The exhibitionist

figures of his generation. Yet for a performer whose self-belief has barely buckled since he turned sped-up samples into a genuine art form on 2004’s debut The College Dropout, the run-up to his seventh album has been far from seamless. Having boasted back in 2014 that his next effort would be akin to “sonic painting”, West kept fans guessing by announcing, and hastily jettisoning, an album’s worth of red herring singles. It was christened, alternatively, So Help Me God, Swish and Waves before it was finally unveiled as The Life Of Pablo via West’s laptop at a globally cinema-streamed launch for his Yeezy Season 3 fashion collection at Madison Square Garden. Yet his confession that “70 per cent of my focus is on apparel” kept alarm bells ringing. Thankfully, the final product is much more than a mere catwalk soundtrack. Its opens dramatically with Ultralight Beam, a typically classy, slow-building West assemblage that lets a rousing gospel choir and the twitchy tones of Chance The Rapper take centre stage before West wrestles dramatically with his faith and a treated Laurie Anderson-type voices implores: “How do I find you? ” Succeeded by the squirty bass and syrupy chords of Father Stretch My Hands, we’re plunged into unstable, ever-shifting ground thereafter, with a highly unpredictable tour guide determined to veer off-piste. That includes questioning the thin line between genius and insanity over a detuned feedback loop (Freestyle 4) and ungraciously dissing Taylor Swift (Famous) before it shape-shifts into a delirious sample pillage of Sister Nancy’s dancehall destroyer Bam Bam. West’s notoriously short attention span allows for further generous lifts from Mica Levi’s Under The Skin soundtrack (Feedback), Arthur RussellR (30 Hours) and ’70s funksters RareR Earth (Fade), even if the navelgazinggazing wordplay rarely veers far from the wide-eyed man in the mirror. And while Madlib provides a suitably abstract beat to trade verses with Compton boy wonder Kendrick Lamar on No MoreMo Parties In LA, it’s the bleak, bravado-ditching musings of Real Friends that finally allow a seemingly rattled West to unpack his uniquely tortured soul. For a rapper who has excelled in redefining the art form, The Life Of Pablo is a sprawling, uneven and curiously unfinished sounding affair with a dearth of recognisable bangers. Much less than the sum of its parts when stacked against the grandiloquent orchestral sweep of 2010’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy or the pared-back abrasive aural sculpture of predecessor Yeezus, it suggests West is merely human after all.

Long-delayed seventh LP from ever-contrary Chicago rapper/ producer, self-described as “sonic painting”. By Andy Cowan.