The Life of Pablo Review: Kanye West’s 18-Track Argument With Himself Earns an 8

“The Life of Pablo” is Kanye West’s 2016 album, 18 tracks, 58 minutes, and it plays like a man refusing to finish a thought before starting three more. It swings from hymn-like devotion to sex talk to grief to comedy inside single songs. That restlessness is the whole point.

Ultralight Beam Opens the Church Doors

“Ultralight Beam” runs 5:20 and sets the tone: choir, prayer, no drums to speak of. It is the strongest opening statement West has put on a record in years. “Famous,” at 3:14, follows a few tracks later and turns a blunt line about Taylor Swift into the album’s most talked-about moment.

Father Stretch My Hands Breaks the Beat

The two-part “Father Stretch My Hands” (2:15 and 2:09) rides a warped piece of borrowed sound into something loose and unfinished-sounding, on purpose. “Feedback,” “Low Lights,” and “Highlights” move through six minutes of the record without much urgency, ordinary rather than essential.

I Love Kanye Turns the Joke Inward

“Freestyle 4” is chaos with a beat, two minutes of West narrating his own scene. Then “I Love Kanye” arrives at 0:44 seconds long, a stripped solo-voice joke that doubles as the closest thing here to self-criticism.

I Love Kanye

Wolves Closes a Hard Stretch

“Waves,” “FML,” and “Real Friends” form the personal center of the album, three songs in a row dealing with marriage, fear, and family strain, running a combined eleven minutes. “Wolves” closes that stretch at 3:59 with the record’s coldest production. “Silver Surfer Intermission” is a 59-second breather, barely a song, more a punctuation mark before the record’s back half.

No More Parties in LA Runs Longest

“30 Hours” stretches to 5:25 and rambles pleasantly, a phone call turned into rhythm. “No More Parties in LA,” at 6:14, is the album’s longest track and its best rap performance, verses trading back and forth over a beat that never lets up. “Facts (Charlie Heat Version)” is a blunt, proud drop after that high. “Fade” closes the record at 3:13, built on borrowed voices and disco bass, ending the album on rhythm instead of a statement.

Eighteen tracks is too many.

The back half loses strength under songs that feel like sketches West never returned to finish, and the sequencing resists any single mood taking hold. But the peaks — “Ultralight Beam,” “Famous,” “Real Friends,” “No More Parties in LA,” “Fade” — are as good as anything in his body of work. This is an album that argues with itself track to track and mostly wins the argument. It is not neat, and it does not want to be.

“The Life of Pablo” is a mess that knows it is a mess and dares you to call it unfinished. It mostly earns that dare.

2016 albums · album review · hip hop · Kanye West · The Life of Pablo