By Bharat Mehra, 16
The long wait for ‘Yandhi’ last year and then the tentative cancelling of that album followed by the announcement of ‘Jesus is King’ had a lot of Kanye Stans, including me, pretty excited as it was clear that he was going in a different direction. I’m not exactly religious but I don’t have anything against religion or religious music.
After listening to the Yandhi leaks, my expectations were pretty high. But this album disappointed me, to be honest. It’s not bad at all but it’s clear that this was very rushed (which is evident from the weak songwriting on some songs and the terrible mixing, which has been fixed though and is slightly better now). Kanye wasn’t very focused here and that’s clear (ironic, considering the lyric “I ain’t mean, I’m just focused”. It’s a fun listen nonetheless. The lyrics aren’t terrible but not exactly the best out of all his albums and sound contradictory and hypocritical at some points. Maybe I wouldn’t be so disappointed if I didn’t listen to the ‘Yandhi’ leaks, but this is not exactly a great effort either.
That said, some songs like ‘God Is’, ‘On God’ and ‘Selah’ were absolutely amazing. Songs like the aforementioned ‘God Is’, the intro track ‘Every Hour’ and the outro track ‘Jesus is God’ should have been longer in my opinion. The potential was definitely there but Kanye just didn’t capitalize on this enough. Some songs that were there in the original tracklist were abruptly removed a few days before release and I assume that they will be incorporated in his supposedly upcoming Jesus is King Part 2 album on which he is working with the West Coast Hip Hop legend Dr Dre.
Overall, this album is one of Kanye’s worst and a stint in his amazing discography. I can only hope that he will work more on his next album and prove his genius along with ‘spreading the message of Christianity’ which seems to be his main purpose now.
Dikshant
blog3002