Samples drop out abruptly, ideas are discarded mid-song, and most of these tracks vibrate with the phantom energy of layers deleted toward the end of their creation. At the time of its release, West’s previous album, 2013’s Yeezus, felt boldly minimalist in its production, but Pablo makes it seem baroque. Like much of Pablo, the sound of “Ultralight Beam” is so sparse, it’s almost skeletal. And because, contrary to conventional wisdom, West is not so deep into his own head that he can’t appreciate promising young talent, the most outspoken celebrity of our time obeys this rookie’s command. “This is my part, nobody else speak,” Chance says as the beat cuts out.
It’s a poignant moment, hip-hop past and present cross-fading into each other: West is graciously passing the baton to a gifted Chicago rapper almost half his age, and Chance is representing a generation of kids who learned to rap by memorizing every word of The College Dropout and then, eventually, adding their own flourishes. A goose-bump-inducing gospel choir drowns out his mortal mumblings, R&B powerhouse Kelly Price belts a showstopping benediction, and then, right when you’re expecting West to return and bring it all home, he lets 22-year-old Chance the Rapper shuffle in and deliver the most arresting verse on a Kanye record since Nicki Minaj decimated “Monster” back in 2010. West takes plenty of flak for being an egotist (and, to be fair, seems to delight in stoking that particular flame), but “Ultralight Beam” showcases his artistic generosity - he lets basically everyone else on this song steal his shine.
As it stands now, it’s the most stunning opening to any of West’s albums, and the kind of song that makes Yeezy nonbelievers stop in their tracks and rethink what they know about this dizzyingly contradictory artist. Pablo now opens with a song initially intended to be its finale, “Ultralight Beam.” This was the right choice it belongs up front. Pablo’s paint is still wet - which makes the fact that it occasionally approaches the grandeur of a masterpiece that much more astounding. The album “will never be for sale,” West tweeted on February 15, and as you read this, who knows if that’s still true. But this has been par for the course for Pablo, a piece of music in such a constant state of flux that it feels utterly anachronistic to call it an “album.” It is not a slab of vinyl so much as a puff of the Cloud - or an auto-refreshing playlist, the concrete facts of its existence seeming to transform day by day based on the whims (and grandiose tweets) of its creator. “ima fix wolves,” West tweeted later that afternoon to his 19 million followers, even if it was unclear to anybody but him exactly what needed fixing. But even after the album’s exclusive release to the streaming platform Tidal in the early hours of February 14, the track - and perhaps Pablo itself - still seems to be a work in progress. For the Pablo version, though, he’s made a last-minute switch and replaced Sia with the avant-garde composer Caroline Shaw, and Mensa with the reclusive (and sorely missed) R&B singer Frank Ocean. That line comes from the latest version of a stark, eerie song called “Wolves,” which West first debuted a year ago at a fashion show for his Yeezy 750 Boost sneaker, and back then, “Wolves” featured guest vocals from Sia and Vic Mensa.
Or at least I think he still asks that question on The Life of Pablo, but at press time, who can be sure. “What if Mary was in the club before she met Joseph?” Kanye West asks on his strange and sprawling seventh album, The Life of Pablo, which is, throughout, an audacious commingling of the sacred and the profane.
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