Let’s not talk about the audio, or how it sounds. Because even though I love Kanye, musically this album wasn’t anything ground breaking.
But the album stands for a few things. It definitely stands as a voice for those who need help, from their ethnic backgrounds and upbringing. It also stands for his remembrance for his mother, his loved ones, and who God is to him as well. These things are clearly just stated out right, with little imagination.
But that’s another thought process of what we would consider a lyrically strong album. I think Kanye knows what a lyrically deep song might looks like, he’s obviously done enough. But for some reason, repetition, and simplicity, is his current main message medium. Maybe it’s laziness, maybe it’s a refrain idea. There’s a lot of ideas of why and how he would choose these ways of speaking.
I’d like to reference Bieber’s Peaches – and how simple his approach was for most of the song. More than that, a number of artists are approaching that simple, short catchy chorus. It forms a earworm that just crawls through your internal melody for days. In that same way, until now, I still hear Kanye saying, “Junya Watanabe on my Wri!“ It’s not a super verse, but the way he did it, it’s really stuck on.
At the same time, this album goes for another Christian hit. He’s expressing his Christian faith all over again, and pulling his friends in to be part of it too. It’s really something to get so many artists in to say that they’re willing to speak up outright about their sin and their struggles in their lives. I think it takes effort, especially because of what this means for someone in America to associate with mainstream Christianity. I don’t think the cultural identity of it matches the intended theology, but it lies as a close tie to tradition and conservative politics.
]These associations for liberal artists that are known to not follow conservative notions are a step in another direction. A direction where we wouldn’t really be comfortable with as a whole. I find that its a struggle, myself included, to agree with the idea of a Christendom again. I think society has moved beyond that, and it polarizes more than unites. But at the same time, there is the idea that it could happen. I am slightly encouraged by that, and at the same time very wary of what that implicates as a whole too.
But at the end of the day, I think I could definitely chant along with the refrain “I’ll be honest, we all liars“. We all struggle with our faith, and our stands in one way or another. If we pretend that we’re all okay, and we’re not okay (see what I did there), it just becomes a hypocritical expression of what a Christian looks like.
I hope that Kanye finds someone to walk with him. Someone who’s willing to take the words that Jesus said and lives them out. Not someone hiding behind theology or tradition, but someone who just wants to live rightly before God, no matter the persecution. Even if it means that the Church itself doesn’t agree with it. I really hope God will send someone to him, to help Kanye live a life closer to God. If Johnny Cash could do it, so could Kanye.