Kanye West releases The Life of Pablo

The hip-hop icon’s seventh solo studio album is worth the three-year wait

Kanye West, the Atlanta-born, Chicago-raised hip-hop MC released his seventh studio album, The Life of Pablo on Feb. 14 via Tidal music streaming service.

West’s long awaited album went three years in the making and features some of the biggest names in hip-hop including Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, Rihanna, Kid Cudi and many more. It also features the biggest rap producers in the world like Mike Dean, Metro Boomin and Hudson Mohawke.

Despite the amount of superstars working together for this one project, many people doubted the album would be any good, because of West’s new music style and because he strayed away from “the old Kanye.” Instead, he shattered those rumors. West combines the greatest aspects of his music and puts it all into one album.

The album kicks right off with a gospel-oriented song. On “Ultralight Beams,” West talks about his faith in God, and how he searches for God whenever he’s down, knowing he’ll be alright.

The track features Chance The Rapper, The-Dream, Kelly Price and a choir for background vocals. To close the song, one of the greatest gospel artists of all-time, Kirk Franklin, leads a prayer.

The very next track, produced by Metro Boomin, West borrowed the song title, plus the introduction from Pastor T.L. Barrett’s “Father Stretch My Hands.”

West then refers back to his recent relationships with Amber Rose and his thoughts of his relationship with his wife, Kim Kardashian.

This is the best song of the album as it features a classic beat, vintage Kanye West rapping and an overall amazing song.

In the second part of the song, West talks about his personal moments in life, including the car crash back in 2002 that almost took his life, as well as his mother’s death.

A big inspiration to this track is Ray West, Kanye’s father who left him and his mother Donda when he was just three years old. Hours before debuting the album, West tweeted a picture of the lyrics of Pt. 2 captioned, “I cried writing this. I love my Dad.”

“Waves”, the previous rumoured album name, is the 10th track on the album and is quite different from the rest.

The song features vocals from artists Chris Brown and Kid Cudi. This track took over the Internet prior to the album releasing, and was said to be the song that caused the delay of the album. Kanye stated that it was Chance The Rapper’s fault the tape’s release was delayed because he insisted on adding this song.

First heard back in February of 2015 at the Yeezy Season 1 launch event, “Wolves” is a track that displays a spectrum of emotion.

The song falls perfectly into the album as the prior song, “Real Friends” ends with a similar beat to “Wolves.”

West added and took some verses out for the final album version of the track; he featured an outro from Ocean. After the album was finalized, West revealed that he plans to go back and fix the song.

During an interview with The Breakfast Club, West described the album: “…this album’s just embracing the music, embracing joy and being of service to the people.”

Just like all modern Kanye West music, the album produced mixed opinions.

West is an artist that never likes to do the same thing twice. He takes a completely different mindset for each and every one of his projects.

In this album, West speaks about turning to God, realizing what his life has become and going insane from his fame.

With the addition of TLOP, Kanye proves to have the greatest discography of any living rapper, which includes seven classic solo albums and one of the greatest collaboration albums of all-time. Rating: 9.2/10