E-dubble has passed away - HipHop

The Life of Pablo, as presented by Kanye West, is not an attempt to redefine the relationship between the creator and the consumer, but is rather an attempt to predict/bridge the future of the release/distribution of art to the masses. In this way, The Life of Pablo is not just a different Kanye West album, it is a different Album altogether.

All albums in West's solo discography are the product of experimentation and vary in genre-inspiration and sonics:

The College Dropout famous for soul samples;
Late Registration has lively orchestral arrangements behind its tracks;
Graduation notably apes electronic and dance music;
808s & Heartbreak is an emotionally tortured album with robotic AutoTune vocals (robots known for their lack of emotions);
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy carves out space as a progressive rap epic;
Yeezus is a shallow, industrial maelstrom;
and now we have The Life of Pablo that has been described by Kanye in its iterations as either cookout music during his interview with The Breakfast Club 20 February 2015 or "a gospel album with a whole lot of cursing"— of course it turned out to be both.

Introduction

In the lengthy lead up to the release Kanye West's seventh album, the world received the singles "Facts," "Only One," and "All Day." The latter two would not make the album, while the first would appear in the form of a remix from producer Charlie Heat.

This kind of apparent transparency, in retrospect, exhibited in the lead up to, the release of, and the re-working of the album after release is instrumental to the understanding of the application of Deconstruction to the release of The Life of Pablo.

In the philosophy of Deconstruction, the objective is to define what is without having to define what it is not. The same way that this collection of tracks grouped under the title The Life of Pablo is an album in the traditional sense also gives rise to the new meaning of an Album (as #contemporaryart) as defined by Kanye West as "a living breathing changing creative expression."

To put simply (to the degree that this philosophy can be put simply): Deconstruction is an exploration of the accuracy and precision of language. The Life of Pablo is an exercise in defining/re-defining what an album is when there is no physical release (whether that be cassette, vinyl, or CD), and when the album is updated, again, as a "living breathing changing creative expression." What this means is the album as a stoic, unchanging collection of music is no more and in its place, there is the Album given a new meaning in contrast to the ever-changing, always-tinkering reconstruction of the collection of songs that makes up the Album The Life of Pablo. It is to be understood that Album (capital "A") is the re-definition given by Kanye West as contemporary art, and "living breathing changing creative expression." The distinction is necessary to explore the accuracy of its concept. For reference an album (lowercase "a") is traditionally defined as "a collection of recordings issued as a single item on CD, record, or another medium."

Exploration

After listening to, internalizing, and understanding My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, I found it was the perfect companion piece to 808s & Heartbreak. The latter was a mournful downward spiral and the former slowly became the light at the end of the tunnel. I can see West as Virgil going through Inferno in 808s, and I can see Fantasy as his trek through Purgatorio and eventually reaching Paradiso. And with The Life of Pablo, I sense the other half of this album in Yeezus. While Yeezus was lauded by some critics for its supposed minimalism, I hear the organized chaos as sounds appear, evolve, and then drop out of existence.

Credit is due to The New York Times profile of Kanye West and the subsequent The Wall Street Journal interview with Rick Rubin for popularizing the "Yeezus is minimal" Gruppendenken. Rubin is quoted as saying: "He wanted the music to take a stripped-down minimal direction" in his interview. Kanye likewise says: "Like I say, I'm a minimalist in a rapper's body" and "I'm still just a kid learning about minimalism, and he's a master of it." (Referring of course to Rick Rubin as the "he" in that statement.) I suppose the most minimal thing about Yeezus is that in its current form it lacks true album art.

The idea that Yeezus is not minimal is in direct contradiction to the artist's explicit intent; however, I think in this case it is necessary to challenge this view because of the actual product that also serves as contradiction to the artist's own words.

For fear of digressing too much, I will end this section with these words from Lou Reed's review of Yeezus which explain more succinctly the supposed minimal sound of Yeezus: "People say this album is minimal. And yeah, it's minimal. But the parts are maximal."

Yeezus being understood as not minimal plays into the true stripped down nature of the album that would succeed it. Kanye tweeted "the Yeezus album packaging was an open casket to CDs r.i.p" which is a revealing statement to the philosophy that he puts into play for Pablo as from the death of the physical album, Kanye gives life to what he perceives as a new form of Album. The Life of Pablo as a title is revealing because this is not Kanye re-birthing the album but giving life to, or dropping in media res, into the life of a new way/style/philosophy of the Album.

It is the new way in which music is consumed (via streaming services, specifically) that has given rise to this new style/philosophy of the Album. It is because of the immediacy of the internet that this Album is not only made possible but also inevitable. And Kanye West, self-perceived futurist, desires to be the forerunner of this new style of art distribution.

Evolution of Pablo

Looking at the tracklisting (in its various forms) is what really began to define, and at the same time obscure, the idea of this Album and what it would be experienced as going forward. In late January 2016, Kanye tweeted what would be the initial tracklist for the Album, then known as SWISH. The tracklist clocked in at a paltry 10 tracks (the same number of songs that appeared on Yeezus).

Two days later, Kanye yet again tweeted a tracklist— this time with 12 tracks broken up into three Acts of four tracks. With the revealing of this tracklist he announced the title of his album had been changed to Waves.

A day later the same tracklist was posted with a red line drawn through "Nina Chop" as it had been officially titled "Famous."¹ And nearly two weeks after the original tracklist tweet, and still with no firm release date, West tweeted another track list that he had titled "The Life of Pablo" with yet another version of tracklist.²

Another two days passed and Kanye takes to twitter yet again to list the titles of all the songs that would be on his then-upcoming album. This final tweeted tracklist would have 17 tracks and would be pretty close to what would become the final/ultimate tracklist for the The Life of Pablo.

With every picture of the tracklist change tweeted, a number of celebrity signatures appear on the legal pad as a record of collaborators and friends assist with the completion of the album.

It is worth the exercise to sequence the album that was officially released in the order of the tracklists that Kanye provides. In particular, the Waves sequencing is interesting because it starts out very bombastic with "Famous" remains upbeat through "Father Stretch My Hands" before going into the more melodic downtempo tracks of "Waves" and "High Lights."

The very last words spoken on "Famous" are from the Nina Simone sample:

"I just wanted you to know, I've loved you better than your own kin did/ from the very start I don't blame you much for wanting to be free/ I just want you to know"

And the very first words spoken on "Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1" are "You're the only power" a vocal sample from Pastor T.L. Barrett.

This sequence of vocal samples feels like it completes the thought from "Famous" that is further elaborated on "Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1:"

"I just want you to know you're the only power."

This theme of a person being a power works into Kid Cudi's vocals describing the object of adoration as the sun:

"you're the sun in my morning babe, nothing unwanted"

Similarly, the crass opening lyrics in Kanye's verse from "Famous" has a slight parallel in "Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1." Compare the lyrics:

"To all my southside niggas that know me best/ I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why?/ I made that bitch famous"

from "Famous" (above) to "Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1" (below)

"Now if I fuck this model/ and she just bleached her asshole/ and I get bleach on my T-shirt/ I'ma feel like an asshole"

Kanye goes from making a justification for his desire to have sex with Taylor Swift to contemplating having sex with an unnamed woman he just met and at the same time calls himself out for being an asshole. Calling himself out for not being a better person is not new to him as evident from the song "Runaway."

The sequencing of the Waves tracklist is tighter, more consistent and more what you would expect from a cohesive album due to a stronger linear and almost narrative feel and the relatively short length in which these 11 tracks clock in at. (The final tracklist for The Life of Pablo would eventually explode to 20 tracks.)

The track "Saint Pablo" that would eventually become the final track on the ever-evolving The Life of Pablo would be a complete address of much of the controversy of the album and the antics surrounding it.

What is The Life of Pablo?

I would be remiss to go this essay without mentioning by name the Father of Deconstruction, Jacques Derrida for it is his Of Grammatology that lends to me the ideas necessary to construct my thoughts. For his philosophy is dense and recursive it is with my [mis]understanding of this philosophy that I can push forth the idea of the essence of the Album. Derrida asserts: "there is no outside text." That is to mean that everything that is, is contextual (thus can never exist in a vacuum without context). It is through the text that the universe is observed because without text (i.e. language) there is nothing.

The Life of Pablo is the album laid bare. It is a skewed refraction of the process of taking the talent/raw materials of the album through creating the packaging/product of the album. The constant tweaking: From the album title to the tracklisting to the moving release date to the repeated updates. The lack of physical release is also interested because if a physical album is put out that makes it FINAL. This album blurs the line between the music and our reality. The Life of Pablo may be the first notable album to break the fourth wall.

It was after listening to Frank Ocean's Blonde that I had recognized some sliver of Pablo in it with its controlled chaos sound (especially representative in "Pretty Sweet") and at-times sparse production. There are parallels in the spoken word interludes ("Be Yourself," "Facebook Story," and the outro interview on "Futura Free" in comparison with "Lowlights" and the outro of "30 Hours") as both albums push the limits of popular music.

What I heard in Blonde that I felt echoed in Pablo made me re-think both albums. In the lead up to Frank's release he had hours long streaming on his website that ended up becoming the album Endless that he released to get out of his deal with Def Jam before dropping Blonde the very next day. Both Frank and Kanye seemed to use their albums, publicly, in a way that calls attention to the way albums are made and contracts are fulfilled. Usually these kinds of things are done behind the scenes and the audience is only presented with the final product.

I think it is fitting that Yeezus is an album that was physically released and has no album art, while Pablo has no physical release but two versions album artwork.

Finally, it has been noted before that Kanye West works on his albums up until the very last minute. And, he is in fact, not a stranger to the constant tweaking, as The College Dropout was released then re-released due to continued work on remastering the sound. Plain Pat is quoted in a Complex article about The College Dropout:

"We remastered it four times to get it right. And it was so much later nobody even cared.We were already working on the next album and there I was still approving roughs from the first album."

Kanye is no stranger to constantly tweaking, but with the current technology he can release an album and still tweak the songs later. It must feel extremely freeing for an artist such as Kanye to have that kind of ultimate control over his music.

Footnotes

¹"Nina Chop" is alleged to be "Famous" (I cannot find sources to explicitly state that "Nina Chop" is the song we know as "Famous"). The reasoning for the title "Nina Chop is because "Famous" features a Nina Simone vocal sample.

²At the top of the paper The Life of Pablo is written in red ink with "Which One?" written in green and green dots next to five of the tracks on the paper.

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Daily Discussion Thread 02/14/2017

Posted: 14 Feb 2017 09:35 AM PST

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