Yeezus is not the album we expected to get from Kanye West after My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. After the triumph of Fantasy, the easy money was that West would ride this sort of ultra-populism until he stopped making music altogether, an approach that I believe would have been appreciated by both music heads such as myself as well as the general population who just want something to dance to. Yeezus is not ultra-populist—this is the most deliberately claustrophobic, minimalist hip-hop record meant to be consumed by the masses since, goodness, possibly Dizzee Rascal’s Boy In Da Corner. The song about his reservations of pumping that Black Power hand too hard comes after the song in which he declares himself to be a God (“I Am a God” featuring God) and sounds really down about that idea, and that’s followed by a song called “Hold My Liquor”, whose first line is “I can’t hold my liquor”, and that’s followed by music that is, for the most part, even less readily accessible. Those of the populace who wanted to hear something to go along with the new Katy Perry and Rihanna tunes, then, were the ones who most vehemently rejected this new direction. I care little for their opinions—the world is full of idiots, big whoop—but if there was ever a time for me to give this another look, this seems the time to do it.

I was extremely positive towards Yeezus on its release, but much of what I pondered was wrapped up in the lyrics of the damn thing, arguing that West had made an alternate personality for himself and had written a brilliant character study of his new asshole personality. I maintain that this is probably what West was going for, but on reflection, his lyrics aren’t great and I feel bad for ever saying otherwise. Some of the shortcuts and shorthand are understandable and even enjoyable—I maintain that sweet-and-sour sauce line does exactly what it was supposed to, and “Okay, I smashed your Corolla” is far more amusing than it has any right to be—but the real failure comes with the closest thing to a decoder Yeezus has, “Blood On the Leaves”, in which we’re supposed to be given insight into how this bloke became such a bad person. It is certainly an evocative song, but West is unable to tie his narrative together into a cohesive whole and we’re left with fragments of a tale where an origin story should be. It is one of Yeezus’s few missteps, but it is a critical one.

The bigger achievement here is with the sound, which I kind of fell out of love with shortly after that initial month. I found myself really not caring for this sound as much as Fantasy, what with its coldness as opposed to Fantasy’s warmth, and I seemed to be the only person in my circle of friends who ever had a positive reaction to Yeezus and their claims that there "wasn’t much music in this music" became harder to fight off. What turned it back around for me this week, though, was looking through the production credits and seeing Arca’s name show up on almost half of the album, which pretty much gave away how this album is supposed to be processed.

For those of you who aren’t aware, Arca is an electronic musician who has, since this album came out, put out two great collections of chilling, sparse electronica that is about trying to find beauty in the grotesque. My appreciation for the sound of Yeezus increased exponentially when I listened to it, as the closest thing to an Arca rap album we’re likely to ever get. Even “Guilt Trip”, one of the few songs I was down on when I first heard it, sounds great when viewed less as a dance song and more of a mutation of electronic burps. The only song that isn’t improved by that interpretation is “Bound 2”, which would have been acceptable filler on College Dropout but has no place on a Kanye West album in 2013 or 2016.

I still think this is his second-best album and one worth experiencing, but for different reasons than I had the first time I listened to it. Here’s hoping the ordering of the best Kanye West albums gets shuffled by The Life of Pablo.

Picture credit: Consequence of Sound