Yeezy graduates (2007)

I still kinda love this record. Even the weird date rape anthem can't stop the overall good feeling I get from Graduation: driving to the beach and flicking between 'urban' radio stations to find Good Life, smoking weed, and then jumping in a lake so cold it makes my nuts hurt for hours

The only Ye record self-conscious enough to want to belong to a context rather than a) making a new one, b) shaking an old one, or c) just doing its thing: the impact of Justice's Daft Punk revisionism exciting Ye enough to replace soul samples with dynamic electronica, and swirling baroque-rap with the simplistic/anthemic grandeur of sensitivo house-wife arena rock a la U2 or Coldplay. As such, it's the only one where you can go yeah, I remember (year) when you hear it- it's a relic more than anything. In some ways that's cool- without all the electronica found on Graduation he wouldn't have gone Low the following year, and at this stage there's introspection to go with his boasts. I mean, back in 2007 critics called his boasts playful rather than psychotic or symptomatic of HPD! But it cheapens it- blast from the past rather than fresh and alive. It even feels like a guilty pleasure! But whatever, it did its job in 2007 as a bright and creative record for pop and rap fans with a few of the year's best singles. And I still sorta love it. And I still love those singles.

Good Morning, Champion, I Wonder, Good Life, Flashing Lights, Everything I Am, The Glory

A-

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Yeezy re-upholstered my pussy

Putting this up here for the third (fourth?) time- pop event and crazy good record. By the former I mean I saw praise for this everywhere and was glad to be part of that positivity before cynics and elitists reacted to the famous 10.0 months later. By the latter, I remember bumping the shitty clean leak every day until my cd arrived in the mail- coming with more ugly pictures and accompanying video taking on Black Swan's obnoxious, nihilistic cultural vacuum, and, no shit, beating it

One of those conscious rappers happy to accept he's not an abstract observer transcending the state of things and thus describing them, but rather a product (in the beginning) and an active agent (since ages ago) in said context- intelligent enough to realize that the personal can become political when such a realization is made repeatedly clear, and so 30 something black male going introspective is an intensely emotional/personal and by extension satirical/political work, by now commonly known to be his overblown masterpiece. The lyrics, the sound, the turns, all serve to capture the love hangover: the memories, the damage it does to the ego, the lust, the highs, the lows. A very big, sad, ambitious pop record.

A+

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Yeezy - 808s & Heartbreak (2008)

Yeezy's saccharine robocop concept album: the heat and mind destroyed by an event, the machine required to hold things together. 808's dumb aggression sufficiently balanced by lines as achingly true as I know my destination, but I'm just not there regarding the need to, and yet seeming impossibility of, moving on

PS delete the fuck out of that bonus track. Shit goes straight self-parody

A-

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