Album Rating: 4.0

besides chance's verse, ultralight beam is pretty boring tbh. after 3 listens i've concluded that this album is still a complete and utter mess. i only enjoy a handful of songs and can't very well say that the ones i'm not as keen on work contextually within the album, so i just skip them altogether.



pitchfork's review was excellent. for a brief moment i wanted to share in their enthusiasm. but ultimately i'm just far more interested in the lore behind the record than the actual record itself. i like the meta self-referential lines (especially in 'i love kanye' and '30 hours'), and being involved in the culture - in getting caught up in conversations about it, not knowing whether kanye is trolling us or not. regardless of whether you love it or hate it, you're still talking about it, you're still a part of it.



outside of the actual songs here, my appreciation is more so from a retrospective perspective, considering how this falls into his discography, how, for the first time in a long time, kanye is just making music without the weight of affecting change, or making some grandiose art-pop statement. for the first time (possibly ever) there's no huge cultural shift - he's successfully and unsuccessfully thrown in elements from yeezus, 808s, and mbdtf into a blender, and the results are sometimes as engrossing as they are perplexing

this is a god dream, this is everything

the highs are so great on this but idk if it'll hold up for me.

"I'm tryna keep my faith
But I’m looking for more
Somewhere I can feel safe
And end my holy war"

^^^^^^^^fucks me up

with trimming and more listens to get a grip on all the whiplash tonal shifts, i am falling in love with this, the production is so unreal
also that fucking Bam Bam sample is the most joyous thing ever, i love the samples on this album so much

so is everything after wolves actually a bonus track because those were the weaker ones imo

yeah i'm pretty sure they were if the outro to 30 Hours is any indication

"so is everything after wolves actually a bonus track because those were the weaker ones imo
"

Yeah, the album ends with Wolves and then the Silver Surfer Intermission is the beginning of bonus material. He even says so himself in the ad-lib portion of 30 hours as the beat is rolling out.

No they were going to be bonuses when the song was recorded but he eventually decided against it and made them a full part of it (He hadn't given the final tracklist (minus waves which was added at the last minute) by the time the song was made or even came out)

This is why Fade was moved around as the closer even though it was supposed to be before Wolves (or fml... not sure)

Gwyn, I really think you are wrong on this one, like 99% sure that tracks from Silver Surfer through Fade are not going to be on the iTunes/Physical copies of the album. But I guess we'll just wait and see. It doesn't make sense for them to be on it. Everything before them more or less fits together thematically the last 5 tracks are just a hodge-podge though. The tracks after Wolves are actually the only ones that feature ad-libs, sloppy mixing, and tracks that outright don't sit well on the album (like Fade, which is like a cool 90s-style house dance track, but doesn't fit the rest of the stuff on here)... plus, no way Facts is on the album, even with a cool new beat it still has the same exact refrain as Future and Drake's "Jumpman"

I am still guessing though... but I'm pretty confident in this guess.

Kanye's done refrains from other songs in his album before like he used a Black Sabbath song as the basis for the chorus in Hell of a Life.

I can't believe he refrained a song from the drake/future collab tho... all the gold those two dropped last year and he chose that garbage smh

Man taylor swift is a dumb bitch but I still feel kinda bad that I laughed as much as I did at that line in Famous

Gwyn, well yeah... but he's done refrains from classic 50s-80s stuff... but not from a single that dropped a couple of months before...

Album Rating: 2.5

This is probably the worst album from Yeezy.. Lyrically this is worse than Yeezus.. and as for the production.. it does nothing to me..



Maybe it will grow on time.. but I don't think so

Well if everything after Wolves is just bonus tracks, Imma have to bump this down to a 3.

Album Rating: 4.0

why? the only good track after wolves is 30 hours (no more parties in la is super boring)

no more parties is like easily one of the best songs

Album Rating: 4.0

no more parties is kanye hell: a minute of music on repeat for 6, and the music isn't even particularly interesting. immediately recognizable and accessible, but meh

Album Rating: 3.0

First

Album Rating: 3.0

Yah what gyro's saying



Im waiting til the "official release" (lmao) to confirm judgment but real friends is the only song I'd call excellent



Apparently he's gonna fix up wolves. We'll see