User:Fredbr/A Slice of Pablo

Rearranging Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo
It seems as if Kanye West either does not want to, or has forgotten how to, properly arrange an album. Sonically, The Life of Pablo (TLOP) has clear gospel and electronic influences, but the central lyrical themes aren’t expressed particularly cohesively, and may leave the listener feeling altogether confused about the message of this long-awaited effort. Despite this, I believe that TLOP contains all the content necessary for it to be rearranged into a narrative-driven concept album, dealing with Kanye’s own personal struggle with fame, excess, and his own mental state, and culminating in a new sense of purpose derived from faith and family. Additionally, Kanye’s journey would mirror the conversation of Saul into San Pablo, the album’s namesake. To this end, I would cut the album to a lean 39 minutes and 12 tracks, spread over three acts, as Kanye seems to have originally intended. This would create a strong narrative, and a sense of lyrical purpose. I believe this 'recut' of the album enhances it, and makes it feel more complete, despite being almost twenty minutes shorter.

Act I: Failings
In this first act, Kanye is confident and surrounded by friends, evident from the layered production and various different features. He describes his Lust, Gluttony, and Pride in great detail. There are few gospel influences. Additionally, the placing of the first few tracks in this revision keeps the album’s crudest lyrics in the first third of TLOP, as opposed to being rather jarringly placed after Ultralight Beam and Low Lights. Here, they make sense, as Kanye’s crudity and arrogance are integral to his 'punishment' later on. The bravado and confidence of Famous and Highlights lead on to the nearly-repentant Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1, before Kanye forsakes God once more on Pt. 2.

Famous
Rihanna’s vocals would open the album in similar fashion to Nicki Minaj’s on 2010’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy; additionally, Swizz Beatz' “Wake Up Mr West”-throwback seems perfect for an opening track. The drum and synth lines on the first half of this track are dark and ominous, foreshadowing Kanye’s later descent into madness. The production is layered and rich, mirroring Kanye’s life at this point, full of excess and indulgence. Rihanna’s lyrics detail Kanye’s desire to be free of responsibility, both to God and to himself. At this early stage in the album, these lyrics forgive Kanye; he is understood and free of blame, as he has only recently had these feelings. Later, Rihanna’s God figure tells Kanye that she has loved him since the very start, just as God has always loved the world. Each time she begins to try and speak to Kanye, she is interrupted. By the time the original Nina Simone sample plays at the end of the track, Kanye has long-ago stopped listening.

Highlights
Here, Kanye once again boasts of his accomplishments, riches, and sexual prowess. His focus on the material over the spiritual is his 'tragic flaw', and sets up his fall at the close of Act I. Despite claiming to be a Christian, Kanye seems to blaspheme a great deal on this track, indulging in sex and boasting of money, while The-Dream invokes The Lord. The images of light on this track relate to depravity and sin, as opposed to the cleansing and converting light of God later alluded to on Ultralight Beam.

Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1
In this third track, Kanye seems as if he may be repenting for his previous sins, as he and Kid Cudi paint an almost spiritual picture of morning sex with a woman he loves. But while Kanye’s love for this woman may be "beautiful", he once again espouses his desire to be free from responsibility, while also muddying the waters with a crude story about anal sex - his apology about instigation seems plainly dishonest in light of this. Even with that considered, the first half of this track seems fairly spiritual, and the instrumentation veers away from the brooding synths heard previously.

Pt. 2
Here, the dark instrumentation first heard on Famous returns. Kanye tells of how he "Lost his soul", an important lyric in the context of his fall. His desire to "feel liberated" is far more frantic this time around, and sounds less sincere. The startling cut to the "How can I find you?"-sample acts as a bridge to the second act, and is God making a final appeal to Kanye, before he is eventually forsaken. The guttural noises heard in the background of this track will be a motif that will come to be linked with Kanye’s decline.

Act II: Frailty
Kanye has offended the heavens, and so begins to lose his mind, plummeting into even greater depravity and self-doubt. By the end of the act, he has lost much of his confidence, and only anger and regret remain, this anger is directed mostly at women, the police, and the establishment. Production is relatively sparse and there are fewer features, while distorted vocals and instrumentals give a sonic representation of mental deterioration. A loss of love on Fade leads onto the insanity of Feedback and Freestyle 4, before a broken Kanye attempts to reconcile himself with God on FML.

Fade
Kanye realises he has lost the love of two different parties on this track, the love of God, and the love of his family, and so feels empty inside, fading away. In response, he begins a descent into even greater depravity, driven by desperation and shame. The deep, attention-demanding baseline on this track represents a club, or a brief sexual encounter, and is a feature that will come to define much of Act II sonically. A brief glimmer of faith in the form of the "I get lifted" sample is met with "no, no, no" from Kanye, in an explicit rejection of the redemption offered at the close of the first act.

Feedback
The titular feedback in this track shows the conflict Kanye is feeling. He has rejected God, and now rejects money on this track, leaving him with very little. Ironically, the Good News is also an alternate way of referring to the gospel, but Kanye could not be further from God at this point. He tells the listener that he’s only got "wilder" over the years, and that he’s "been out of his mind a long time", at first maybe admitting that he has issues that will need to be solved by the end of the album, before justifying his mental state with the line, "name one genius who ain’t crazy". Kanye’s in denial, and the "people trying to play him" and the police are the recipients of the anger he should be directing towards himself. While Kanye claims that he "will follow you", he's still failing to follow in the most crucial way; he's not following God. His thoughts are erratic and scatter-brained, best exemplified by the Oprah-parody at the close of the track. In lieu of anything else to be certain of, he latches-onto the only thing he has always been totally sure of throughout his career, that he will always be from the Southside of Chicago.

Freestyle 4
The prominent strings mirror the tension Kanye feels, before he explodes in the middle of the track. Kanye seems to come off his meds, and the result is an expletive-filled intelligible rant, perhaps representative of the damage that a lack of spirituality and family-values has done to Kanye’s mental-state, ending in a shout about fucking in the bathroom. The guttural noises first heard on Pt. 2 return both at the beginning and close of this track.

FML
Kanye has now come down from the 'high' he seemed to be on in the last track, and now seems to be examining his own life and his dissatisfaction with it, while also praying to the god he had previously abandoned. This is the first time he talks about himself and his feelings in much detail on the album, as he reevaluates his goals, declaring that he will "give up the women" as part of his mission for God. Kanye’s humility on this track is in stark contrast to the bravado and depravity which have characterised the act up to this point. This could certainly be seen as Kanye’s 'moment of conversion' within the context of the album. Kanye declares that he would die for those he loves, including his children, the first explicit mention of them on the album. Kanye’s mention of a soul here is important, as he seems to have regained it, having lost it in Pt. 2. Additionally, we can infer that Kanye was "off his Lexapro" in Feedback and Freestyle 4, in a clear admission of some kind of mental torment. Kanye admits to having fucked his life up previously, and that he will do more, both “For [His] Lady”, and for God, while his anger is now directed at those who would question his love for his family. At the close of the track, this anger begins to invoke the same dark instrumentation heard in the rest of the act, threatening to pull Kanye back into insanity.

Act III: Faith
In this third act, Kanye slowly becomes more sure of in whom and what he should be placing his faith, namely himself, his family, and God. He seems truly repentant on these tracks, and self-criticises for much of Real Friends and Wolves, leading into the catharsis of Ultralight Beam, and Waves, which could almost be considered the spiritual-successor to Highlights, both literally and figuratively.

Real Friends
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Wolves
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Ultralight Beam
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Waves
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Cut Tracks
Here’s a few sentences on why I decided to cut these songs/skits from my recut version of TLOP, if you happen to be that interested.

Low Lights
While I like this track, it really has to precede Highlights if it is to be included, but its deeply religious message doesn’t fit with Act I of the new narrative we’re trying to construct here.

I Love Kanye
This track’s simply too sparse to stand in this spiritual concept-album, the reworked soul Soundcloud-version might actually fit better, but the album version is what we have to work with.

Silver Surfer Intermission
Again, this track really just has no place on this recut concept-version of the album.

30 Hours
While I loved the Good Friday release of this track, the last third with the phone call and the adlib just makes it fairly inappropriate for the album, and also diminishes the track in any context.

No More Parties in LA
Kendrick’s verse is weak, and there’s very little lyrical cohesion between the two rappers. Additionally, the lyrical content would be far more suited to the final act, as Kanye raps a great deal about his family, but it doesn’t fit sonically.

Facts (Charlie Heat Version)
This just has no real place on the reworked album, to say nothing of my dislike of this track.