2. Yeezus
If 808s & Heartbreak is no longer considered to be Kanye's most difficult and controversial album, it is primarily due to the release of his most recent record - 2013's Yeezus. If Late Registration is Kanye's most angelic and beautiful release, Yeezus is his ugliest. It is an aggressive, noisy, industrial-inspired wasteland of musical experimentation. It bears the same purification-by-fire approach that drove anarchic 1970s punk. It is hideously inconsistent, both in terms of structure and lyrical themes. And it is utterly brilliant. Kanye stated prior to the album's release that he wanted to make an album that would shock the mainstream and destroy any accusations that he may have settled into a safe musical formula. And boy, did he succeed. Yeezus is sneeringly provocative from beginning to end, from the opening buzz-saw synths of On Sight (which were described by no less than the creator of Metal Machine Music Lou Reed as being "perverse" in their aggression), to the deconstructed-until-it-sounds-like-it-might-fall-apart house of I Am A God, to the sexualised industrial beats of In I'm It, to the slurring autotuned monster that is Hold My Liquor. It is telling that Kanye called upon some of the most experimental producers of the electronic underground to work on this album. Key contributions come from truly innovative and abstract producers like Arca and Evian Christ, as well as some leading figures in contemporary club culture like Hudson Mohawke, Brodinski and even Daft Punk. The album is designed to be challenging, and it shows through on practically every track. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnrLXDYnS6c&list=PL_AOKdtBhKxR2l5dClOsPa1BEehdg0GeA The most incredible moments are impressive simply because of how weird they are. Bound 2, the album's "pop" moment, plays with the same soul-sampling style as Kanye's earlier work, but with far more disruptive and amelodic composition. Black Skinhead is a ferocious assault on inequality that sounds like a souped-up version of Marilyn Manson's Beautiful People, while New Slaves is minimal to the extreme, reflecting the blank CD case that houses the album with its sparse (super-producer Rick Rubin-driven) instrumentation. Then there is the album's centrepiece, Blood On The Leaves. Sampling Nina Simone's Civil Rights masterpiece Strange Fruit, Kanye sings bizarrely confusing and inconsistent lyrics about alimony and MDMA while comparing being forced to sit apart from a girl at a basketball game to the segregations of Apartheid. Crazy, disturbing and somewhat worrying - but that is what sets Yeezus apart, and that is what makes it such a genuinely innovative release. It is certainly one of the most difficult albums ever to reach number one in the Billboard charts.