Kanye West's June Takeover - 8th Solo, Cudi Collab, Nas, and More

[Johnny Textface]

Wonder if Bon Iver gets a credit on 'Feel The Love'. The chorus bit is basically 'Perth'.

[Ja'moke]

Nas album tonight/tomorrow. Looking forward to hearing Escobar on decent beats!

[Z]

A lot of them were going the opposite way, like Migos, releasing a 24 track album hoping it would bump sales due to the streaming of individual tracks.

Migos don't actually seem like the most progressive bunch of guys though. Even when their sound was very much the hot new thing it was simultaneously a huge throwback to Lil Jon and his crunk pals to me. Wouldn't surprise me if their albums had overlong terrible skits and all.



Kids See Ghosts has grown on me a lot. Free still sucks (it reminds me of some other song that done that awful never ending loop of lines ending with a downward word/sound/thing, as a song structure, I just hate that fucking shit) but the rest is great.

[Z]

Where this nas at?

[Custard]

It must be "out" in some form, as there's already a few reviews and ratings on Rate Your Music. I couldn't find it

[Z]

rips from the live play, innit?


Also, today I listened to the finished TLOP for the first time ever. Only had the on release version all this time, it's got a fuck ton of small changes scattered thorough it.

[Ja'moke]

I've heard the stream version. But waiting until the official release to listen again. It didn't blow me away on first listen (although "Everything" is a great intro, even if it feels like it should have been on Kanye's solo album rather than Nas'). And the beat for "Adam and Eve" is classic.

[Ja'moke]

This is out now. It seems the original track order was changed.

[up_the_hampipe]

Okay, the Nas album is great. Thank fuck.

[Ja'moke]

The sample on Adam and Eve is sooo good. The only track I don't really like is Bonjour; the beat is like something Nas would usually rap on, which is to say, boring. The rest is mostly great though, despite some awkward anti-vax lyrics.

[up_the_hampipe]

Oh I loved Bonjour. But we disagree on Nas' production history anyway.

Adam & Eve and Cops Shot The Kid are my favourites though.

[up_the_hampipe]

The new Beyonce & Jay-Z joint just gave Kanye's efforts a big Jamie Foxx style dickslap.

[Ja'moke]

The new Beyonce & Jay-Z joint just gave Kanye's efforts a big Jamie Foxx style dickslap.

Not really. It's ok. But sounds like most stuff out right now - trap beats, complete with Migos adlibs.

[up_the_hampipe]

Not really. It's ok. But sounds like most stuff out right now - trap beats, complete with Migos adlibs.

Apeshit alone is better than anything Kanye has put out in this run. It's not really trap either.

[Ja'moke]

Apeshit alone is better than anything Kanye has put out in this run. It's not really trap either.

It's maybe better than a couple of the Nas tracks, that's about it. Doesn't touch anything on Daytona, Ye or KSG.

[DukeDeMondo]

NASIR is, I think, the first Nas album I've enjoyed all the way through (revered as it is, Illmatic has only ever halfways worked for me. I don't know why that is or what's going on, but that's the way things are). Granted, it's only wee, and the Kanye Factor means a lot, but still. I've listened to it a whole bunch today, I think it's excellent. "Not For Radio," "Cops Shot The Kid" and "everything" are my favourites, easily. The latter currently sounds to me like something of a bridge from DAYTONA through ye and KSG to here. Sounding like that at the minute, anyway. Might sound like something else this time tomorrow.

With all of this excitement, I'm a bit surprised there hasn't been more talk about the work Kanye's done with Christina Aguilera over this past while. Granted it's not as attention-grabbing as this other stuff, but still. "Accelerate," which he co-wrote and co-produced, appeared about a month ago, and I thought it was really good. Her new album, Liberation, appeared on Friday, complete with another Kanye co-write/co-production in "Maria." I didn't like that one as much initially, but it's grown on me a bit.

Anyway. I've always liked Xtina, I still think Stripped is pretty great far as huge big diva pop goes, but she hasn't released anything especially satisfying in the years since. I haven't heard all of Liberation yet so I dunno if it's business as usual or it isn't, but "Accelerate" at least is better than most anything off, say, Bionic.

[Z]

I wonder how Pusha, Nas, Cudi and Teyana Taylor are gonna feel about these releases a few years from now. Can't imagine Pusha being too peeved, guy comes across like an absolute superstar out of it all but I could see both Nas and Cudi at some point being bitter that they're being framed so much as part of a Kanye West project.
Would be a bit unfair on Cudi though, there's quite a bit of him on that album.


RE: Aguilera, only heard he produced some stuff for her yesterday. Think Accelerate is too busy, I'd rather hear an instrumental of it.

I really want a Kanye instrumental album at this point...

[up_the_hampipe]

It's maybe better than a couple of the Nas tracks, that's about it. Doesn't touch anything on Daytona, Ye or KSG.

Oof, couldn't disagree with you more on this. But you like Nikki Cross too, so maybe we'll never meet in the middle on anything.

Actually, I will concede that Daytona is better, but Ye and KSG are very mediocre albums.

[Ja'moke]

Anyone looking for that College Dropout/Late Registration-era Kanye production should check out the Teyana Taylor record (which is now officially out). Lovely stuff.

I'm impressed he actually did it - 5 albums in 5 weeks.

[up_the_hampipe]

I like how the last track is a completely different vibe from the rest of it. Work this pussy!

[Z]

Only got around to the Nas one a few days ago. Production is mostly solid but damn is it hard to get past Nas himself at points, he comes across as a bit of a moron and I don't think that's the image anyone really wants of the guy who made Illmatic, although it perhaps seems closer to the real person. Him and Kanye is just a weird mix at the end of it all, feels like two guys who would be best without mixing personally two (i.e. two guys so desperate to prove how smart they are that they fall into that "both sides have a point" type bullshit in a big way with no one to counter them).

Ye continues to be the most intriguing of the bunch. Really feels like he potentially shat away a really good album for a kinda intriguing one (and a joke track that clearly could've been made into something really good). His rapping is probably the best its been since MBDTF (I'd say he's been actually pretty great on all of these asides from Daytona flow wise tbh), but everything feels unfinished. Yikes obviously should be a really big song but it sounds like a first draft over the lyrics with an approximation of the beat done on a casio or some shit.
Maybe this is what the last few Kanye albums would've sounded like without dozens of other people to refine the parts he's already moved on from.



Daytona and Kids See Ghosts are both amazing and either one would have justified this whole project alone. That two of them were that good and that his solo album was so commercially successful, sets a very promising precedent for hip hop which still has issues with albums being way too fucking long.

[Ja'moke]

I like how the last track is a completely different vibe from the rest of it. Work this pussy!

Reminds me of 'Fade' that track. Kind of annoyed that it tipped it into 8 tracks, though. What happened to every album 7 songs!

[up_the_hampipe]

Reminds me of 'Fade' that track. Kind of annoyed that it tipped it into 8 tracks, though. What happened to every album 7 songs!

I think we can make exception for that major jam.

[Ja'moke]

I think we can make exception for that major jam.

Yeah it's a good un. There was another track missing too, from the stream, 'We Got Love'. Rumour is that they couldn't get sample clearance.

[up_the_hampipe]

I'm getting into most of KSG now, but I still think the last two tracks are fairly disappointing.

[Malcy]

Was persuaded to listen to Nasir. Not much of a Nas fan and fucking hate Kanye. Was told to listen to 'Cops Shot The Kid'. Load of shite. Gave up after a minute. The Slick Rick sample is off by a tiny bit and it bugged me.

Hip Hop is properly on it's arse at the moment.

[DukeDeMondo]

I found K.T.S.E. to be really, really disappointing. I've listened to it about eight times now and that's probably me done with it as an album. It has some proper highs, and I've no doubt that I'll return to stuff like "Rose In Harlem" and "Issues / Hold On" fairly often, but the lows are poisonous in the extreme. I find "3Way" and "WTP" virtually unlistenable, and "Hurry" isn't far behind. Those three tracks, the former two especially, absolutely soured the whole project for me. What does a song like "3Way" have to offer anyone who isn't a heterosexual male looking to rummage about in his knickers for a while? I'm not saying wank fantasies don't have their place, like, fucking go for it, I don't give a fuck what you do, but I don't have to find explicit fuck-chat transparently engineered to appeal exclusively to the sexual imaginations of hetero males particularly compelling in and of itself. It would be different if it felt like Teyana Taylor was the one doing the fantasising throughout, maybe, but it doesn't feel like that at all. It feels like she's being used to prop up someone else's hard-on, and I find it repellent and certainly no fun to listen to.

That might come across as a load of virtue signalling, but whatever. I don't think it's too much to be a bit annoyed. The one female artist in the run and she's pictured writhing about in her underwear on the cover (something neither Kanye nor Pusha T nor Nas nor Cudi felt compelled to do) and half of her album is given over to wetting the ends of off-screen men via a bunch of ludicrously gratuitous Turn On.

Easily the worst of the lot for me.

But. That said, this has been an utter fucking blast for the duration. Hugely exhilarating and exciting waiting for each of these things to drop. It's no shame really that the album it concludes with, the fifth in as many weeks, is only half-good, considering that the four that came before it were each and every one fucking excellent. I'm sad to see the back of it, to be honest. Fridays just aren't gon be the same any more.

[Ja'moke]

Time for rankings then:

Kids See Ghosts
Daytona
Ye
K.T.S.E
Nasir

[DukeDeMondo]

DAYTONA
ye
KIDS SEE GHOSTS
NASIR
K.T.S.E.

Very little separating the top three though. On any given day at any given time the ordering of those might get jumbled about a bit.

EDIT: Maybe I'm just in a sappy sort of a mood, but I thought this video of a wee lad and his da REACTING to KSG was just adorable. Probably they're big internet sensations, these two, I dunno. I like them anyway.

[up_the_hampipe]

I've listened to it about eight times now and that's probably me done with it as an album.

Only 8 times? Give it a chance!

I find "3Way" and "WTP" virtually unlistenable

How dare you. I bet you'll be chanting "work this pussy" to yourself soon enough.