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Samsung Galaxy Presents JAY Z and Kanye West At SXSW

Source: Rick Kern / Getty

Kanye West is about to round out the end of 2018 with three more albums in the works. I want you to seriously ask yourself, Do you care? Coming from a true Ye fan who can remember the first song he played on a loop for days after hearing it on a hip hop compilation album (“Through The Wire”, that sample still gets me), if you would’ve told me Mr. West would drop five albums in one year my head would’ve exploded from excitement. But a Kanye West fan in 2018 definitely needs a break from the constant headlines placing West in scenarios that range from newsworthy to thoughts that could’ve stayed in Twitter drafts. Or at least an explanation on what’s going on with the outspoken speaker of truths from the Chi.

Last week West took to Twitter to post a picture of an album cover, the album title Yandhi and the date September 29, 2018. The cover had a similar design to the jarring, dividing and critically acclaimed album Yeezus that dropped in 2013 so fans and blogs began imagining the second coming of the Yeezus era; a very personal and creatively freeing moment in Kanye’s catalogue where he swan dived from the high expectations listeners had due to his past career defining albums and gave us a game changing album (“You give us what we need / it may not be what we want,”). Even though West is constantly updating us with tweets on ideas he’s working on and sharing screenshots of texts from his influential friends on Instagram, details are very scarce for Yandhi.

The ninth studio Ye album is coming a day before West performs for the season 44 premiere of SNL. When thinking about the year Yeezus dropped, Kanye West’s life seemed good on paper but the album let the controversial artist dive deep into his inner turmoil and showed fans the intense thoughts from a man on top of the world with everything to lose (Replay “Black Skinhead”, “New Slaves”, and “Hold My Liquor” for a refresher). Between sold-out stadium tours, the birth of his first child North, his engagement to Kim Kardashian, the signing of his Adidas deal and the infamous interview with Sway, West could take his pick on what to be inspired by. Life hasn’t slowed down since then but to make a sequel for such a polarizing album, fans are expecting a lot more than the seven track Ye affair that we got in June. Hearing west discuss being bi-polar, a father and a husband was humanizing but his lyrical depth hasn’t exceeded his last musical masterpiece My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

By the end of this week we’ll know where Yandhi will rank musically within West’s catalogue and more importantly we’ll know if it’s safe to be a Kanye West fan again. This year West’s persona and highly debatable comments were louder than the music. The art that most people could respect got overshadowed by MAGA support tweets, unnecessary rap beefs and extreme opinions on slavery being a choice. This isn’t the first time fans have had to reconsider listening to an artist’s music because their opinions or life decisions were hard to accept but Kanye West is an example of how difficult it can be to support artists that don’t seem to support you. Seeing your idol support public figures and dangerous ideologies that make being a minority in this world more difficult obviously sucks but when you can go back to their first three albums and hear a soul that hadn’t been tainted by fame, social class and “free thinking”, it makes you miss the old version of that artist so much more. So here’s hoping Yandhi is not only a musical resurgence but also a solid return from an artist fighting to get out of the sunken place.

Article By: Marcel Jeremiah