The summer of 2018 was Kanye West’s season. From the iconic Kid Cudi collaboration on Kids See Ghosts to his snapshot production on Pusha T’s critically acclaimed Daytona, ye converted the chaos of Kanye’s surroundings into where it goes best, the music. Of course, his messy life was predominately orchestrated by himself. Seemingly making an outlandish statement daily before the project’s release, fans had no idea what to expect leading up to ye. However, expectations certainly weren’t as high as they tend to be regarding one of the greatest creatives of our generation.
Ye sees the Chicago kid as personal as ever. Is it a finished product? Absolutely not. Completing ye over merely a few weeks, the album is a unique snapshot into his genius bipolar mind. Ye sounds like a sudden picture taken on a vintage camera, a rugged capture of his ever-changing world. While albums such as My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy or the recent Donda shoot for grandiosity, ye was exactly the opposite of that. Instead, the 23-minute and 43-second project shoots for conceptual simplicity. We see a magnum cover of the Grand Teton mountains of Jackson Hole. It exemplifies distance from the world he’s become so accustomed to. Looking back, ye was a standout moment in the career of Kanye West.
Ye Experienced A Chaotic Album Leadup
If there’s a good word to describe Kanye West’s life leading up to the release of ye, it would be disorder. He publicly donned a MAGA hat in the streets of Los Angeles. West ignorantly muttered that slavery was a choice and urged his followers to “stop thinking so much.” All of it seemed as if it was a purposeful self-sabotage of his image, a reinforcement of his inability to be canceled so as to solidify his God-complex image. However, ye was a pleasing reminder of his innate artistic talent behind his madness. In addition, its narrative dialogue starkly contrasted the egotistical mania he was putting out into the news. Instead, ye is vulnerable and, at times, self-deprecating.
Ye rambles about his bipolar mindset on album opener “I Thought About Killing You,” musing, “I think about killing myself, and I love myself way more than I love you, so…”. It’s a disturbing level of introspection for the audience to experience, specifically as the introduction to a project. However, its wild metamorphosis from trippy vocal sampling into the heavy drums of the track’s latter half perfectly reflects ye. One moment, he’s painstakingly bordering on suicidal tendencies. The next, he artfully depicts himself next to creatives such as Pablo Picasso. “Violent Crimes” sees Kanye reflect on his changing mindset surrounding women, stating, “‘Cause now I see woman as somethin’ to nurture / not somethin’ to conquer.” He’s growing and maturing, even if it often looks as if he’s doing the opposite.
Ye Is A Beautiful & Complicated Mess
However, ye certainly wasn’t met with widespread critical acclaim upon its release. Take this statement from Pitchfork‘s official review of the project: “But I can admit that after ye ended unceremoniously the third or fourth time, I put on ‘Family Business,‘ and I thought about the kid from Chicago who wanted to be the biggest rapper in the world, who now lives in an empty-looking concrete mansion in Calabasas, who has stopped trying.” In fairness, it wasn’t easy to earnestly digest deeply personal cuts such as the iconic “Ghost Town,” considering his offensive antics at the time.
In essence, ye is a beautiful mess. Five years later, fans who initially criticized the project continually find themselves returning to the album. Every piece of Kanye West pops up on the record. The mania and aggressiveness appear in the 808-induced “All Mine,” while “No Mistakes” throws it back to the coming-of-age tonnage of The College Dropout. Kanye West just wants “feel kinda free,” which seemed to be the undercutting factor of his detour out to Cody, Wyoming. From riding around on a fleet of Sherp ATVs to curating the Yeezy Campus, the escapist tundra of Wyoming has Kanye West’s idea of a therapy session culminating in ye.
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