A ludicrous roster of guests serves only to show off his contact book – or, in the case of Nicki Minaj's stunning cameo on Monster, completely upstage him. West flags up his own self-satisfied, laboured jokes in an increasingly nasal flow: he whinges, we cringe. His way with words is now at exactly the level one would expect from that crushingly obvious title. This album offers beats that retread past glories, and an emotional palette narrowed to a range roughly as wide as West's navel. Moreover, his talents have severely deteriorated since his days as rap's golden boy producer.
He thinks he's an aesthete, but his taste (porn stars, luxe signifiers of high/white society) is mundane. He fancies himself a tortured artist, but his mixture of ego and self-loathing could not be more of a cliche. A fascinating public persona is not synonymous with fascinating musical output, and while West's attention-seeking behaviour may be grotesquely compelling, the manchild himself is not.
0 kommentar(er)
