For 15 years now, Kanye West — the rapper, the controversial figure, the incomprehensible cultural phenomenon — has been called one of the most influential artists of our generation.
Many agree. Many disagree. But it doesn’t matter whether one loves Kanye or hates Kanye, hearing his name once in a while is simply inevitable. He is an icon that our generation is fascinated with, and there’s no argument there.
The question, at least for me, always comes in regards to his music; specifically, whether or not I should listen to it. I do not like Kanye as a person (for God’s sake, he suppports Trump and said slavery sounds like a “choice”), but, the truth is, for as much as I dislike him, I cannot deny that as a rapper, he raises the philosophical, moral dilemma of separating art from artist: he is goddamn good.
But his last album, “Jesus Is King,” may not necessarily be a part of the Kanye oeuvre that makes one question that ontological argument. At its heart, Jesus Is King, which is Kanye’s sincere attempt at Gospel, is perhaps Yeezy’s worst project yet — and it is not necessarily because the rapper deviated from the hip-hop he’s best known for, but because at most, it feels like an unfinished, work-in-progress album.
How Jesus Is King Came To Be
Since the beginning of the year, Kanye has performed with a choir in events he has called his “Sunday Services,” where he has often reimagined his own catalog with gospel arrangements. From these famous services, Jesus is King was born.
With 11 songs, the album spans 27 minutes long. It starts off with “Every Hour,” a choir accompanied by a minimalistic piano, followed by “Selah,” a more traditional hip-hop track featuring a choir as back-up.
At its length, the album features celebrated artists from the gospel and secular genre, including Ty Dolla $ign, Clipse, Fred Hammond, Ant Clemons, and Kenny G.
The album has some good songs — Selah, Follow God, Everything We Need, and Water are all good songs. The production of the album is, as well, amazing — as always. The amalgam of instruments and voices brought out the art that Kanye has for years been perfecting: he easily seemed to mix hip-hop with another genre. As an album that attempts to reflect the intricacies of the black American church, it has its good parts too.
But then, the album has its questionable moments — which are too big to ignore, and too horrific to leave out of our judgement.
Honestly, what was going through Kanye’s head when he wrote “Closed on a Sunday?”
It’s embarrassing. The saddest part is that the song has it’s good parts. It had potential. It starts off with soothing instrumentals and certain lyrics that bring out the Kanye that we expect with lines such as “no more living for the culture // we nobody’s slaves.” But besides a few exempt lines, Kanye’s worse-than-mediocre lyricism in the rest of the song ruins it.
West really says “Closed on a Sunday, you my Chick-fil-A // You’re my number one, with the lemonade.”
Part of me is skeptical and doesn’t want to believe that a 42-year-old man wrote that and thought, “this is the peak of 21st century lyricism.” Part of me wants to believe that it was a Kardashian-West plan to bring Kanye to the spotlight. Part of me feels that this exact type of criticism is what has created a separation between the Old Kanye and New Kanye.
Maybe West has simply cracked Gen Z humor. But Jesus, it’s so bad.
Personally — and in my agnostic humble opinion — I’m not particularly interested in listening to religious music. But despite “Closed On a Sunday” and Kanye’s repeated references about the 13th amendment — may I point out that he said it should be abolished— I enjoyed listening to the album as a testimony between a damaged man and his faith.
Religion has always been a source of inspiration for artists. For Kanye’s diaristic-style lyricism, it has been so since his debut album “The College Dropout.” Jesus is King was perhaps overdue in that sense: it’s Kanye’s tribute to the source that has inspired him for decades. It is a declaration of him, a troubled person, walking in the light and attempting to reconcile with himself.
But Jesus is King with its intended goal doesn’t quite come close to any of Kanye’s previous religiously-charged productions. Jesus Walks, for instance, which is a song about Kanye’s relationship with God, is in itself a better religious product than the intended entirety of Jesus Is King. Same with the song Ultralight Beam from the album The Life Of Pablo, which Kanye called once a “gospel album with a whole lot of cursing.”
This album had the potential to be so much more — perhaps more than the commercially unsuccessful Ye. It feels unfinished, and it’s not that it is Kanye’s shortest studio production yet — length is trivial. The album simply needed more work. “Every Hour,” for instance, feels like it ends mid-note, and some lyrics feel like they were written by a parody channel not hip-hop legend Kanye West, who has compared himself to Axl Rose and Jimi Hendrix.
For an album with so many delays, social media traction, and overall hype, it simply fell short of what it could’ve possibly been. It’s an album worth listening to. But at most, it is unfinished.
