Kanye West is a horrible person, but a damn fine musical artist. His fall from grace started ten years ago with the Taylor Swift controversy, and dates even farther back from that whole situation. He’s always been an egotist, and he’s always thought that he was some sort of messiah, and it’s been apparent from his debut.
But despite all this, I don’t know why, I’ve always felt intoxicated by the bravado of his music. And with the new album “Jesus is King” Kanye hopes to redeem himself through his Christian ideals. And I’m here to tear it to shreds.
This album is bad. My goodness, did Kanye drop the damn ball on this one. Gospel is a perfect genre to get overly theatrical with but Ye kept the same production quality from Ye and fails to deliver. It starts out promising with “Every Hour,” “Selah,” and “Follow God”. But then it gets to “Closed on Sunday” and Kanye officially made his worst song. Yes, even worse than “I Love It,” the song is so corny and boring I didn’t even stop to question if the wait for the album was worth it. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.
Not only that, but it also fails to be a true gospel album. Kanye constantly complains and drones on about his “troubles” to the point where this feels like a sequel to Ye rather than it’s own project, it’s own stage in Kanye’s career. If he had kept the title Yahndi and maybe kept a few of the leaks, then, maybe this album could have been about as good or slightly better than Ye simply due to perception. If this album had not been shown and shoved down our throats that this IS a Christian album, and Kanye really IS born again, listening to it would have been enjoyable.
The entire time writing this article, I’ve had trouble separating art from artist. At some points of his career, Kanye portrays himself as this monumental figure who’s essentially fighting off the entire world, while simultaneously trying to pull off this “poor me” facade. Which is it Kanye? What face are you wearing today? Am I listening to a Kanye that is genuinely in tune with his feelings or does he actually believe he’s this superstar, Christian, genius, billionaire?
Unfortunately, the real Kanye is the latter, as evident with his most recent album. The fact that he’s using a Christian platform to profit off of the masses is appalling, and kind of flies in the face of what kind of a platform Christianity is supposed to be. Although he’s not NEARLY the first person to do this, the United States has had a mile-wide list of Christian exploitaters, he’s one of the most blatant about it. This is also why I have such contempt for Jesus is King, some people find true comfort in religion and exploiting that comfort is despicable to say the least. He’s trying to justify the insanely high prices of his merchandise in a GOSPEL record, when one of the most famous verses of the Bible explicitly says, it is harder to achieve the impossible than for a rich man to get into heaven. If you would like to hear hypocrisy incarnate, listen to Jesus is King. To conclude, Kanye makes, or rather, made good music and is a dreadful person.
But despite all this, I don’t know why, I’ve always felt intoxicated by the bravado of his music. And with the new album “Jesus is King” Kanye hopes to redeem himself through his Christian ideals. And I’m here to tear it to shreds.
This album is bad. My goodness, did Kanye drop the damn ball on this one. Gospel is a perfect genre to get overly theatrical with but Ye kept the same production quality from Ye and fails to deliver. It starts out promising with “Every Hour,” “Selah,” and “Follow God”. But then it gets to “Closed on Sunday” and Kanye officially made his worst song. Yes, even worse than “I Love It,” the song is so corny and boring I didn’t even stop to question if the wait for the album was worth it. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.
Not only that, but it also fails to be a true gospel album. Kanye constantly complains and drones on about his “troubles” to the point where this feels like a sequel to Ye rather than it’s own project, it’s own stage in Kanye’s career. If he had kept the title Yahndi and maybe kept a few of the leaks, then, maybe this album could have been about as good or slightly better than Ye simply due to perception. If this album had not been shown and shoved down our throats that this IS a Christian album, and Kanye really IS born again, listening to it would have been enjoyable.
The entire time writing this article, I’ve had trouble separating art from artist. At some points of his career, Kanye portrays himself as this monumental figure who’s essentially fighting off the entire world, while simultaneously trying to pull off this “poor me” facade. Which is it Kanye? What face are you wearing today? Am I listening to a Kanye that is genuinely in tune with his feelings or does he actually believe he’s this superstar, Christian, genius, billionaire?
Unfortunately, the real Kanye is the latter, as evident with his most recent album. The fact that he’s using a Christian platform to profit off of the masses is appalling, and kind of flies in the face of what kind of a platform Christianity is supposed to be. Although he’s not NEARLY the first person to do this, the United States has had a mile-wide list of Christian exploitaters, he’s one of the most blatant about it. This is also why I have such contempt for Jesus is King, some people find true comfort in religion and exploiting that comfort is despicable to say the least. He’s trying to justify the insanely high prices of his merchandise in a GOSPEL record, when one of the most famous verses of the Bible explicitly says, it is harder to achieve the impossible than for a rich man to get into heaven. If you would like to hear hypocrisy incarnate, listen to Jesus is King. To conclude, Kanye makes, or rather, made good music and is a dreadful person.