Our Least Favorite Kanye West Albums

This week on the newsletter, the boys elaborate on which Ye album is their least favorite and why.

Mar 11, 2022

Welcome back,

This past week on the podcast, we continued our “For the Love of Kanye” series by recapping the Jeen-Yuhs documentary trilogy, reacting to Donda 2 and talking about his latest antics, including the controversial “Eazy” music video.

To wrap up months of Kanye-centric episodes, we decided to talk about the one area in which he consistently shines — his music. But rather than contributing to the age-old “what’s Kanye’s best album” discourse, we decided to instead highlight our least favorite.

You’ll find each of our rankings below, plus an in-depth explanation about why our least favorites… are our least favorites.

Happy reading!

Ep. 81: For the love of Kanye Pt. 2

Our Least Favorite Kanye Albums

Nnamdi: The Gospel Album that Lacks Depth

Nnamdi, @NnamEgwuon

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Graduation
Late Registration
808s & Heartbreak
College Dropout
TLOP
DONDA
Ye
Yeezus
Donda 2
Jesus is King

Jesus is King was far from Kanye West’s first juncture in gospel. Over the course of his career he’s made classic Sunday-morning staples like College Dropout’s “I’ll Fly Away,” and The Life of Pablo’s “Ultra Light Beam” and “Low Lights.” It’s been well established that Kanye West has the sound nailed down. Which is fitting, considering he’s yet to make an album in which his rapping outshines his producing. But what happens when the innovative sound of an album isn’t enough to justify how lackluster all of the other elements are? That’s the position I find myself in with Jesus Is King. As refined and contemplative and soulful as the album sounds – its cheap lyrics, and failure to commit to its own theme (an ode to Christ) place it at the bottom of my Kanye ranking.

The album in itself served as a redemption of sorts for Kanye. Netflix’s new documentary “Jeen-Yuhs” paints the picture clearly – after a period of very public breakdowns, Kanye turned to a place that’s long been a place of comfort - the church. He became “radically saved,” founded his Sunday Service gospel choir and pledged to spread the word of God. The problem is none of that – his period of personal turmoil, his journey back to the church, lessons learned amid his “reawakening” – made the actual album. Instead, we got a bunch of fake-deep lyrics, weak references to God and general concepts so half-assed that it almost felt insulting to call it gospel. The premise of “Closed on Sunday'' is literally that God is Kanye’s Chick-Fil-A. Kanye felt that was sufficient.

And then there’s the response to the album. Even though it was pretty widely bashed by fans and critics alike, it became the new face of gospel music. It topped the Billboard Gospel charts. It won the Top Christian and Top Gospel Award at the Billboard Music Awards. It earned him his 22nd Grammy award after taking home “Best Contemporary Christian Music Album.” If you want to listen to a good gospel album produced by Kanye West, listen to his 2019 follow-up Jesus Is Born. But as far as I’m concerned, Jesus Is King is a weak attempt to turn Kanye’s narrow interpretation of religion into some sort of new-age spiritual proverb…and it failed.

The 97 Demo @the97demo

This week, we reacted to "jeen-yuhs: A Kanye Trilogy." .@COODIEROCK's decades worth of footage added a level of humanity to a rapper too-often mired in controversy. There was one scene that really stood out:

Noah: The Short Album that Wasn’t Short Enough

Noah, @noahamcgee

Late Registration
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
College Dropout
Graduation
808s & Heartbreak
TLOP
DONDA
Yeezus
Donda 2
Jesus is King
Ye

Now, let’s put what I think is Kanye West’s “worst album” into perspective. Mr. West has one of the best, most acclaimed, creative and outstanding discographies in the history of music, let alone hip-hop. So even his “worst” album is still a lot better than many of rappers' best. But this album is what I call forgettable.

Like many of Kanye’s albums in the last 5-6 years, Ye feels rushed, unfinished and unrefined. But this one is by far the driest, uninspiring and most boring. It isn’t surprising considering that Kanye reworked the entire album after his infamous rant in the TMZ office where he uttered one of the dumbest statements in the history of man, “When you hear about slavery for 400 years that sounds like a choice.” He tries to attempt to comment on the controversy on the track “Wouldn’t Leave” when he says, “I said, ‘Slavery a choice,’ they said, ‘How, Ye?’ Just imagine if they caught me on a wild day.” Like many lines on this album, none of them connect to form full thoughts.

Other lowlights on the album include “All Mine” which just might have the worst chorus in the entirety of West's discography, which sounds like Ant Clemons is singing for the first time in his life.

Some may argue that this is some of Kanye’s most personal and reflective lyrics of his career, I would say that it’s some of the most unclear and disorganized lyrics of his career. None of the songs sounds focused or engaging, besides “Ghost Town,” which has a psychedelic, joyous and uplifting feel to it that works. But besides that, nothing of this album is of note.

This was disappointing for me at the time considering Ye was making some of the most inspired music of his career at the famous Wyoming ranch. Remember, this album was a part of the announcement that Nas, Pusha-T, Teyana Taylor and Kids See Ghosts were all releasing seven-track albums (all produced by Kanye) a week apart from each other for five weeks straight. This album is the worst one, which is even more damning for the album considering I love short projects. But, for the 24-minute long Ye, it could not end fast enough.

Y’all hear about this?

Avery: Kanye’s newest feels like his most uninspired

Avery, @AveryDalal

College Dropout
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
The Life of Pablo
Late Registration
Graduation
808s & Heartbreak
Ye
Donda
Yeezus
Jesus Is King
Donda 2

I know I may be cheating because Donda 2 is not on streaming services, but I feel comfortable counting it because it was released on the platform that Kanye said it would be released on.

That being said, what I heard from this album… I really did not like it. Granted, it doesn’t sound finished and a lot of Kanye’s lyrics are just mumbles, but when you can hear him, it is continuing the weird harassment of his ex-wife and her current flame.

I found the songs “Security” and “Get Lost” to be particularly unbearable for cringy lyrics and just plain not fun to listen to, respectfully. There are songs that I feel have wasted potential like “Louie Bags” that could have been an interesting song about navigating the fashion industry, but just kinda ends up being about nothing. There are songs I like, like “Happy” and “We Did it Kid,” but to me, they aren’t memorable because of Kanye’s rapping, and rather the features and instrumentals.

I think a lot of these issues I have can be fixed with a more refined version of the album, which I do hope we get, but this album left me feeling very sad for Kanye and, as of right now, is my least favorite project of his to date.

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