Kanye West - Yeezus
CD $12.98
Much as 808s & Heartbreak was a reaction to personal drama that led to a cold, mechanical album unlike anything he had previously produced, Yeezus seems to be a response to everything Kanye West has previously recorded — and to hip-hop, and popular music, in general. In short, it sounds like nothing else around, a fusion of harsh industrial production and some of West’s most aggressive lyrics to date. We had already heard the controversy-baiting “Black Skinhead,” its Nine Inch Nails-style beat giving a tribal flow to an otherwise entirely antagonistic first single. The rest of Yeezus follows suit; West as his collaborators keep you guessing what’ll happen next throughout. Listening to opener “On Sight” feels like staring into a glaring light, its synths overdriven to a digital roar, as West claims he doesn’t give a fuck, before West and producers Daft Punk drop an R&B sample that sounds like it was recorded from another room. “New Slaves” takes bling-obsessed hip-hop to task, along with private prisons and implied white privilge, ending with a gorgeous, lo-fi outro sung by Frank Ocean — it’s way too much for one song to handle, yet it’s thrilling to hear the song teeter back and forth. Ven the tracks here that don’t sound particularly interesting at their outset, like the slow-to-start “Hold My Liquor,” eventually do something that make your head spin — in the case of this song, it’s the way those sirens and West’s cadence bounce off the bubbling, ethereal synthesizers beneath. The greatest faults in Yeezus lie in West’s lyrics — heightened braggadocio and claims of manhood are nothing new to hip-hop, which is exactly the problem with some of the more repetitive lyrics about his sexual conquests, compared with their riveting delivery and the production surrounding them; furthermore, “Blood on the Leaves” questionably cops anti-racism classic “Strange Fruit” for a track that doesn’t amount to much lyrically. Yet even beyond these issues, Yeezus is so thoroughly exciting that complaints largely fall by the wayside — in fact, West’s free-for-all attitude to making music here is what fuels that burning feeling in the pit of your stomach when Yeezus is on. Even as the spectacular My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy stretched the limits of modern hip-hop, Yeezus doesn’t sound tethered to any particular time or genre, nor does it sound particularly concerned with radio airplay — even the Rick Rubin-produced “I Am a God,” one of the closest tracks here to straight-up hip-hop, seethes frustration and anger, dissolving into a series of screams and Twin Peaks-style synth strings, with nary a catchy sample or synth riff to rope in the average listener. For someone who receives (and invites) endless flack for things that have little to do with his actual music, Kanye West continues to be the most provocative and exciting artist in modern pop music with the imperfect yet undeniably brilliant Yeezus.
As of this month we can now add Billie Holiday's name to Amoeba Music's ever expanding, much lauded Vinyl Vaults department. This Amoeba-exclusive, historic vault of American music icons, that specializes in preserving valued vinyl releases by carefully transferring them to digital files, already includes such icons as Louis Armstrong. And to this boutique, curated collection of digitized vinyl and 78s Amoeba this month will unveil another two iconic music artists in the Vinyl Vaults: Billie Holiday and Kenny Rogers. More on Kenny Rogers' inclusion into the Vinyl Vaults in a later Amoeblog but for now let's take a look at the jazz/blues legend that was Billie Holiday and whose Vinyl Vaults additions will include approximately 30 different tracks (most already all remastered and now available from Amoeba) from the artist dubbed "Lady Day" by Lester Young and whose short 44 years on this earth (1915 - 1959) were a life of living the blues and whose musical legacy is a part of American music history that Amoeba deserves major props for helping preserve. One of the folks responsible for the tedious task of digital 
transformation of Amoeba's Vinyl Vaults is Gregory Griffith who I talked with over the past couple of days to find out more exact details about these Billie Holiday additions to the Vinyl Vaults that are now available in digital files: mp3, M4A (lossless), or WAV files.
The five-day concert series celebrates musical diversity and will feature a mix of established and up-and-coming artists.
