A “grower” is simply an album that grows on you. An album where on first listen, you may have wondered what on earth you were listening to. Where at first you may have thought what you were listening to was absolute rubbish. But then it begins… — Some blogger named Jeremy

I heard Yeezus for the first time on a late-night drive last summer. I was excited about it, so I gave it the entirety of my attention in one uninterrupted sitting. It had been released a week earlier (June 18) and leaked online a few days before that. Music writers were hunkered over keyboards and losing their minds.

So I listened, and decided without a shred of hesitation that it was an absolute pile of garbage. Haphazardly cobbled sounds, idiotic lyrics placed in prominent spots, mediocre rapping and a general disregard for aesthetic.

As writers rained down the Yeezus think pieces, I went from hating the album to hating the writers. Part of me wanted Kanye to explain away the 40 minutes on Yeezus by revealing that the album’s unlistenability was deliberate; a social experiment played on the critics of the world. No album cover, no structure. Just unpleasant sounds and improvised vulgarity thrown at the wall — slapped together thoughtlessly. A dumping ground for samples and beats. And titled Yeezus, just to drive things home.

Kanye came up in conversation while I was at a bar one night last fall, during which I shared the sentiment I just described. When I remembered the conversation the next morning, I decided I’d give the album one last listen to reinforce my thesis.

So I listened, and so it began…

By no means did I suddenly love it, but it became clear pretty quickly that I had overstated my previously expressed hatred. I consumed it this time not as a hip hop album to be compared to the rest of the Kanye West discography. I just let it play loudly while I cleaned by apartment.

Slowly, the tide turned. And then it started turning quickly. By the end of that week, I was a straight-up convert; the Yeezus lover I am today.

That album is legitimately so great. I owe the music writers from the previous paragraphs an apology.

I’ll avoid diving into the track-by-track specifics for fear of sounding like an idiot, but I might as well zoom in on some actual music to try and describe how this change happened. I’ll stick with the album’s first song, On Sight, which is a pretty good microcosm for the disc as a whole.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnrLXDYnS6c

The undulating grind of the first few seconds is grating — more like a spacey chainsaw than a melody. A harsh, rolling fuzz with scattered staccato synth notes and snare hits that come and go throughout the verse. When the lyrics arrive, it’s this: “Yeezy season approaching / fuck whatever y’all been hearing / fuck whatever y’all been wearing/ A monster about to come alive again...”

[Even as the album has grown on me, there are still some prominently placed, dumb lyrics. But there are also some great ones, and some ridiculous ones that have received plenty of attention. (Those ones count as great in my book).]

Kanye continues like that for about about a minute-and-a-half , and then the song jostles suddenly into a choir sample for 14 seconds with no transition or regard for the timing or tones that precede it or follow it. It feels slapped together like a couple of spliced reel-to-reel tapes. These sudden jaunts happen a few more times on the album.

The lack of predictability is unsettling the first go-around, but it’s a recipe for increased enjoyment over time.

I’m unqualified to talk in depth about the evolution of rap music as whole, but I can say the genre leans heavily on the beat. It’s what hammers home the time signature (usually 4/4, although here’s some top-notch 3/4 Kanye) and typically serves as the spine for everything else that happens in the song.

With Yeezus, Kanye West annihilates that convention. Some of the songs have no traditional drum sounds at all, while others use them sparingly, usually as texture in specific moments. And usually it’s just a singular looping bass kick or a set of snare claps. Rarely do they all cohere simultaneously into the kinds of traditional beats we’re used to.

On a visceral level, we humans want to feel that beat. That’s why we tap our feet and slap our steering wheel when we listen to music. We’re keeping a beat, participating in the musical process on simplest of levels. But Yeezus doesn’t connect those dots for you. It denies you that comfort.

I’ve had albums grow on me before, but I’ve never experienced a 180 of such epic proportions as this. I now find myself trying (and failing) to make my friends listen to the album after having sincerely told them just six months ago that it was a heap of garbage.

Which is to say: You should check it out, even if you already did so last year and made the choice to move on. And if you do, be sure to use quality speakers or headphones.

Follow: @CoxJustin