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Kanye Westis hip-hops Erik Killmonger.
The villain from theBlack Pantherfilm and comics is magnetic, articulate, and frequently successful.
All of this sounds like a tight synopsis of the last five years of Kanye.
That lyric from thepoemthat becameThe College Dropoutsingle All Falls Down was prophetic.
Kanye Wests music has grown incrementally darker and lustier ever since.
OnYeezus, Wests philanderers dreams seemed animated by cold feet, or at least first-time dad jitters.
The albums dire religiosity seemed like a cry for help.
The pages of TMZ headlines that followed are harrowing proof he meant business.
Two years afterPablo, Kanyes newYealbum offers fresh insight into the artists rocky travels.
I think Prince and Mike is trying to warn me, a song appropriately titled Yikes theorizes.
They know I got demons all on me.
Ghost Town includes a pledge not to bet it all on a pack of fentanyl.
The producers expert handle on sounds and samples lends the message extra gravity.
This is the quietest album in the entire Kanye West catalogue.
Emptiness is a fascinating new direction for an artist known to jam a dozen voices into a single record.
Wouldnt Leave makes the most of twinkling bass and keys and sanctified shouts on loan from Reverend W.A.
The club jam All Mine sounds like a reggae riddim scrubbed of half its contents.
What the new music doesnt do so well is process the strife that birthed it.
The messaging is questionable.
Ghost Town is a tearful trip back to the well of soulful penitence that spawned Runaway.
(The new song floats where it should soar for sounding more freestyled than written.)
As was the case withYeezusandThe Life of Pablo,Yeseeks redemption via altar call.
Forgiveness is love on loan; you pay it back by righting your wrongs.Yetalksthe game.
Is Kanye living it?
They knew death was better than bondage.
You want to believe in brash, charismatic people because we are all uplifted by their successes.
You watch yourself around them because their failures carry the same pull.
Kanye West was once the everymans rapper, a poet of the downtrodden.
