After long delay and a sticky rollout, Kanye West's anticipated album "The Life of Pablo" finally released last week. 'Ye originally debuted his album a few days before that at his Madison Square Garden fashion show. Showing off his new Yeezy Season 3 collaboration with Adidas, Kanye played all the new tracks to a sold out crowd before they had even been released. Fast forward a few more days and Kanye is performing two of the tracks on Saturday Night Live, which ended up being the same night the album would eventually release. The album was (and still is) released on Jay Z's music platform Tidal, and Kanye has opted to make that the only source for the album (not to mention the 500,000 other people who have pirated it illegally). From front to back, Yeezy's "T.L.O.P." is a true masterpiece.
The 18 track LP starts off with a song called "Ultra Light Beam." Originally a song that might have been scrapped, the track ended up being the very first on the album. This song is beautiful musically, and seems almost like a gospel song. The slow piano-sounding beat with the crooning vocals of Kelly Price, a choir, The-Dream, and Chance the Rapper, plus a chorus of "This is a God dream" gives any listener the feels right away.
The next two songs are parts one and two of "Father Stretch My Hands." Both fire. Part one features Kid Cudi, and he takes care of the chorus, beautifully. Moaning "beautiful morning" over a mellow beat, Cudi reminds us that he is still talented in his vocals. The second part features a sample from a new G.O.O.D. Music rapper, Desiigner. His song "Panda" is essentially the whole song, so it's cool to see Kanye put on for his new signees.
Rihanna-assisted "Famous" comes next, with the help of production from Swizz Beats. This is easily one of the best songs on the album in terms of beats, and lyrics. 'Ye takes shots at Taylor Swift in the opening line, making the entire song enjoyable. "Feedback" is next and is one of Kanye's lone solo songs. 'Ye raps over a static-sounding beat, reminding everyone he still has the bars.
Another two-parter, "Low Lights" and "Highlights" comes next, and these two are both fire. The former acts as an intro to the latter, so the transition seems flawless. "Highlights" is my personal favorite song on the entire album. Young Thug's harmonizing fits the mood perfectly and blends nicely with Kanye's auto-tuned sound.
"Freestyle 4" comes next, and has yet another feature from Desiigner. The combination of these two have proven to be scary, as this song is straight fire.
From there, the second half of the album really consists of songs that haven't been already released or teased throughout the past year. "I Love Kanye" is a hilarious minute-long ode to himself and Waves" with Chris Brown was the title track of the album last month. Besides The Weekend-Assisted "FML" the rest of the songs are familiar from before the release of the album.
"Real Friends", "Wolves", "30 Hours", "No More Parties in LA", "Facts", and "Fade" were either played in one of Kanye's previous fashion shows ("Wolves" in Yeezy Season 1 & "Fade" at Season 2) or released on West's personal Soundcloud page, so it's safe to say the second half of the LP was no surprise.
Overall, I give "The Life of Pablo" a 9/10. Is it Kanye's best album? No. Is it one of the better ones? Yes. Kanye's use of feature artists turned this LP into a musically beautiful masterpiece. And even though this wasn't one of West's strongest projects in terms of lyricism, it certainly was in terms of overall music quality.
Kanye delivered on this album. He met the hype, and even succeeded it. And although the process leading up to the release was sloppy, it had no effect on the result. "The Life of Pablo" will go down as a benchmark in Yeezy's career and has chance of being one of the top albums of 2016.
