Kanye West - Donda (August 6th, 2021) Album • Page 9

Idk Kanye was a pretty good rapper back in the day and has had some of the most iconic verses of all time. it's clearly just no longer a priority for him anymore. My brain can't comprehend Kanye hearing the finished mixes of MBDTF and Yeezus and then also hearing this pile of shit and thinking "this is of the same quality and is ready for the stadium" lmao

 

People fucking lauded TLOP, another unfinished mess. He got away with it then and kept doing it

 

He was never more than an average rapper, he just managed to make great, thoughtful music regardless. Partly because he was/is a great producer, partly because he really had something to say. The latter hasn’t really applied in at least a decade though.

 

imo kanye was never a “good” rapper but he had a decent flow once upon a time. it was pretty much gone by ‘09

 

This. I've been saying this - TLOP was awful save for a couple songs and he realized what he can get away with because of his stature. He's still obviously very popular, but the more and more he moves away from appealing to a younger audience, the less relevant he'll become.

 

I’m not trying to rewrite history because of how he is now either, that’s really not my thing and those of you that have interacted with me more than others can probably confirm that. This is how I always felt.

 

Pablo was a mess but like, several stratospheres less of a mess than this or Ye. It was overblown and he should've spent his last 10% of energy on it finishing the best 10-12 tracks instead of continually expanding it (the tracklist grew by what like 7 or 8 songs in the last two weeks before release?). But at its core it had plenty of songs that sounded fully developed on both the lyrical and musical fronts and stood toe to toe with his prior material.

Agreed that he was never a great rapper but he was good enough. Even only going back to Pablo he had No More Parties in LA. Always wonder a bit how much of his top tier stuff was ghostwritten - I've been pretty doubtful it was everything but it's been a long time since he's inspired confidence otherwise.

I guess it's all kind of irrelevant given that none of us are rooting for him anymore. I expect to be sad listening to him on a 'used to think this guy was so cool, now I just know he's an asshole' level. Last night I was sad the way you are when one of your old favorite athletes just doesn't have anything left in the tank.

 

lil nas x just keeps releasing good songs what a dude

 

Kanye did a pretty good job producing that new Lil Nas X song that dropped today…love Nas doubling down and dropping queer references in every track now

 

thank you for bringing this back lol

doubt this even drops this weekend and don't care either way but like, he needed to work on keeping deadlines as much as he did keeping his politics to himself after that MAGA-hat mess, by the sounds of things he has done neither and probably won't ever make an album approaching passable again

this is who he is now

 

A positive spin: Let’s just be grateful he half-assed his political career just like he does with his albums now.

 

Post 09 thought had some of this best work though with Watch The Throne, GOOD, and Yeezus….post Yeezus though I have to agree there hasn’t been too much I’ve enjoyed

 

Totally fair to call TLOP a mess, but from a quality standpoint alone, I really don't think these past three records are even comparable. At least parts of TLOP feel calculated, it's kaleidoscopic and feels unique to his catalog, it's got "Ultralight Beam," "Father Stretch My Hands," "Feedback," "Real Friends," "No More Parties in L.A.," and "Fade." ye and JIK had...3-4 solid tracks combined?

 

I’m an “up to Pablo guy”. Love that album. There are even songs on ye I enjoy and moments on Jesus is King (production only/Sunday Service choir) that are at least interesting. But his vocal performances and give a shit factor at the mic are basically nil right now. I imagine when this ever drops it will be similar, there was like 3 songs last night in which my ears perked up and then a lot of head scratching.


At one point in his career Kanye would have taken that “Every Hour” hook the choir hands him on a fucking platter and made something transcendent. Now he just tacks in on to the front of the album and calls it done.

 

Never understood the love for Father Stretch My Hands. The bleached asshole verse is one of the worst verses I've ever heard. Cudi's hook is great, but second part is just a straight lift of Panda.
I love Ultralight Beam, but his "verse" almost ruins that song for me too. He straights mumbles lines and was too lazy to sit down and write actual words.

808s-Dark Fantasy-Yeezus was such an amazing trilogy of albums, that the disappointment of Pablo hit extra hard, at least for me. And seeing people go nuts for what I heard as mediocre songs made me realize that Kanye could literally blow air into a mic and his stans would still call it a masterpiece....which ironically is happened with Lift Yourself.

 

lol I'm not getting used to people calling him Nas so this really took me a second

 

Hard disagree. I've said this before and nearly everyone disagrees, but to me Kayne really started falling off after his first three or four albums. It just took a while until the fall really accelerated, so MBDTF for example still seemed great at the time, but all the signs were there already.

 

That line is when anything resembling the great Kanye really, truly died

 

I mean...okay lol Pablo is my favorite so we're not gonna see eye to eye on any of this. "Ultralight Beam" means the world to me, the "Father Stretch My Hands" beat is an all-timer and his lyricism on "Pt. 2" is top-notch. It's an album where you start to see the cracks, but personally, just enough to make it more endearing to me. The sketchlike structure of it all, the revisions, that was all a part of that era/rollout for me, and if it was isolated to that album, I think it would have really worked. It traverses a number of styles and moods over the span of about an hour almost like a mixtape would, making it unique to his catalog. So yeah, idk, the record means a lot to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

but how you feel about TLOP seems to be how I feel about ye, so I get it

 

Pretty sure "All Mine" was the song that made me realize he'd lost it, musically speaking

 

I don't think he lost it as a producer by the way, I think that short Teyana Taylor album for example is some of his best work, I think think he fell off as a rapper

 

One of the things I loved about Ye was he could bring the best out of all of the artists he featured (minus Jay, I guess). Like he knew who would perfectly complement his beats and they'd rise to occasion because they didn't want to disappoint him.

On a related note, I remember everyone going crazy in the Kanye Chorus or AP thread when he held his "Pablo" premiere livestream show. It was really exciting, probably more than the album deserved. But yeah, since then, besides Teyana Taylor and Kids See Ghosts, there's nothing about him that excites me as an artist and as a person, he's a piece of shit.

 

Here to give some Pablo love as well…Wolves is a top 5 Kanye track for me, Sia’s vocals are so haunting in that track.

 

why would anyone want to talk about the ins and outs of Kanye’s work on this website

 

I can appreciate your view. But I’m gonna have to agree with “nearly everyone who disagrees” with your opinion haha…for as great as those first 3 albums are I think MBDTF is the peak and Throne and GOOD and Yeezus are not much of, if any drop off