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Kanye West presents The Life of Pablo |OT| WE ON AN ULTRA LIGHT BEAM

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hughesta

Banned
ULB and FML are two of his best songs. Album's worth it just for them. Hoping I wake up to some news on CDQ (or even a drop, fingers crossed)
 

StoopKid

Member
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This is kinda
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THRILLH0

Banned
North and Saint are going to love listening to High Lights when they're older.

The fuck talks about the mother of their children like that?
 

It's a weird situation. I was definitely side-eye at the original leaked "owes me sex" lyric because that just sounds petty and shitty for a lot of reasons. The lyric as it appeared during this performance though, changed to "I feel like we might" feels much more believable as both a joke (in poor taste, sure, but a joke nonetheless) but also as a thematically appropriate statement of braggadocio at that point in the album.

Granted this might all be rubbish given that we STILL don't have a final version of the album, but I feel like there's a pretty solid through-line to TLoP. Ultra Light Beam tells you where he is now, but everything else feels like a story about how he got there. Father Stretch My Hands talks about his relationship with his parents. Freestyle 4 talks around his come-up ("we about to get this paper"), how he felt slept-on, references to early album lyrics (wake up) and his almost immediate perception in the media as crazy ("I've been out of my mind a long time") after his 2005 outburst on the Hurricane Katrina aid broadcast.

Famous fits into this narrative pretty well. The Taylor interruption is still probably his most infamous outburst, and the way he says the line "I feel like Taylor and I still might have sex/why, I made that bitch famous" makes me think the intended read is not "why? I made that bitch famous" but a more indignant, haughty "why, I made that bitch famous!" tone. Playing a character, essentially, or rather a character based on a past self. He's done this before. A lot, actually. Power is the best example of this: "I ain't on a power trip - who you going home with?" "I was drinking earlier, now I'm driving," the way "so exciting" is layered to sound like "suicide" - Kanye has at least a smidge of self-awareness and likes to portray himself in unflattering ways quite often. Famous is a characterization of the height of his arrogance. He trashes Taylor, he trashes groupies, he trashes people trying to bite his style, he lists a bunch of ways he spent his money, and then talks about being close to the sun and how he's "never going to die." Famous is Icarus at the peak of his ascent.

I think the following tracks support this too. High Lights and Feedback detail his lust/love for Kim. And then everything comes crashing down in FML, Real Friends, and Wolves. Suddenly after all the boasting and arrogance, Kanye is talking about lexipro, having episodes, feeling surrounded by "wolves," and all the ways his family and friends have let him down - and most importantly, all the ways he realizes he has let them down. I don't know if it's intentional, but there's something especially haunting to me in Real Friends about his distinction between "I don't know how old your son is. I couldn't tell you how old your daughter was." Was? There are a few ways to read that, none of them good. Ultra Light Beam's of-the-moment portrait aside, TLoP is a slow and steady descent from arrogance into anxiety. Asshole outbursts about Taylor Swift fit into that.

So, tl;dr... I think as presented in this version of the album, the Taylor line makes sense. I certainly don't begrudge her for not liking it though; I mean, yeah, it's... still not a nice sentiment, regardless of whether or not it's a joke/in service of storytelling. But it's at the very least not as nasty as the early one that leaked.
 

Owari

Member
Man fuck all the leaks. I'm just going to wait until the CD is in my hand to listen to this again. Really kind of bummed about how today turned out. Expected an album.. Got.. Kind of an album?
 
This is already sounding better on Periscope than it did on the stream earlier. I wonder what the next step will be, holding a stream on twitch while Kanye plays the album from his car?
 

FZZ

Banned
This is already sounding better on Periscope than it did on the stream earlier. I wonder what the next step will be, holding a stream on twitch while Kanye plays the album from his car?

It's because he's streaming the master

Release might be tomorrow if we are lucky

That's probably Travis since he was thanking Kanye for putting it back on the album on twitter the other day

That's what KTT is saying, but idk his voice sounds too deep even with the modulation and autotune travis usually uses
 
Also in addendum to my previous post about how Famous fits into a narrative about the highs and lows of living with an anxiety disorder, don't forget that the now-scrapped I Feel Like That featured Kanye reading off what sounded like either a list of symptoms or a list of med side effects
 
He should just give the digital version away for free.

Sell physical goods direct; cd or vinyl bundles with a hat and hoodie or t-shirt.
 

EloquentM

aka Mannny
Also in addendum to my previous post about how Famous fits into a narrative about the highs and lows of living with an anxiety disorder, don't forget that the now-scrapped I Feel Like That featured Kanye reading off what sounded like either a list of symptoms or a list of med side effects

interesting. I haven't really heard any of the songs people have been getting snippets from until today and of course not all of the songs were on the stream. I wonder why he cut that song.
 

udiie

Member
He should just give the digital version away for free.

Sell physical goods direct; cd or vinyl bundles with a hat and hoodie or t-shirt.
but then the hypebeasts would shit all over it because it wouldn't be limited or exclusive
his tour merch sells well because it's near impossible to get
 

Peru

Member
Well, the real big narrative of Kanye's relationship with women is he has a problem with women 'taking advantage' of men of authority. That's echoed time after time. His pro- celeb rapist stance fits into that pretty neatly.
 
but then the hypebeasts would shit all over it because it wouldn't be limited or exclusive
his tour merch sells well because it's near impossible to get

Make it a limited alternate and small run. Include a Blu-Ray of the Season 3 show and a photo catalog of the collection.
 
the real big narrative of Kanye's relationship with women is he has a problem with women 'taking advantage' of men of authority.

That's a shitty underlying sentiment that's present in a lot of hip hop, yeah (and to be fair, a lot of music in general). I dunno if Famous specifically falls under this, though. Now 808s, as much as I like that album, hoo boy is it chock with this idea. Kanye's definitely not blameless in this regard.
 

EloquentM

aka Mannny
That's a shitty underlying sentiment that's present in a lot of hip hop, yeah (and to be fair, a lot of music in general). I dunno if Famous specifically falls under this, though. Now 808s, as much as I like that album, hoo boy is it chock with this idea. Kanye's definitely not blameless in this regard.

eh, a lot of people tend to blame the opposite sex when they go through heartbreak. definitely not healthy but I'm sure many people can relate. If you can't there always the self loathing or general disdain for society/life to go along with the misogynistic tones of the album as well.
 

Hanmik

Member
I'm almost one day older, and that is just since it was expected to hit the streets.. I will probably be a week older before the thing can be bought.

I was really expecting to wake up to a release this morning.. especially after sitting through those 1½ hours of "model torture" last night.
 

EloquentM

aka Mannny
I'm almost one day older, and that is just since it was expected to hit the streets.. I will probably be a week older before the thing can be bought.

I was really expecting to wake up to a release this morning.. especially after sitting through those 1½ hours of "model torture" last night.
Mike dean said the master is done....so it's only a matter of time
 
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