I love how raw this record is. Take On Sight for example. Just pure distortion, filth, abrasiveness. That’s what I love about Yeezus as a whole actually. It’s messy, it’s distorted and it’s experimental. That’s also what makes it such an oddity in Kanye’s discography. Every Kanye record, however different from one another they’ve been, have always had one thing in common – clean production. Nothing’s ever too experimental, everything’s clean, there isn’t a lot of abrasiveness. With Yeezus however, Kanye takes that cleanness, that formula, and gives it the middle finger. You’re playing with Yeezy’s rules now, and Yeezy is an angry person. Why? look at the intro to I am a god for one. Self explanatory. And then there’s Kanye’s rapping in New Slaves, angrily proclaiming “My momma was raised in the era when, clean water was only served to the fairer skin.” Kanye’s very angry, there’s no doubt about it. Why? My guess is fashion, or something like that. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that Kanye’s emotional state gives us his most exciting and interesting record in years. Every song on here is interesting. And great. Blood On The Leaves and Bound 2 in particular are two of Kanye’s finest songs in years, yes, even compared to MBDTF, his magnum opus. But, putting Bound 2 and Blood aside, there’s a bunch of great tracks here. New Slaves, Hold My Liquor, I’m in it. But more so than tunes, I found this record is mainly about moments. What do you mean by that, Matthew? New Slaves is a great song, and I enjoy its first 3 minutes, but I’ll be damned if I don’t listen to it to get to its ending. “I can’t lose, no I can’t lose.” Pure musical euphoria. Beautiful. Then Frank Ocean joins in and elevates it to a whole new level. It’s the climax of the song, it’s the conclusion and boy does it conclude things well. The whole track is reserved, almost like its holding back to unleash itself at the 3 minute mark.

Other great moments? The verses to Hold My Liquor, which are very cinematic and feel like they could be on inception’s soundtrack. The weird sound effect in those verses that kind of sounds like a car drifting. The Deep chant in bound 2’s verses, hidden amongst 10 or so voice, during the “bound to falling in love”. Listen for it, you’ll find it. The aggressive horns in Blood On The Leaves. Oh and I have to mention how great of a song Blood On The Leaves is. I love how the song starts very calm and relax, with Nena’s voice singing “blood on the leaves” and the soft piano notes. Then, next thing you know, the track explodes and Kanye is half screaming over aggressive horns. And every melody in here is great as well. I especially love the piano melodies that are played. What’s my favorite moment on the song though, since I was talking about moments? That would be at 2:59 when Nina Simone mutters “from the poplar trees” for one last time and were trusted into nothing but the horns aggressively…moving the track along and then eventually Kanye’s voice comes in singing some of my favorite lyrics of the track before the drums seamlessly join in and the song continues. Yeah, that’s my favorite moment. But the whole song is, really. Great song.

Criticisms? Okay. For those of you that have already heard the record, this is probably the elephant in the room. The lyrics here aren’t great. Actually, let me rephrase that. The lyrics here are terrible. Subjectively, they’re okay, I can handle them, mostly because I don’t really care about lyrics, but objectively, yeah they’re shit. I like a few of them, i like some of the lyrics on New Slaves and Blood On The Leaves but the majority of them are terrible and should have never been put on record. I think though that, with this record, Kanye realized that lyrics don’t really matter and he stopped giving a shit about them. And hey, if the production is great, i pretty much agree with him. I’d take great production over great lyrics any day.

Oh, and the chorus to Bound 2. That’s a great moment. Scratch that, that’s a fantastic moment.

Thanks for reading! Posting a new ‘WYSLT’ every sunday.