Kanye West — Ye

«When you hear about slavery for 400 years ... for 400 years? That sounds like a choice. You were there for 400 years and it's all of y'all. It's like we're mentally imprisoned.» — Kanye West in 2018.

Hospitalized for drug problems in late 2016, after also stating on stage that friend Jay-Z wanted to assassinate him, praying he didn't send his killers to murder him, Kanye West isolates himself from the world again and also stops using twitter for almost a year. In spring 2017, West calls several collaborators to a new location isolated from the rest of the world and in the middle of nowhere that becomes his new music recording venue, Jackson Hole, Wyoming. From West's recordings, known as the Wyoming Sessions, five albums by five different artists come out: Pusha-T ("Daytona"), Kanye West ("ye"), Kids See Ghosts ("Kids See Ghosts"), Nas ("Nasir") and Teyana Taylor ("K.T.S.E."). The albums each consist of seven tracks and are released within a week of each other. Pusha-T's album precedes West's by one week.

West begins to lose his mind. You can see that from the opening quote, which is actually said by Kanye West himself in an interview with TMZ in May 2018. 2018. It should be remembered that this guy has never gone to school and has never opened a book in his life, for whatever reason, he was never educated even by his parents. West continues to be more and more of a clown and a joke these days, humiliating the few fans who have remained loyal to him thus far. This album is already made entirely in May 2018, but it's full of even more controversial lyrics than that sentence about slavery: it seems that West has in fact made a revisionist concept album about the rise of Hitler and about that period of history concerning Nazi Germany, reviewed with a positive outlook. The original title is "Hitler". West wisely decides to completely redo the entire album in a month, maybe less.

Even the cover should be very different from the final one. Here, he takes it out directly on the plastic surgeon who did an operation on West's mother, Donda, and the operation led to complications which caused her death the next day. West would like to humiliate the surgeon by putting a photo of the surgeon performing surgery on Donda West as the cover of his new album, at this point the surgeon has to publicly ask crazy West not to use any photos of him and to stop ruining his life. West complies, on the advice of his own lawyers. A new cover comes out, one day before releasing the record, Kanye West takes a photo of the Wyoming mountains outside the estate he just bought to record his new music and then adds the green writing "I hate being bi-polar it s awesome", admitting that he suffers from a serious mental illness, which many people have long suspected.

Shortly before the album's release, West released the track "Lift Yourself", which features a beat reminiscent of his chipmunk soul period and nonsensical lyrics: the track is in fact a trolling towards everyone, especially towards people who argue about his Republican political orientation. The track, harshly criticized by fans, does not end up on West's new album. Just before releasing "Ye", West posts a tweet claiming that Bill Cosby is innocent, creating new controversy. Then the project is released.

"I Thought About Killing You" opens with a desperate cry stretched by the autotune, then Kanye West does a long spoken intro on a light and essential production. After more than two minutes, he starts rapping with a cheesy, withered, bored, soporific style, here he's in one of his worst moments ever from the point of view of vital energies, he looks like a mumble rapper. Switch beat with heavy, angsty, annoying, minimal, poor trap production. The lyricism deals with West's dark thoughts and his drug addiction. "Yikes" is still not a good song, the beat is bad and annoying, the lyrics still push on his addiction and drugs. The third choice seems to be better, instead West invents a trash tune that feels totally out of place, with a horrible hook and a terrible execution, ending up being one of his worst tracks in the entire catalog.

The rhythm of "Wouldn't Leave" is good, the song seems dedicated to his wife Kim Kardashian who had doubts after her sentence to TMZ in 2018, pity that West here claims not to repent, indeed, almost to vindicate his own controversial claims on slavery. "No Mistakes" is one of the few tracks where Kanye West actually seems to make no mistakes, except for his self-righteousness: there's a good slow soulful hook performed by Charlie Wilson and Kid Cudi — Caroline Shaw, sometimes uncredited, also does a beautiful contribute with the background singing — an enjoyable fluid production that recalls those of his best times, a rapping delivery from West and an excellent cupissimo jazzy bridge on the hook. The track is a diss to friend-foe Drake and also addresses the issues West faced after his hospitalization.

The Chicago rapper and producer looks like the real one again here, for less than two minutes, maybe also helped by a brilliant sample from Slick Rick, incredible. West returns to the subject of mental illness in "Ghost Town", over solid production driven by heavy rock guitar: after the opening verse of PartyNextDoor, West recites his lyrics with a clean, even, almost spoken delivery, before the long closing sung by 070 Shake, who also has the honor of opening the final track of the disc, "Violent Crimes". The song boasts a good slow and simple tempo, and West reminds us that he has sons, North, Saint and Chicago (for the few who don't know who Kanye West is: it's not a joke, these are the real names of his children; Psalm will be born later, in 2019), especially that he has a daughter, North. The album is closed by an outro by Nicki Minaj, rapper who had introduced what is considered his masterpiece album in 2010.

Second of the five Wyoming Sessions albums, "Ye" precedes hip-hop duo Kids See Ghosts' self-titled album by a week, which West forms together with his friend Kid Cudi. The record, hailed by fans and critics as one of the best projects in Kanye West's history, features "Freeee (Ghost Town, Pt. 2)", sequel track to "Ghost Town" that was originally intended for this effort, then moved to the duo's CD. Free of promotion and singles, the album is released by GOOD Music and Def Jam and debuts at number one on the Billboard 200, with 85,000 physical copies sold in addition to streams. With eight consecutive #1 in the pop charts, West equals Eminem (2000-18) and the Beatles (1965-68) and moreover with Eminem he puts eight records in a row in first place in the debut week, something the Beatles had not achieved. Sales exceeded expectations, and the disc also reached number one in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Estonia, Ireland and in the UK urban chart. Despite the absence of singles, all seven songs debuted in the top 40 of the Hot 100 and "Yikes", selected as lead single one week after release, it becomes Kanye West's first solo single to enter the top ten of the Hot 100 since 2008, when the artist released the hit "Heartless".

While the public keeps their faith unshakable in his idol Kanye West even in the worst moments after one disastrous episode after another, just like Bart kept it for his idol Krusty the Clown at Kamp Krusty, critics begin to be much more cautious in judging West's works starting with this, that for the first time in ten years and four studio albums, decides not to give even a single perfect score to Kanye's new record. Crazy. The highest rating, removing amateur sites and irrelevant magazines, is represented by the "4/5" coming from the British critics, while at home it's always the controversial "The A.V. Club" that holds Kanye West's flag higher than anyone else, not going beyond the "B" rating. "Pitchfork", which over the years has lost competence, grossly exaggerates his evaluation of West's new album and considers it one of the best forty of the year, but it doesn't go beyond a tender and very tepid seven point one out of ten, while still remaining one of the top five serious publications in the industry with the highest rating. The others more or less kill the project, for some music critics this is Kanye worst album.

Even the record industry turns its back on West after his recent ones and numerous controversial statements, and begins to snub him: for the first time ever, a record by him doesn't get a Grammy nomination — not even at the Best Rap Album, until then dominated by the works of West, multiple winner — and West receives only one sop from the industry, a poor nomination for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical, losing to Pharrell Williams.

Kanye West closes an life cycle opened with "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" and he's aware of it too, calling Nicki Minaj to bid farewell to the record. Two personal albums in which West shows himself to the world, but also two profoundly different albums. If West was a methodical perfectionist in 2010, eight years later he leaves everything to chance. The project more or less faithfully reflects the state of mind of Kanye West, what is happening to him and what is happening around his family, the record looks deeply and for a long time into the abyss that is its author's sick and twisted mind with frequent references to his own mental health, bipolar disorder, opioid addiction, to worries for himself and for his family, homicidal and suicidal thoughts, and the usual misogyny that always accompanies his works. It sounds less personal and more liberating in a way than the 2010 record, and it becomes a sort of chronicle of an agonizing boy full of hardships who in vain seeks and asks everyone for help and isn't helped by anyone.

The album is of poor quality and sounds unfinished and rushed, showing itself as a shaky experimental work, scribbled and bland, contrasting, chaotic and dull, average in its best moments, bad the rest of the time. It's 23 minutes long, but it's still a grueling, light, awkward and erratic effort that feels too long. Lacking in concept, coherence, real direction and minimal material quality control, it presents a shoddy, ridiculous and mediocre lyricism with which the author casually rambles for twenty minutes, and bland and tasteless music in the first part of the disc, which begins with three weak tracks and recovers in the second part with more enjoyable cuts. Musically, the boy is stuck in the mud, cumbersome, can't get out, surrounded by rubbish that doesn't help him get out of the sticky slime of mediocrity. There's a little rapping, a lot of spoken word and the boy still relies on autotune, he's insecure, completely lacking in confidence and never focused on one of his messiest, most botched, most rushed works in his catalogue, quite forgettable, which marks the beginning of his personal and artistic collapse.

Rating: 5.5/10.