Yeezus is a very unique brand of anger. It's hard to explain, but we'll try anyway. See, by this point in his career, Kanye West doesn't see anything strange or distasteful about an album title like Yeezus. Yeah, so it sounds like Jesus... so? To West, you imagine he feels he's on that level. It's a grandiose sense of self which he has been cultivating since he hit the scene, before he'd sold a single album. And, in fairness, it's been a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts - no one can deny his star status, regardless of your views on his ridiculous attitude. Still, he's huge. And he knows it. But on Yeezus, we are press ganged to sit through the snarled quips of a man angry that feels he's not as famous as he deserves to be. This is the sound of a bitter god, growling and spitting and cursing because his believers aren't worshipping him with enough self-sacraficial fervour. But, instead of rising to the challenge to earn their endless praise, he throws a rap tantrum. In his mind, this self-obsessed self-created deity should be the king. Of everything. Lyrically Yeezus isn't his smartest work, but he is burning and passionate like we've never heard him before. Like hip hop through an electro organ grinder, this is Yeezy pushing his craft to its extremes. Nasty and abrasive, stripped, raw, this album kicks off like hip hop acid rain. In his world, women are his sex toys. The rap game is his bitch. There are a tracks where he loses focus and things fall apart, but for the most part this an album where Kanye showed that rules are meant to be broken. And pissed on. And then eaten and spat out in lines of furious prose laid over burning loops and death synths.
Game-obsessed since the moment I could twiddle both thumbs independently. Equally enthralled by all the genres of music that your parents warned you about.
