This Is Kanye’s Worst Album Yet.
Jesus Is Still Walking, Though. That’s This Album’s Victory.
“Godbody is a slang name for the members of the urban, Black empowerment, youth movement called the Five Percenters…Five Percenters refer to themselves as the Nation of Gods and Earths (Black men are considered Gods, Black women are considered Earths). Their members are considered Godbody.” — Urban Dictionary
Jesus Christ died on a cross to remove the sins of the world. Related, for approximately fifteen years, Kanye West has likely believed himself to be a Christ-like human, and Godbody level creative. In the 50 years or so of rap music’s existence though, we never presumed mental illness as being related to any black man’s proclamation via lyrics and microphones that their Five Percenter and therefore hip-hop culture-related brilliance was directly related to their celestial proximity to the hand of God. Concurrent to this statement, if you ask anyone who suffers from mental illness though, when it goes unchecked, it causes a level of psychological angst that likely causes a pain worse than death. Kanye West is still alive. Moreso, he’s now — via a hastily scribbled missive on the cover of ye , his just-released eighth album — a living and breathing, self-admitted sufferer of bi-polar disorder. Thus, Kanye West is the first rap superstar to ever have to release a record wherein they have to shed their God-body Christ-likeness and instead just be a man trying to be really good at a job requiring super-human greatness.
If a believer in Christianity and the Holy Bible, imagine a story wherein, instead of sentencing Jesus to death, Caiaphas instead released Jesus on probation. As well, he was released to psychiatric counseling that included a prescription for Xanax. This makes the story of Jesus into well, a story wherein a song like ye album opener “I Thought About Killing You” makes sense. The first words Kanye speaks on the album are “most beautiful thoughts are beside the darkest.” If that isn’t Jesus standing in the garden at Gethsemane questioning his mortality at the foot of Father God’s throne, then what is? It’s a striking moment for Kanye, a career gone full circle. The Jesus he evolved into is now the Jesus that damn near died for his, and our, sins. Now, more cautious than ever before, he’s attempting to boldly create at the level with which the world is accustomed to seeing and hearing.
Even crazier, think about a story of Jesus that includes Christ and his disciples, in lieu of a Last Supper, instead sitting in a cave in the Amazon Basin, and drinking ayahuasca, which is described by Wikipedia as an “entheogenic brew made out of Banisteriopsis caapi vine and other ingredients.” While doing so, Jesus and his devoted dozen had their spirits awakened, true Earthly purpose for living revealed, were shed of their egoism, and emerged reborn. On “Yikes,” Kanye West directly alludes to using DMT, aka dimethyltryptamine, the active hallucinogenic agent in ayahuasca, in order to “[die] and lived again.” Again, imagine a Holy Bible wherein Jesus isn’t crucified, entombed, and arisen, yet scathed, three days later. Kanye’s attempting ascension into the next phase of his career on ye, and because he’s still doing so while inhabiting our shared physical plane, it’s well, a little more than difficult.
Ten years ago, Kanye released an album entitled 808s and Heartbreak which, in retrospect, is where we witnessed Kanye’s slow decline into manic depression. Sparse electronic production and Autotuned vocals highlight songs like “Coldest Winter,” which, as a song, is a lovelorn ballad that is defined by a level of poetry that is quite easily approachable to the average listener (Goodbye my friend will I ever love again / Memories made in the coldest winter) and thus wholly connective.
On ye, we find Kanye in likely an even deeper pit of despair than a decade prior. The song is literally entitled “Ghost Town,” and to continue the previously made Christ analogy, this would be Jesus wandering through his mind prior to being empowered to remove the boulder from his grave. The use of a sped up soul sample of Blind Willie Johnson’s “Trouble Will Soon Be Over” to note “someday I’ll wear a starry crown” is extraordinarily haunting. Rather boldly Kanye is weaving a loop through the first fifteen years of his career as some sort of Pablo Picasso style creative age, then ascending into heaven. Of course, this makes every bit of Kanye’s last album, The Life of Pablo, make all of the sense. More self-aware than he’s ever been, the level of using a real-life diagnosis of bi-polar disorder to then rectify the existence of your physical self with the spiritual essence you’ve activated in the real-life creative realm is amazing.
“Ghost Town” also does well as a pair with Jay-Z’s 4:44 album track “Kill Jay-Z.” Jay’s another Godbody level hip-hop creative who has emerged from psychoanalysis and shed his Godbody-ness for a more tradtional humanity. However, his Godbody-ness is much less Christian in its exposition via his creativity, and moreso “dope-rapperness” as some sort of Freudian “Superugly” super-ego evovled as superpretty and redemptive.
However, because of Kanye’s bizarre conflation of Christianity, Five Percenter theology, revelation for self-actualization purposes, and the power inherent in the Delta blues, something stunningly transcendental occurs. When 070 Shake joins in and says, “…and nothing hurts anymore…I feel kinda free!” it’s the album’s most significant victory. Maybe, even bigger than Jay-Z’s many attempts via 4:44 at asking for some kind of larger forgiveness of hip-hop’s sins against humanity, is the moment that all sins by rap against the world are forgiven. It’s raw and unhinged, yes, but also exalted, and brilliant.
The rapping, and Christ-like spiritual essence of Kanye West is dead. And in some way rap music, in all of its ostentatious bluster, angst, and mania, has died, too. What shockingly began one year ago on June 30 with Jay-Z’s 4:44 has now finally come to a close on June 1 with ye. From the big brother to the little, rap’s godfather legacy to its adopted hipster sons, and now, from cradle to grave, and now past heaven, past the throne at the right hand of God, into the unknown beyond. This is an album much larger than Kanye West, a man of flawed and failed human flesh, could handle. But, it’s the Jesus in Kanye, though, that though savaged — in being neither crucified, nor entombed — still walks. Sans disciples, sans humanity, he now stands alone, afraid, but undeterred. Jesus still walks. ye is Kanye West’s worst album, but it’s also Kanye telling us that his Godbody spirit is alive, and evolved.
