superstar existence, billed as The Life Of Pablo, will strike many people as the life of Riley, yet he still finds ways to moan about it.

If it’s not the women hurling themselves at him, it’s the cousin who allegedly kidnapped his laptop and demanded a ransom.

A track called Famous, which could take us inside the crazy world of celebrity, prefers to concentrate on belittling Taylor Swift.

There are countless co-writers and producers and umpteen guest vocalists, including the two rising stars of hip-hop, Frank Ocean and Kendrick Lamar.

But the album is all about Kanye. It’s a self-portrait of the artist as the bore in the bar, banging on about himself while everyone else loses the will to live.

GIG OF THE WEEK

Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats

02 Academy, Oxford On tour until March 11

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There was no more enjoyable record released last year than the self-titled debut by Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats.

Even more than with most albums, to love it is to want to hear it played live, and he’s giving us the chance now and in June and November.

The show opens with I Need Never Get Old, a blast of old-school soul so exhilarating that you could go home straight afterwards and still feel you’d had your money’s worth. Hands clap, drums thump, horns toot, guitars rock, and Rateliff hollers as if this is the last gig he’ll ever play.

Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats provide blasts of old-school soul so exhilarating that you could go home after just one song and still feel you'd had your money's worth

The temperature drops in mid-show but the atmosphere stays warm and it hots up again with S.O.B., a stripped-down barnstormer that has reached a wide audience on Instagram, as the soundtrack to a video Britney Spears made of herself dancing in her underwear.

On an icy night in Oxford it proves equally capable of getting people dancing in their thermals. Rateliff’s date at the Brixton Academy in June falls suspiciously close to Glastonbury.

The Eavises will surely give him one of their best slots.

nathanielrateliff.com

THIS WEEK'S CD RELEASES

By Adam Woods

The 1975 Dirty Hit/Polydor, out Fri

I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It

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In a safety-first music business, The 1975 once again sound like they’ve smuggled an album into the shops without letting their record company hear it. Matt Healy’s foursome offer 17 bits of Eighties pop, Bowie-ish funk, ersatz gospel, sad electro-pop and more, while oversharing about sex, drugs, mental health and Healy’s late nan

Basia Bulat Good Advice Secret City, out now

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Having become big in her native Canada, Basia Bulat’s next act was to make a heartbreak record with My Morning Jacket’s Jim James. And while heartbreak may be far from scarce, radiant songwriting of this kind is harder to find. Thanks to Bulat’s big lungs and nine bright songs, Good Advice announces her as a talent for everyone

Steve Mason Meet The Humans Double Six, out Fri

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