new kanye album...

i'm quite surprised you say that about rap albums babs, seen you bigging up rap/hip hop tunes quite a bit on here before - or is it that you like individual tunes but not albums usually?

hell of a life is my favourite track at the mo, amazing production and so nonchalant, but it changes every few hours.

yeah that's what i meant with "skip to the next song", i've made a thread about it before but i find that most rap songs outstay their welcome by a good minute or so. the beats don't really evolve and they just get boring. it's a genre where less is definitely better than more and it doesn't help that most rap albums seem to be 17 tracks long

about half way through the first run through of the uncut version, but the only track that's really grabbed my attention so far is Monster. Everything else, while brilliantly produced, clean, lyrically competent and slick has left me feeling a little uninspired. Too many cheesy r&b/pop choruses.

I've never really rated Kanye or Jay-Z as hip hop artists (good pop stars and pop writers/performers) but was expecting a lot from this considering the list of collaborators, but it still feels like typical kanye piece of work....just not my thing i guess.

But, i'll persevere and see if something clicks.

Yeah thats a great point, I was talking to Jamie (titchjuicy) about this the other day, although this album is long, its only 13 songs and sounds a lot more cohesive, I hate it when you have a hip-hop album that is 23 tracks long, 7 of them being pointless skits and its almost like they've just thrown everything that is half decent that they have recorded during the sessions onto the album, it makes so many hip-hop albums bloated and tedious.

Most of my favourite hip-hop albums are ones that have chewed the fat back and are shorter and leaner, sometimes the skits work, but I almost feel like so many artist feel they need to pad the album out in a quantity of quality mentality and that rarely works.

Agree on the points about Kanye & Jay Z, I said earlier that this is a hip-hop album in the broadest sense of the word, to me this just sounds like an expansive and ambitious pop album

Listened this morning & it was a blast, had such fun with it & it never seemed to drag which is unusual for me on a first listen when an LP goes well over the hour mark.

Listening to this for the first time now, only on track two but the South Park fish sticks mention was quality.

i love the fact that he ends runaway with a 4 minute fucking vocoder solo and it still sounds great and not over-indulgent

Here I was hoping he would stop using the horrible vocoder stuff that completely destroyed his latest efforts for me.

Obviously he doesn't use it all the time but it just put me off so completely the first time to even bother listening to his stuff after that.
Sure, it's my own narrow mindness but anyway.. I'll give this a try. It's too hyped up by the soapy not to bother with

the last album was more autotune than vocoder tbh. i actually think 808's is a little underrated, some cracking songs and he tried something different. but it was a bit much. anyway, on this album, any little tricks he uses are perfectly judged, they all work in context.

as kev said, it's an ambitious pop album and a fucking fantastic one at that.

I just wish rappers would stop it with the fucking skits. I dont think they add anything to an album and are speed bumps to the listening experience.

Except The $25 Sack Pyramid.

and 36 chambers

"...torture motherfucker. i'll fucking, i'll fucking..."

Even that has gotten annoying after time. Ill sew your ass cheeks closed and keep feeding you and feeding you just doesnt have the same affect after 1000 listens.

Had another couple of listens through and it hasn't grabbed me at all.

Even taking it as a pop album it still has faults imo. He drags a load of the tracks out for way too long, it feels bloated even though it's only 13 tracks.

'Monster' stands head and shoulders above anything else on there for me, but even that goes on too long (i reckon he should have cut it after nicki minaj's verse- which incidentally was brilliant)

I like 'So Appalled' too, and there were one or two others that i thought were pretty good, but can't remember the tracknames...other than that i think it's dull.

I like these guys review, hes like an american babu

my favourite bit of any song this year is in the full length version of runaway. after pusha t's excellent, quietly sneering verse, kanye chimes in at 4:25 with "never was much of a romantic, i could never take the intimacy"and that whole mini verse is so perfectly pitched against the braggadocio that precedes it. really resigned and melancholic. it makes me near goddamn fucking melt. gorgeous.

yo baz download this and tell me what you think
adventoutpost.com/2010/05/odd-future-presents-radical/

i downloaded it last night on your recommendation babs, will listen over the next coupla days and let you know