Kanye’s artistic career up until this point has gone through two major cycles, two distinct phases, “old Kanye” and “new Kanye”. Old Kanye is the young, determined, energetic version of him present on his first three projects, and the first cycle sees him work for success as an underdog on College Dropout, deal with success and expand the scope of his artistry on Late Registration and finally become acclimated to fame and success on Graduation. This version of Kanye dies on 808s and Heartbreak, where his world is completely torn from underneath him by the death of his mother, his split from his fiancé and the trappings of fame revealing themselves to empty. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy introduced us to a new version of Kanye, the tormented, egomaniacal genius, the Shakespearean tragic hero. This image was further developed on Yeezus and tension between this version of himself and the better person Kanye wanted to be was the core focal point of The Life of Pablo. ye sees Kanye finally shed the last vestiges of the Yeezus character, going through a major ego withdrawal that comes to close on Kids See Ghosts with him looking for respite in religion. Thus, we arrive at Jesus Is King, the first supposed step into a new era for Kanye, at least artistically.
There are a few issues with reviewing the album at this current moment. For one, the album is seemingly going through a Pablo-esque phase of being retroactively edited and remixed. The album dropped in an admitted rough state, and some parts of it remain so, though it would currently be rash to deride the project for this given how in a month, the mix could be completely different. On one hand, you can only evaluate what is actually released, but at the same time, the album is going to live on long past this current period, and it seems unfair to brand the album as one thing when the form it ends up in is completely different. Kanye reviews in general tend to be somewhat pointless anyway, in no small part due to his incredible ability to divide opinion in a way no other major artist can. His last universally acclaimed project (assuming we ignore a certain melon…) was MBDTF, and that dropped nearly ten years ago. Since then, every Kanye release has split opinion, the fans call it a masterpiece and the detractors call it an abomination. With time, each of his releases has come to be viewed more favourably, usually around the time that the influence of each project is clear to see on the face of popular music. This happened with 808s, it happened with Yeezus, it’s happening to Pablo right now and only time will tell how history will view the two-hander of ye and Kids See Ghosts, though personally I consider it among his best. Due to these two reservations about Kanye and his work’s strange relationship with time, consider this not so much a review but a mediation on the album, it’s place in his discography and what it means for Kanye going forward.
The backlash on Twitter to the album has been about as dramatic as the one ye received, though this time I understand it a great deal more. The response to ye existed mostly as a protest against his support of Trump, wearing of the MAGA hat and comments of slavery. Of course, criticism of the work itself existed too, with most touching on the album’s brief length and the more hastily produced songs, many of which have been rewritten following his “slavery was a choice” debacle. ye arguably worked this rather slapdash production to its favour, creating a very intimate snapshot of Kanye’s mental state at the time of release. JIK, on the other hand, does not, and the lack of major overshadowing events truly does impact the perception of it, with all Kanye’s recent dramas relating directly to the actual content of the album. Those who find his recent turn to Christianity confusing, or even insulting, will find neither respite nor explanation on this album. Kanye’s expression of faith is endearing, and at times, if you don’t think about it too much, the spiritual production and vocals can be uplifting, if in a simple way. That said, all the ‘Kanye-isms’ we’ve come to know and love/hate are still here. Pierre Bourne-produced banger ‘On God’ sees Ye rap about, among other things, the fact that his merch is so expensive because “the IRS want they fifty plus our tithe.” However, just a few lines earlier he spits about how he bleaches his hair for every time he “could’ve died”, and the song carries an infectious energy that makes it hard to be angry at. Similarly, the moody ‘Closed on Sunday’ contains a new contender for ‘Most Kanye Lyric’ with “closed on Sunday, you’re my Chick-Fil-A” joining the illustrious company of “if I fuck this model” and “hurry up with my damn croissants.” The version of Kanye is still very much the same as on ye, but seemingly lacking the introspection or courage that album so brilliantly displayed. At times the clash between his retained ego and supposed devotion to Christ comes off as blatantly hypocritical. I don’t doubt his turn to faith, but it’s very easy to read into it as a ploy to gain back public sympathy.
No small part of my disappointment came from my previous exposure to the Yandhi leaks, some of which have actually made their way onto JIK, albeit now with more Jesus. The exact relationship between JIK and the unreleased Yandhi is unclear, though it seems that JIK is effectively Yandhi 2.0, given the tracks that carry over from the leak and the rumours that other leaked tracks, such as the Nicki Minaj vehicle ‘New Body’ were at one point rewritten to tie into the religious themes of JIK. The album suffers from a lack of progression and flow, with each song feeling quite contained, only really linked by the focus on God and some aesthetic similarities. They all feel like they belong on the album, but the album lacks the structural strength of something like MBDTF or Yeezus. Even ye and the infamously schizophrenic Pablo have a clear narrative throughout, and the absence of one here is striking. I’ve seen arguments that the album has a 5-1-5 structure (@KanyePodcast on Twitter), with the first five songs focusing on his own internal faith, and the last five seeing him try to enact that faith in the outside world, but even this is far weaker than emotional journey of ye or the complex narratives of his other works. This isn’t the case with the whole album, but few songs pass the three minute mark, with ‘Follow God’ (1:45) and ‘Jesus Is Lord’ (0:49) being the worst offenders. Last year’s Wyoming projects experimented with a shorter length, all clocking in at around 21 minutes, and whilst JIK is longer than any of these at 27 minutes, its lack of development on the actual tracks leaves it feeling meagre by comparison.
The album also suffers from feeling somewhat one note at times, given the overwhelming focus on religion. Kanye has never made a project this laser focused before, and it does feel at first like there’s nothing else going on here. There is more going on, but it’s harder to access than it has been on any of his recent projects, at times as oblique as Yeezus. Most of the real meat of the album actually comes from its relationship to Yeezus, with the album acting as a complete antithesis to it. The album cover is a more wholesome version of the Yeezus cover, the blue vinyl as opposed to the bare cd with a red sticker. Kanye expresses a strong desire to atone for Yeezus, especially on tracks like ‘Follow God’ and ‘Hands On’, both of which directly reference lyrics from Yeezus. The first ends with the scream that also ends Yeezus’ ‘I Am A God,’ Kanye now saying God has shown him how he wasn’t being “Christ-like” at the time. ‘Hands On’ references ‘On Sight’, the opener for Yeezus, and he implies he was working for the devil at the time. The song also contains the line: “cut out all the lights, he the light,” which somehow manages to disregard the majority of his back catalogue (most Kanye albums have a song that has “lights” in the title), rejecting it all for God. The album contains many other weird ties to his past work, and in this sense it is a Kanye fans dream, an album that keeps revealing more as you look deeper into it, even if what it says is a bit weird. Worrying, however, is the thought that the album is only interesting for its meta relevance, as Kanye utterly fails to provide interesting or nuanced content regarding religion in any way.
JIK’s one saving grace is its production. Following on naturally from both ye and the Yandhi leaks, it moves back and forth between gospel, gospel-inspired hip-hop and futuristic, synth-driven maximalist pop. The album sounds like it is intended to be performed live, with towering vocal harmonies from the Sunday Service choir dominating about half the track list. ‘Selah’ and ‘Use This Gospel’ both lean into the kind of maximalist minimalism Kanye has been building on since ‘Runaway,’ both to amazing results, though the latter is somewhat ruined by sloppy mixing on the Clipse feature (somehow the fact that Kanye managed to reunite Clipse is one of the less interesting things about this project) and a chorus that is so weak it boggles the mind why he changed it from the original featured on Yandhi. ‘Every Hour’ and ‘God Is’ are both straight up gospel songs, the former being a joyous, bouncy intro sung by the Sunday Service choir and the latter being a genuinely earnest song sung by Kanye about his faith in God. ‘Water’ is an almost reggae inspired synth pop instrumental over which Ye and new collaborator Ant Clemons sing about purification and baptism. A great deal of the vocal mixing is quite rough, but this does lend it a nice, raw quality which actually serves the project well. It also needs to be said that for the most part, Kanye’s flows are on point, more so than usual, especially on ‘Follow God’ and ‘On God.’
I find it impossible to enjoy JIK. In many ways, the album is nothing special, barely more interesting than the most plain Christian rap album. The only thing truly interesting about it is its meta relevance, and in this sense, I wonder if Kanye is now too big to fail, if anything he puts out becomes interesting merely through its association to him. The spectacle of Kanye continues on, but it carries a particularly worrying undertone now. I can’t shake the feeling that the project is a result of a downturn in his mental health. Kanye has been very public about how he stopped taking meds for his bipolar disorder around the same time the transition from Yandhi to JIK occurred, and it’s impossible not to see the two as linked. His turn to God, while clearly sincere, feels like a desperate struggle to define and redeem himself, much like his turn to MAGA last year, and his recent interviews show a Kanye confused and worried about his place in the world.
It’s equally impossible to say where he goes from here, with the album itself possibly seeing additions or remixes down the road. He has declared that he’s done with secular music, that he’s going to re-record all his old material without explicit content, and if he does, I see no outcome other than this being the death of his career as a serious artist. Certain Kanye fans will always lap up whatever he puts out, but should his next two or three projects follow in JIK’s footsteps, his appeal to the wider audience will almost certainly die out, and this will be remembered as the moment Kanye’s star imploded, and he began to collapse in on himself.
