my first few listens to the life of pablo left me disappointed that there wasn’t more kanye on it. in retrospect, i think what i meant was more of kanye rapping. i’m often guilty of not taking him seriously enough; this album is probably kanye’s most introspective, most reflective.
my position first changed when my friend gabe pointed out the lengths to which kanye had gone to obscure his voice. he seems to be almost hiding, composing collages of sounds behind the scenes. but then he doesn’t make the sounds either, does he. kanye’s great ability from my beautiful dark twisted fantasy on (as my friend adron told me) was to bring together great artists.
like with beyonce’s music, this mode of production draws the auteur question of filmmaking into music. this is a distinctly digital way of working, unique to a mode where recordings are assembled into music on computers. how much responsibility can we give kanye for the final product? is he actually creating, or is he just curating sounds?
kanye is a tastemaker. if not necessarily in fashion but in music his ability to make these collaborative albums renders kanye a kind of henry the navigator for the sonic landscape of the next few years. this tastemaking ability reminds me of two people: his wife, kim kardashian, and the man to whom he has frequently compared himself, steve jobs. both of these people take what has been made by other people and assemble it into something that people never knew they wanted until they had it.
consider, for tastemaking proofs, frank ocean’s distorted voices across blond(e). or perhaps look at the way frequent kanye partner justin vernon’s voice slowly transitions from vocoded distortion at the start of 22, a million, into clarity at the end. consider, again, the mystical adornments on the album cover.
there is something mystical about pablo. it begins with the ultralight beam, which can be understood as pure experience of divine and simultaneously as the overwhelming spotlight of fame. the troubling overlap of these things: the pursuit of mystical truth (resonating with aesthetic truth) and the pursuit of fame. can they be distinguished?
this tension pulls the album into its deeply introspective space. in doing so, it seems we retreat back to the very earliest episodes in the kanye myth. understanding the album requires an entire genealogy. there are many references to college dropout and late registration throughout the album, culminating in the story told on thirty hours. this story seems outside the kanye canon, about a long-distance relationship that didn’t work out. kanye’s verses, smooth at the beginning, break down into an aimless freestyling.
the beating heart of the album is probably i love kanye, though. an ironic reflection on the persona he has constructed, delivered in a raw beatless way. the attempt to reconcile celebrity culture and aesthetic mysticism is driven by his wondering about what is left when he attempts to transcend this persona, and whether or not he is trapped by fame.