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GAF-Hop |OTXV| Afterlife

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O

OG Kush

Member
Nibel said:
Remember that Kanye was ready to get back into the ring one or two years ago but decided to pull his album back because a) the Paul McCartney experiment didn't really work out for him and b) he kinda got shook by To Pimp A Butterfly which I can't blame him for since it can be said that this album pushes its genre forward in terms of sound and importance. So what I feared was a Kanye who isn't really sure what he has to do in order to drop the kind of album he wants to drop, and unfortunately this is the Kanye we got in the end.

It's like he was looking at the current music/rap market and put everyone who is relevant or has potential to grow on the album to the point where it feels more like a cautious "Kanye & Friends" album than an interesting solo Ye album. You got tracks that sound inspired by TPAB, you got tracks inspired by the dominating trap sound, you got tracks that sound like oldschool-rap Kanye, you got tracks that give you MBDTF vibes, you got tracks that have a more poppy flavour - and none of this does really sound a coherent album with a vision behind it but a mess of hundreds of ideas that either clash or work. I can't imagine even die-hard Yeezy stans being satisfied with this.

There are some funny Ye lines here and there (I laughed out loud at the GoPro and bleached asshole lines), but overall it feels like he had nothing of value to say. Ye was never the biggest lyricist but managed to drop memorable lines here and some more "feels"-filled lines there, but man are these lyrics lazy as hell. The Taylor Swift line was as unnecessary as the Meek lines on Summer Sixteen and rubbed me the same way, he talks way too much about his dick and just comes over as a very insecure man who is scared of who he has chosen to portray in this world. Each Ye album had a point to it or themes it tried to work through but man, this is an album by Kanye the musician about Kanye the symbol.

And it's not only that his lyrics are lacking more substance than they usually do, but that it feels like Kanye is underrepresented on his album because there are way to many other different voices and people. This is an already short album that barely manages to last an hour and then a lot of what you hear is not Kanye but fucking Swizz Beats for example.

The most bizarre thing this album did for me though is retroactively appreciating Yeezus which is way tighter produced and has more coherent sound and subjects.

Overall, I think this album has some nice highs and just too many underdeveloped ideas and too much unnecessary fat. Him tweeting during the late production cycle showed a glimpse of the pressure he put himself under and I feel like it broke him to a certain point. I mean you let fucking Wiz Khalifa call you out in public and then look like the bigger moron later? To the point that not only your ex benefits from the situation but you feel forced to change the album title? What's with the early-access album rollout? Why do you let so many malnurtured dread-wearing skeletons whose vocabulary probably ranges from "YES" to "ok this classic already" influence you? Are you scared to be out of touch?

Kanye is someone who I like being arrogant, but that arrogance always came with a great album that further manifested him as one of the greats. And nothing will probably change about this, but TLOP to me shakes the whole Ye myth up and felt like an album he thought he HAD to drop instead of an album he wanted to drop, an album with an actual message and vision instead of shallow dickswinging. Oh, what could have been brehs.
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Great post man. Agree with you.
 
E

Eos

Member
The closest similarities are Fade and King Kunta, and that's only because of the beat, and even that is a reach. Everything else, lyrically and production wise, is totally different.
 
C

Courage

Member
Eos said:
The closest similarities are Fade and King Kunta, and that's only because of the beat, and even that is a reach. Everything else, lyrically and production wise, is totally different.
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Even those two are totally different. Fade is a house track while King Kunta is pure funk.
 
E

Eos

Member
Courage said:
Even those two are totally different. Fade is a house track while King Kunta is pure funk.
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Yeah I'm comparing them in the sense that both tracks having upbeat production but I agree that's a stretch like I said earlier
Two different albums going in totally different musical directions
 
E

Eos

Member
cb1115 said:
damn this is shockingly close to sounding full CDQ

maybe he'll release the original as part of GOOD Fridays or something
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Hopefully but I'm doubting it lol
KTT currently going ham trying to get it as close as possible to a cdq w/ frank, so I expect they'll have it done within a couple of days
 
E

enzo_gt

tagged by Blackace
cb1115 said:
damn this is shockingly close to sounding full CDQ

maybe he'll release the original as part of GOOD Fridays or something
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Once they swap in the right Sia verse and fix the volume on Vic's parts, it's gonna be godly.

A lot of the ingredients are already there, just in separate files.
 
S

Storm Chamber

Banned
Vorheez said:
Amidst all this Kanye hype I listened to yeezus for the first time

What a piece of shit
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hurry up with my damn croissants
childplease.png
 
N

Nibel

Member
kermittqssc.png


Glass Rebel said:
I'd rather have something incohesive but sonically pleasing like TLOP than the cohesive garbage that was Yeezus
ld.png
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We all drop our standards for quality when it comes to our faves; I look forward to your impressions in a few weeks when the dust has settled
even though in this thread it never stops settling with these Irish posts

Real talk: I get what you are saying here but to me Ye always had a certain idea behind an album; sure, maybe you dig the more mixtape/compilation style of tracks with lots of different vibes, and I can live with "incohesive but sonically pleasing" projects as well, but it feels way too extreme in here and way too forced, like he wanted to please literally everybody with this project. This is why I feel Enzo's "Ye does what he wants on his albums" laughable especially in context to this project

enzo_gt said:
Some notes on stuff in this review:
- Ye stans fuck with NMPILA because its shit talking Ye with quotables and long verses
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That was more or less a short observation of the stan echochamber that is your OT TLOP thread and several KTT threads, don't let it get it to ya. It was more of a tongue-in-cheek comment and you actually adressing it shows me your position b

- Mention of TPAB getting Ye shook is like an instant 3 strikes
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I don't know man, So Help Me God had a cover, name and buzz around March 2015 and then Kendrick came (he probably delayed it because of the stolen laptop, relax); for giving me 3 strikes you sure wrote a lot

- The fuck sounds inspired by TPAB on this album? Sonically, nothing. So are we gonna start attributing any post-TPAB comments on institutionalized racism to Kendrick now even if it's been a theme throughout Ye's whole career?
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I will adress this later since I seem to have offended a lot of people here, scary actually when you think about it

- Disagree with him not having anything to say, dude put his depression out there on this album like nothing since MBDTF/808s, and in a different way. Quite a good chunk of the album reflects on him losing his sense of self and people slipping away from him. Because the album isn't structured well or cohesive around a theme, I do think that it's hard to sell this as a grand vision, but doesn't talk about anything? Nah, we get prime Ye vulnerability moments on here, which is where the MBDTF/808s comparisons even stem from.
Click to expand...

But these moments of vulnerability you are mentioning are very few though. And not only that, but a lot of these subjects are either being talked about on a very superficial level or just brushed off way too soon. I don't know Ye any better than I knew him before listening to this album and would you really seriously argue that this reaches MBDTF or 808 levels of intimacy? Stop playing yourself.

- I disagree with your point about other voices clouding the expression in this album. I think Ye has a good history of using other voices to complement his own perspective (not that he hasn't done better in the past), and it doesn't feel overshadowing to me here.
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"Complementing his own voice" is not the same as letting features ride huge lengths of the album. He did a similar thing on MBDTF and it worked way better than it did here for me. There wasn't enough Ye for me on this album; I read somewhere that this feels like Cruel Summer in terms of features vs Ye and I agree.

- Most criticisms of the album rollout are overblown, unless we're talking about the Tidal stuff, which was 30 mins of extra waiting. Not an excuse for not delivering on Feb 11, but it's kind of an odd talking point. It's not like dude promised us Federal Reserve or anything. If we are making inferences about how volatile the tracklist seemed to be and arguing thats a bad thing, I can see where you're coming from.
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xddw3icafrr0.png


I won't even adress this bullshit, you could have saved your time

- Ye's excitement about TLOP kind of hurts your point about him being forced to drop it. I don't think there's anything in the history of the making of the album that points towards that, besides him saying it's one of his best albums instead of his best, and even that's kind of a sloppy point when dude was still recording at that point. I mentioned either here or in the other thread that he just wants to put stuff out.
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Let's be real, he put himself under a lot of pressure and the biggest evidence that he forced himself to drop it is the fact that there a lot of amazing ideas and concepts on that album that were not given enough time. Like a lot of the Aight Tier list could have easily slipped into the Flame Emoji list with way more time and it rubs me the wrong way that it came this far. I would have no issues with waiting another month - or hell, even two months - for a better project

- Since when has Ye aimed for an album with a message? Dude makes what the fuck he wants and that almost always starts with a sound he wants to explore, or in this case, multiple sounds.
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Nah.

College Dropout has an overall theme that actually perfectly fits the album name.
Late Registration has an overall theme (and some fucking good storytelling)
Heck, even Yeezus has a certain coherence and message from Ye as stupid as it is.

TLOP doesn't have that, and like I told Glass Rebel: this can work, but for me it doesn't in this case

Most of everything else you said falls in line with my own first impressions, but to reiterate a bit, this album is going to be pretty exemplary for the effect of expectations on an album release, much moreso than TPAB had. Not just the stuff Nibel mentioned above which includes several gaffes or marketing stunts over the past month, but also various comments Ye has made about him conquering music already and wanting to take his creative talents to other domains. I don't say this to absolve Ye of criticism, though I'll reserve my thoughts for a proper review, but I think the opportunity for criticism and opinions informed by more than the music are the highest they've been since the Swift debacle.
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Nothing is set in stone, maybe I'll switch my lists up in one or five months, but yeah, you are making a good point here.

Now to solve the big mystery

Courage said:
How does TLOP sound like TPAB at all? Because it's upbeat and celebratory in nature?
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PBY said:
It doesnt at all.
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Eos said:
The closest similarities are Fade and King Kunta, and that's only because of the beat, and even that is a reach. Everything else, lyrically and production wise, is totally different.
Click to expand...
Courage said:
Even those two are totally different. Fade is a house track while King Kunta is pure funk.
Click to expand...

I wasn't saying that this is sonically EXACTLY the same direction as TPAB, you guys are overblowing my statement like Corn Chamber blows my dick. TLOP has a 'blackness' that kinda came surprising to me after Yeezus and the McCartney tracks (even though Ye always had that in him); the usage of old soul samples, the gospel tunes, the funk elements here and there. You won't give a shit about a thing I have to say about this since you have already made up your minds, but listen to 2014-2015 Kanye and then tell me some of these elements - that have been on TPAB as well - popping up doesn't come off as surprising considering where he was going with his sound.

BTW y'all way too critical of the new Wolves; it feels like people are unable to review that song over their disappointment that he changed it
and the bigger tragedy is that Can You Be isn't on the album
 
C

Cesare Borgia

Banned
Eos said:
The closest similarities are Fade and King Kunta, and that's only because of the beat, and even that is a reach. Everything else, lyrically and production wise, is totally different.
Click to expand...

I don't like TPAB but there's some jazz on one of the early tracks, and as with TPAB there's a Stevie Wonder vibe to multiple tracks in terms of the chords.

IMO the album is a mess but in a good way. Still processing everything. Disappointed in the lack of Travis Scott, who is probably the second best artist in music today behind Kanye.
 
F

FZZ

Banned
Rodeo is still fantastic

So idk if y'all just trolling, but I really am disappointed Travis wasn't anywhere on the album. Days After Rodeo gonna bump tho
 
C

Courage

Member
I still don't see the TPAB comparison. Ultralight Beam is the only one I can kinda see because that's the clear gospel track here. And no one here is offended; just confused by your criticism of the album.
 
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