Something Strange Is Happening

You'd think Kanye West is just being a dick with all his talk of god like status and monster ego, but then he releases a record that magnificently lives up to the hype. On first airing the LP is cacophony of noise, uneasy screams and shouting, electronic power surges and daunting beats. On further listens the squawking crows and elephant yelps on Black Skinhead make sense, tracks like the Daft Punk and Hudson Mohawke produced I Am A God (feat.God) are positively captivating from the electro pulses to the wild horror screams and at the same time inviting controversy. As Lou Reed says in his Guardian review - 'People say this album is minimal. And yeah, it's minimal. But the parts are maximal'. A statement that sums up this capricious record. 

The Hudson Mohawke helmed Blood on the Leaves is a very powerful song that samples the sacred song about lynching, the poem Strange Fruit, written by Abel Meeropol and famously performed by Nina Simone. West samples the line Blood on the Leaves as the centre of the song as well as a few other poignant lines of Simone's masterpiece. Kayne's not overly political with this song but talks about past relationships, you can draw some parallels between the two though. 

New Slaves is breathtaking and stuns with maximum effect and Kanye just doesn't give a fuck, he spits out the words with pure raw emotion "I wear my heart on the sleeve, I know that we the new slaves, I see the blood on the leaves" (another reference to Strange Fruit) and setting the tone for the whole album with lines like "You see there's leaders and there's followers, But I'd rather be a dick than a swallower". Then at just under 3 minutes the track has 'a day in the life moment' when Frank Ocean explodes into a crescendo as the song reaches its soaring climax.

As with his last LP Kanye isn't scared to try new things and consistently pushes boundaries creating original music. Highly Recommended.

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