When Chuck D of Public Enemy described hip-hop as “CNN for black culture”, he probably did not expect to see the antics of famous rappers become such a fixture of the wider news cycle. And yet Ye – the eighth studio album by Kanye West – finds the controversial rapper in candid, unrepentant form, making the news once again.
Over a brief seven tracks, the 40-year-old superstar confirms his production prowess, veering between sparse, hyper-modern styles and compositions which hark back to the soulful bent of the producer-turned-rapper’s early career; a volatile mix of the sweet and the acrid, the sentimental and the tendentious.
Lyrically, he is less easy to defend. “I don’t take advice from people less successful than me,” sneers West, the lofty self-made millionaire, on Make No Mistake – a song whose buttery first verse and chorus (sung by Charlie Wilson and Kid Cudi) curdles into a series of self-righteous outbursts.
Much of Ye – Kanye’s nickname – feels raw, personal and up-to-the-minute, the album cover-shot having been taken on an iPhone as a private listening party and album streaming session was being set up last Thursday in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Yikes – one of the best tracks, musically – bounces and swings, as West raps through an entire pharmacy of drug references, harking back to the episode last year which found him hospitalised for exhaustion: “on meds, off meds.” If there is a valuable seam of wisdom on this record, it is the fear of legal opioids, the prescription medication implicated in the deaths of Prince, Michael Jackson and countless others.
On Wouldn’t Leave, another track with a superficially twinkly mien, West raps about the furore unleashed just a few weeks ago when he implied that 400 years of African-American slavery was “a choice” rather than enforced bondage. “I said slavery a choice/They said ‘How ’Ye’/Just imagine if they caught me on a wild day.” The track also provides a telling snapshot of the aftermath. “My wife callin’, screamin’/Sayin’ we ’bout lose it all.”
There is plenty of love for TV personality Kim Kardashian here, as well as worry for the couple’s elder daughter. The closing track, Violent Crimes, finds West despairing at male-kind (“N****s is savage”) and hoping that four-year-old North grows up to be strong like Nicki Minaj. The closing voicemail message confirms that Minajco-wrote some of the lyrics.
The pseudo-feminism West directs towards his closest female relatives is not enough, however, to claw back sympathy for an increasingly divisive artist whose support for Bill Cosby (recently found guilty of aggravated indecent assault) has added to the dismay swirling around the star. West expends plenty of couplets on Ye extolling his preferences for “girls that’s basic”, alluding to indiscretions and boasting of how often he has paid for women to have implant surgery.
Obnoxiousness comes easily to West, whose apparent support for Donald Trump has recently bewildered a significant part of his fanbase. The ability to shock as well as awe has, however, long been part of the rapper’s appeal. That Ye also finds Kanye West homicidal, suicidal (all on one track, I Thought About Killing You), fatherly and able to produce music of a high calibre confirms this divisive figure is, at least, consistent in his wilfulness.