When the date of Jesus Is King’s release was announced and pushed a total of three times, it didn’t matter, solely because the Kanye Myth persisted. But something feels different about the hype this time. There’s very little point in forming a real opinion on the songs in Jesus is King, for their purpose has gone beyond being just songs. Instead, these are roundabout ways for him to announce to the world who he is at this point in time. Since the controversy of the MAGA hat last year, Kanye had uncharacteristically receded from the spotlight, only to return a few months later, as a more fleshed-out version of a man who claimed that “slavery was a choice”. He embraced Christianity and began praising Jesus to absolve himself of the sins of his past — sex, drugs, and cussing. Jesus Is King then, feels like a natural progression: Here, he has embraced the role of being the Lord’s personal hype man. But in praising the Lord, Kanye has committed a cardinal sin of hip hop — he’s released a boring album. And Jesus is King is boring, from back to front. My body was ready to be pummeled by Kanye’s angelic verses about Jesus and the gang; I was mentally prepared to give my soul to the Yeezy-fied version of Church. Instead, these are 11 tracks that seem unfinished and unexciting. His lyrics try too hard to be interesting (“Closed on Sunday/You My Chick-Fil-A”) and his insistence on placing himself front-and-centre drags down an album that begs us to believe that it is actually not about him. His natural propensity to go loud falls short on almost every track, many of which begin with promise but then pull away from that trademark explosion of Kanye ideas. If Kanye West ever made elevator music, I suppose this entirely forgettable album is how it would sound like.But in praising the Lord, Kanye has committed a cardinal sin of hip hop — he’s released a boring album.
I’m not sure what it is. Maybe, this is all God’s divine light could muster. But in this outlandish journey from Yeezus to Jesus, Kanye’s dizzying self-assuredness is gradually turning into a veneer for his fading music. From now on, his albums will only be incidental to Kanye as an event — mere chapter breaks in the longer reality show that is his life. We once judged (and forgave) Kanye because of the musical standard he set for himself. But now, as his reality, rather than his music, becomes our only window into his mind, there is this distance between him and the rest of us, which makes his music more alienating than invigorating. It’s why fans still raving about him are beginning to resemble audiences in evangelical church videos, palpitating and violently vibrating, when they sense that God dwells within them just because an overpaid pastor told them so. In many ways perhaps, Jesus Is King marks Kanye the Genius’s descent into musical anonymity. But it also does something else: it situates him as a broken god for our godless generation. 2013’s Yeezus had a song bluntly titled “I Am a God”. Six years later, he runs with that thought in Jesus Is King. There is no escaping that he has always wished to be mythologised and like Jesus, Buddha, and Allah, he is now being debated and dissected, hated and loved with equal amounts of vigour. It doesn’t matter that his new album isn’t great and it also won’t matter if his follow-up falls flat, as long as he is in our minds. In that sense, he seems to be doing just fine.From now on, Kanye’s albums will only be incidental to Kanye as an event — mere chapter breaks in the longer reality show that is his life.
