Six years later, he was doing the same thing on The Life of Pablo’s “ Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. It was Cudi who sang the haunting hook on “ Gorgeous,” the second track on West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. His lush baritone has appeared on every one of West’s albums since, becoming a sort of instrumental flourish unto itself. Cudi has been one of the most important and influential figures in West’s expanded universe since 2008’s 808s & Heartbreak, a landmark, career-altering album that was steeped in the then up-and-coming Cudi’s influence. For starters, it feels much more like a Kid Cudi vehicle than a West vehicle, at least outwardly: West doesn’t even take a verse on the album’s first track, “Feel the Love,” which features Pusha T (once again) comparing himself to Eazy-E and declaring that he “love to fuck to trap music” while Cudi handles the hook, “I can still feel the love,” repeated over and over, a phrase whose exultant quality is belied by the sighing, minor-key organ behind it. Kids See Ghosts is the first full-length collaboration of its kind that West has done since teaming up with Jay-Z for 2011’s Watch the Throne, but for all significant purposes, Kids See Ghosts couldn’t be farther removed from that luxury-rap blockbuster.
That’s no one’s fault but his own, of course, but it’s also a bit of a shame, because Kids See Ghosts is excellent, a work of adventuresome confidence that boasts no small shortage of real beauty. This is the first work West has done in ages that doesn’t feel like it’s in an argument with something. If West’s name weren’t (figuratively) on this project, we might be listening to and talking about it more than we are now, the first time something like that can be said about any Kanye West record since 2004. The album -which, if we’re being technical, is the self-titled debut of a duo called Kids See Ghosts-has underperformed commercially since its release, the starkest sign yet that “Kanye West” is testing everyone’s patience with Kanye West. I found myself wishing I could live in that latter world just this past weekend, when I spent no small handful of hours listening to Kids See Ghosts, West and longtime collaborator Kid Cudi’s seven-track, 24-minute burst of sound that was dropped online on Friday.
I’ve never once wished that I could live in a world without Kanye West, but I have sometimes-recently, more than sometimes-wished that I could live in a world without “Kanye West,” the celebrity grotesquerie who haunts our culture like some perpetually expanding rough draft of a horrible think piece.
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