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Revisiting The Life of Pablo and ''Old Kanye'' in 2024

Seeing how Kanye has been acting recently and the quality of his music going down in recent years, especially with the unfinished mess that was Vultures 2 got me to revisit The Life of Pablo (TLOP), Which in my opinion is Kanye's most interesting and creative project to date. It has been a long time and his style has changed a lot since then, so Could TLOP be considered Old Kanye now? Lets see.

Album · Kanye West · 2016 · 20 songs

The album starts out with the song ''Ultralight Beam'' which sets the Tone for the whole album, giving a feeling of holiness in its sound, and the child's voice at the start praising the lord definitely makes what Kanye's trying to make you feel here very obvious. It is a song to get you ready for what's to come in this album, starting off calm and slow and ending with choir sounds that then lead into some of the best-produced songs ever created in ''Father Stretch My Hands'' parts 1 and 2. My favorite sample from the album comes from an old '70s choir band and it is actually crazy how well Kanye uses these old-timey sounds and makes something that feels brand new and so different from other stuff we got in 2016, it is honestly sad to see how far he's fallen from the peaks on this album. that's not to say that part 1 doesn't have some pretty questionable lines like this one here,

However the songs are still very fun and man is that instrumental good. It can almost get me to forgive any wack line Kanye comes up with.

After the Trip that is both of those songs you make your way to Famous which has one of the best instrumental parts on the whole album.

This part where the Woman singing reminds me of Jazz musicians doing scat and the idea of using unintelligible noises to make stuff sound good is just so cool.(also really reminds me of The Great Gig in the Sky by Pink Floyd where the feeling is given to you not with words but with sheer vocals) Bam bam Bilam Bam was stuck in my head for years after listening to this album.

Unfortunately I think after this song the album does go on bit of a slow streak. Feedback is a fun song but I see it as almost like a filler episode, songs like Low Lights and Highlights never really stuck with me and I don't love the skits and freestyles he does on this album so I will skip them for this review except obviously the song that defined kanye for the rest of his career after this album

The song I Love Kanye really shows us what he was going for on this album. Shutting up all the critics, saying and showing us he is better than his old self, he is confident in knowing this new experimental stuff IS really better and he shows us that he is always ahead of the game. After understanding how Kanye saw himself in 2016 now we can see the opposite situation happening today. Kanye with his new albums like Vultures 2 still imagines himself as a pioneer and the unfinished experimental sound does feel similar to how it was in 2016 However the difference this time is that (at least in my opinion I might feel very different on the album in a couple years, maybe I don't appreciate Vultures 2 enough and I will come to love it later on in life.) the songs are simply less creative and he doesn't have the same messaging and just straight passion that went into TLOP. Vultures 2 feels commercial and it feels like Kanye is trying to cling to success while TLOP was a definitive part of Kanye's career while he was already extremely successful, He didn't need to prove himself he could have fun, have bad bars, and also still make great music. Now it just feels like Kanye is taking the piss on every song, Not even trying to make something artsy, and just wants to be shocking so people will still pay attention to him hence the whole tirade about Jewish people. (Maybe it really is the Nox that got to him.)

To get back to the Album at hand, after the halfway point of ''I Love Kanye'' you get great songs like Waves which really holds up in its production and Wolves with even more amazing production, what makes Wolves special I think is that it has some very different messaging about the modern dating life of people, saying that everyone is in danger of being taken advantage even Mary would be at risk being soured in this day and age is what I get from that song, Definitely an interesting perspective and definitely a Kanye perspective on things.

When you get towards the end of the Album there is a bit of a shift in tone, Kanye gets serious again. (except for Facts which is just a diss song against Nike lol) the main two songs I want to focus on at the end of the Album is probably 2 of the best songs on it. Firstly we have to get to No More Parties In LA. Not only does this song have some of the best bars and overall meaningful lyrics on the album it actually sounds so good that the song has not aged a day in my opinion. if Kendrick and Kanye came out with a song on the same level as No More Parties in LA this morning, it would shoot up to Number 1 and kill everything else on the billboard lists.

Lastly and most importantly we get to the Titular and in my opinion the best song on the album Saint Pablo. This song touches on many points and just sounds amazing start to finish, I love the vocals that Sampha does in his verse and especially the Bridges and choruses in between,

he adds a really nice and mellow tone to the song and the lines for example ''wondering where's god in your nightlife'' stick with you.

Overall I love this album very much however there are a couple dud songs in there now that I listened to it again. However even though they are some mid-level songs, man do the Good ones keep the album together. I love the concept, the whole idea of Kanye being unapologetic about being himself, not being afraid to say what he wants and the fact that the songs on here are undeniably super important to Music history since it came out. You can hear the influence this album has on Rap music still and almost every song on here still holds up. unfortunately though at this point I think we can even classify The TLOP era as Old Kanye considering how much he has fallen off since this album.

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