as well as assuming they’re going to have sex because of it, but apparently Taylor Swift herself came up with the line. In one of Kanye’s many tweets, he said he was told that she had said it during a dinner with a mutual friend. Kanye can be a jerk, but I don’t think he’s dishonest, and her publicist- issued statement about misogyny after the fact seems a little bit unfair, considering she apparently had a phone conversation with Kanye and okay’d the line. I liked Taylor Swift’s synthy dream of a last album, but her overall persona is a little bit saccharine for me: it seems to teeter too much between wounded doe-girl and empowered woman to be anything but contrived. Like, you’re the most popular musician alive right now, stop whining about how the boys hurt your feewings. Try drying your eyes ona Calvin Klein model’s boxers or something, you'll feel better. Her feminism has always seemed to be a bit of a marketing strategy for me. I’d much rather listen to someone who is authentically a total D-bag (Kanye) than a syrupy album about minimizing your personal power when it’s convenient to get boyfriends. Taylor Swift makes me want to blow chunks. I’m a bad feminist, I know, I know. As well, this song features both Sister Nancy and Nina Simone on the outro, and until Taylor Swift starts promoting black female artists as much as Kanye does, she can stay in her corner with her talks of “sisterhood”. Yeezy is problematic in how he treats women, but musically, he practices intersectionality. 5. Feedback Kanye goes back to Yeezus’ roots, with some great dissonant synth backgrounds here. He also references Gospel’s origins, “you heard about the GOOD news?” He demands that people ‘wake up”, referencing the Black Lives Matter movement, “hands up we’re just doing what the cops taught us.” This line is tragic, echoing unarmed black teen Michael Brown’s pleas to the police officer who subsequently shot him. “Hands up, then the cops shot us”, he says, outlining the helplessness faced by people whose only crime is existing in their own skins. This is Kanye’s most political track on the album: later on, he says, “rich slave in the fabric store picking cotton”. As arich man, he has more opportunity than most black men, but here he suggests that he’s still subject to many of the forces of white hegemony, especially in terms of his endeavors in clothing design. 6. Lowlights ..is a pared down piano-backed gospel intro to the next track. It talks about God. Whatever. 7. Highlights An earlier version of this track featured Madonna in place of Young Thug, and it was a lot poppier. I think I liked the Madonna version better. It sounded like something indie-electronic boppers Purity Ring might make in another Danny Brown collaboration, and had an upper end that sounded like shredded confetti. Sonically, I think the Young Thug collab fits better with the rest of the album’s frenetic masculinity. Also, G the line about wishing his dick had Go-Pro is hilarious. Near the end of the track, a booming, boisterous beat that mimics Young Thug’s well-rounded baritone segways into a great opportunity for Kanye to deliver a really kicky verse... which he completely wastes to talk about over-eating, his trainer, and whomever his brother-in-law is sleeping with. I get that Kanye is approaching middle age, and he’s all about family now. This song is about how the banality (or, Kanye’s version of it) is restful and awesome and wonderfully ordinary. I get it. But every time I think of how awesome this beat is I get angry at him for doing it disservice. Part of what made earlier Kanye efforts great was that his overblown ego was matched only by his chronic insecurity—both fed into each other and created each other like some cosmic snake eating and crapping itself for eternity. Now that domesticity has tempered his insecurity, he’s got his ego, and no need to make clever, manic verses. I think. Or maybe he just doesn’t care. Either way, this verse is lazy and I hate it. 8. Freestyle 4 Oh hell yes. Beautiful, eerie, high-strung violins open, contrasting anxiously with a raspy-voiced open. Gothic highs contrast with manic industrial vocals from Kanye. The tempo gets more and more frantic, as the beat shifts into something that sounds like a hospital heart monitor. Then... a sound like an error message, and it’s done. This would have fit right in on Yeezus, but the mid-highs are a lot more complex than a lot of the darker strainings on that album. Also, Kanye pleads with a prostitute to bring her price down, presumably because he’s $53 million in debt. If 1 could make out with this song, I would. 9. | Love Kanye It’s almost as if Kanye anticipated criticism for his lazy-ass verse on ‘Highlights’. I can’t explain to you how perfect this song is, or how brilliantly self-aware and tongue in cheek Kanye can be when he needs to. Suffice to say, I’ve memorized this, and plan to include “I love you like Kanye loves Kanye” in my wedding vows to whatever sap I trick into marrying me. Also, that little giggle at the end? Absolutely precious. uffice to say, I’ve memorized this, and plan to include “T love you like Kanye loves Kanye” in my wedding vows 2 pa Right here is where I tentatively forgave Kanye the artist for every stupid, ignorant thing he’s said, just like we all forgave Justin Bieber for being the literal human personification of a dildo because he put out an album full of bangers. Pop culture fans are fickle and superficial nerf herders. 10. Waves This song is currently the most-streamed song on the Billboard charts. You go, Glen Coco. I think it’s kind of boring so I’m not going to get too into it. Basically, it’s got a mellow bed that sounds almost like it could be backing a slower Beach Boys track and is emotive. It definitely carries the gospel theme. Chance the Rapper and noted awful person Chris Brown are on this track. 11. FML This has backings that sound like autotuned church organs, and rat-tat-tat sparse snare beats. It’s super effective! Kanye says here that his wife, Kim Kardashian, probably doesn’t like it when he sleeps with randoms, which we can all relate to. The beat gets denser and The Weeknd comes in for the chorus, “Wish I would go ahead and fuck my life up/Can’t let them get to me/And even though I always fuck my life up/Only Student Voice 13 Ican mention me”, which is a testament to the power of choice that only the most- elegantly self-destructive may dream of. As usual, Kanye manages to extract the best work from his collaborators: The Weeknd sounds almost operatic here. There’s a really dissonant backing vocal that I can’t identify that sounds like Nirvana played ona record player at the wrong speed: it’s disorienting and really adds to the sense of a complete loss of control alluded to by the lyrics. This song is a masterpiece. 12. Real Friends Well, if Kanye ever decides to put out a children’s album, we’ll know what it'll sound like. This is a testament to the difficulty of maintaining lasting relationships—reminiscent of “Welcome to Heartbreak”. Kanye gets more personal here, talking about being a deadbeat relative: “How many of us are real friends to real friends?” This track begins a hilarious later theme of this album: Kanye fucking hates one of his cousins. This dude apparently stole a laptop from Kanye, and Kanye says he loves him still. 1 don’t believe it. 13. Wolves This track initially featured Sia and Vic Mensa, but they were replaced by an outro by Frank Ocean (hi Frank, where’s the new album?). It’s haunting, with a background singer making Tagaq-esque unearthly ululations. It’s also the type of song an English major salivates for, full of Biblical allusions. “What if Mary was in the club/Met Joseph surrounded by hella thugs.” This is the closest that Kanye comes to reconciling his lofty spiritual aspirations, family, and with his high-wheeling lifestyling. It’s near mystic, and it feels like growth. A gentle piano accompanies Frank Ocean’s thoughtful intonations on how precious life is. 14, Silver Surfer Intermission This is a voicemail that addresses Kanye’s beef with Wiz Khalifa about the album’s former title “Waves”—the guy who came up with the “wavy” movement, Max B, is giving Kanye his blessing. Kanye West’s newest alter-ego: a vindictive Regina George.