I don’t actually like Kanye’s music all that much, so why I’m on my third listen of his new album Yeezus when I only downloaded the thing about three hours ago is kinda weird.  I get kinda hypnotized by music reviews sometimes.  I should never read them, because I never have any idea what the hell music reviewers are talking about when I read their reviews– and I have half a theory that most of the time they don’t either.  But the reviews on this one are all dwelling on how different and how angry (and “conscious,” which is an adjective that, when applied to hiphop, causes me to spend money) and bloody weird the album is and it sucked me in.

I’ve always found Kanye’s music to be really lazy.  He’s got a weirdly nasal voice and you can do a pretty effective Kanye impression just by saying “eeee” and “nyeee” a lot to some sort of rhythm.  His lyrics don’t often make a whole lot of sense; he’ll always prioritize a rhyme over coherence and frequently will just repeat words in lieu of finding new ones that rhyme with whatever he just said.  I’ve caught him repeating entire verses on guest spots on different albums.  When you consider that half of everything else is just about how rich he is and how good he is in bed… sigh.  I got over this shit in 1996, dude, it’s boring.  Try actually saying something.

But… man.  If you don’t pay much attention to the lyrics, Yeezus is seriously something else.  I am, again, manifestly not a music reviewer, and absolutely shitty at describing music, so lemme pull this from the Rolling Stone review, because it’s on the mark, I think, maybe:

Yeezus is the darkest, most extreme music Kanye has ever cooked up, an extravagantly abrasive album full of grinding electro, pummeling minimalist hip-hop, drone-y wooz and industrial gear-grind. 

There are some seriously standout tracks on here (“Black Skinhead,” “New Slaves,” and “Blood on the Leaves,” which samples fucking Strange Fruit of all things, are awesome) but again you don’t want to pay too much attention to the words because by and large they’re nothing terribly interesting.  “I Am A God” is particularly dumb in this respect, although it sure as hell sounds good.

So, is that a “buy it!”?  I dunno.  See if you can stream it somewhere or something.  It’s damn interesting, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to say that about a Kanye album.