That's my main criticism of Yeezus too dude lol Like I appreciate the minimalism and the identity it has, but the chords of songs like Bound 1 are insane, nostalgic, cinematic and do more to add to the mood and setting of a song.

Kanye used to remind me of prime Dr Dre in how they felt like composers at times lol

minimalist lyricism

s*** like this makes me wanna punch strangers in the face

It's crazy because of how hard Kanye fell off while Cole went on to drop what many consider his magnum opus, and Mac continued to experiment with different sounds/vibes successfully. Macadelic and Watching Movies with the Sound Off were considered wild departures from the kinda music Mac was making before, and after those projects he went onto to make even more off-kilter projects with Faces and GO:OD AM. It was considered a very risky move for him to continue into that lane but he did it successfully.

Kanye could've easily went onto make another album better than Yeezus. Instead he started bullshitting with directionless rollouts and fashion s***, caping for Trump, and whatever he was doing with ye and JIK.

"Minimalist lyricism" is just a codeword for trash lyrics tbh

Oh, I totally agree. Lyrically Late Registration and MBDTF are his masterpieces bro. I just feel like the general public feel like Yeezus is where the dropoff started when in reality all that s*** was a deliberate choice to commit to the minimalist aesthetic of the album.

TLOP was the real dropoff to me cuz it felt like he didn't know where he wanted to take that album artistically

Yea but that's typically how artistic careers work. 99% artists aren't dropping classics 10+ years into their careers bro. Cole became unlistenable dogshit in less than 10. There's a reason Cole and Mac don't even have 6 classics combined yet Ye does lol. He's an outlier. It's like expecting Bron to solo carry teams to the Finals at 38. Who in rap is still improving that late into their careers? Wayne's run was shorter. Jay's run of quality music was shorter. List goes on.

Kanye was focused and taking a f***ton of risks in his younger career, too. Yeezus and 808s were bigger risks than anything Cole or Mac ever did.

The one album that reminds me of Yeezus stylistically was when Blu did the left field s*** on this album

I’d say “Yeezus” was Ye’s last great album & “Pablo” was pretty good.

But his last classic record was “MBDTF”.

He had a 5 album stretch from 2004-2010 where all he did was drop albums.

But once he got with Kim & ventured off into other mediums, that’s when his music gradually began to decline

Though I don't care much for 4YEO and The Off Season, it is very wild to say bro is unlistenable dogshit when he went on to become one the most listened to rappers of the 2010s. And I know it's a meme we joke about, but you can't be unlistenable dogshit and go onto to drop back to back albums that go platinum with no features.

??? TLOP went platinum and outsold Yeezus lol. By your metric Kanye did release a better album after Yeezus. Ain't Donda also plat?

Honestly if he had just done the other mediums solely and then came back to music later, he'd still be straight musically

Die lit old money specifically

Lmao f*** you hard on the sink

Rather have lyrics like yeezus than anything else tbh

I think Donda is close to 2x plat soon lol

It’s always funny when oldheads act like Kanye’s music is unlistenable since Yeezus/TLOP while most people outside still listening to TLOP/Ye/KSG/Donda (not including JIK because thats his worst album)

It's no surprise that TLOP went on to perform better than Yeezus because Yeezus was abrasive af, scare the ho type music, and considered a "pleb-filter". Whereas TLOP was stacked with features and many considered Kanye "returning to form" even though I believe TLOP was when Kanye began to lose direction and focused more on spectacle than making good focused projects.

Cole went away from the feature heavy projects and improved in his rapping and album making.

I also have no idea how you think that is my metric when I have been itt talking about quality of albums. Not sales.

Lmfao almost a decade later and we're still acting like TLOP isn't a classic?

Wtf is pleb filter

Sidebar if you think TLOP, ye, or Donda are better than Yeezus or anything Kanye released before it because they sold more please stop listening to hip-hop music.

This coming from the person talmbout some f***in "minimalist lyricism"

wmwtso is better than born sinner for sure

So I used to have the critique of Yeezus being bad lyrically but honestly a lot of it has aged phenomenally. You can remember highlights like New Slaves, Blood on the Leaves, Black Skinhead, Hold My Liquor, On Sight, etc more than the highlights of both Cole and Mac’s albums. They just hold more weight and Yeezus did more for music than both of those albums and that’s just a fact.

Kanye himself lost that singular direction in his albums after this because of multiple things including fatherhood, him getting into fashion (shit he spent 80% of his press talking about what happened with him getting into the fashion world lmao he barely talked about the yeezus songs like that) and of course his marriage to Kim.

stop lying to yourself, Kanyes career didn’t start at TLOP. Better than CD, LR and Grad??