ye
| Kanye West
ye
Ye (stylized as ye) is the eighth studio album by American rapper Kanye West. It was released on June 1, 2018, by GOOD Music and Def Jam Recordings.Following controversy surrounding his sociopolitical views, West re-wrote and recorded all the work on the album, completing it over the course of just two weeks at his ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
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Pitchfork
Kanye West’s stint in Wyoming created an album born from chaos for chaos’ sake.
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Variety
Not the outright disaster that some might have feared, but far from the return to form that might have helped heal his battered reputation, “Ye” sees the onetime innovator stuck in a holding pattern, too far gone to notice just how much the landscape has shifted beneath him.
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Rolling Stone
Kanye West continues the most controversial period of his career with a wildly uneven 23-minute album
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Independent (UK)
Kanye may have set himself an impossible task trying to redeem himself through music from the past year's shenanigans, but with this new album it's like he didn't even try.
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SPIN
Kanye West ruined a perfectly good album
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The A.V. Club
You’ll hate this album, it’s awesome.
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HipHopDX
Kanye West fumbles with mental health acceptance on otherwise enjoyable “ye”.
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The New York Times
On “Ye,” Mr. West’s focus is not on America but on his all-encompassing self-absorption: as a celebrity, a rapper enmeshed in beefs, a husband, a parent and a case study in bipolar disorder.
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Time
Ye is an uneasy look at Kanye West’s life as a walking contradiction
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Esquire
Ye, at its heart, is a cry for help. And it gets to the terror and chaos of 2018—a year defined by mass shootings, unruly men with god complexes (West included), and absurd ideas.
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Tiny Mix Tapes
ye really does what a self-titled album should do: it says “Hey, this is who I am.”
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Vulture
Ye is a bit of a success and a bit of a failure. Ye’s most affecting moments find West realizing he might be tarnishing his gift and legacy but also straining to hit the brakes.
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XXL
Ye, proves that inner anguish isn’t always a fast track to outward genius.
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The Guardian
Self-righteous, soulful and still shocking
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Cosmopolitan
If you can put aside what you know of his off-album antics, then Ye is mostly enjoyable.
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Entertainment Weekly
It’s a brisk 23-minute trek into bipolarism
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The Ringer
The rapper-provocateur’s eighth album shows flashes of his enormous talent, but too often it feels like a rush job with a confused point of view
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Slant
As a chronicle of living with mental illness, Ye is Kanye West’s most unsparing work to date.
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NPR
This album is part suicide note, part ransom note. And it's gonna take more than a forged doctor's prescription to fix Ye.
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Highsnobiety
Kanye West's 'ye' is intimate and insightful, but far from his best work.
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billboard
'Ye' Is a Missed Opportunity for Redemption
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Hypebeast
For Kanye fans, you’ll enjoy it, and for fans who are on the fence with the superstar, it won’t pull you back to standom.
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The Telegraph
Never mind his politics, the old Kanye is back .
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Independent.ie
Kanye has started to climb out of the hole into which he’s dug himself. By those metrics, Ye counts as a win.
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The New Yorker
The album is a blurry Polaroid, when what is needed is a crystal-clear, panoramic window upon a torturous year.
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DJ Booth
ye isn’t a masterpiece from a genius, but it’s not the disorderly finger painting of a child. It’s somewhere in the middle—a beautiful mess.
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Stereo Gum
Ye is not going to be anyone’s favorite Kanye West album. West’s whole idea — producing five seven-song albums, for himself and others, in a five-week period — is admirably ambitious.
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Vibe
It’s a haze of puckish and juvenile beliefs and a haphazardly put together sonic structure.
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The Atlantic
It is unafraid and love-drunk and loud, a roar of flame amid mere embers.
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The Gateway
It’s ironic that at a time when the more Kanye says, the worse he gets, he releases ye, his shortest and quietest album to date. But unlike Kanye’s recent tweets and TMZ interviews, ye does not disappoint.
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NME
Nobody can deny this mini album flirts with brilliance, and feels like a pop cultural moment straight out the gate; we just wish there was a little more to it.
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Hot New Hip Hop
Kanye West's "Ye" is rewarding for those willing to look beyond the antics.
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Pretty Much Amazing
After a rollout marked by more controversy and chaos than usual, Kanye West's new album, Ye, has arrived. For an artist defined by grandiosity, it is frustratingly slight.
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The Redbrick
It’s a continuation of West’s dynamic and restless evolution which has taken us from peerless work to peerless work.
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Campus
Most of the songs on this album are fairly decent but compared to previous works, Ye is a let-down. But, if you can separate the art from the artist, there is enough here to make it worth listening to
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The 405
A man's accelerated journey from self-consumed mania to renewed gratitude for the woman in his life should have been thrilling to ride along for. It's too bad it wasn't.
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Newsday
Kanye West's new album focuses mainly on his favorite topic: Himself
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Palatinate
The album is summed up by the lines, etched on the album cover, “I hate being Bi-Polar, it’s awesome:” ‘ye’ is unabashed; punchy; revealing.
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The Line of Best Fit
This record is, ladies and gentlemen, a uniquely modern mistake. This man is being indulged to the point of doing irreparable damage to his public image and his reputation.
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Verge Campus
Despite the criticism, Kanye West delivers another classic album just in time for summer.
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Boston Globe
Ye was neither an unraveling of the artist nor a crescendo for all the confusion he had created. It was merely West cashing in on all the attention he had spent weeks banking with some calculated trolling.
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Star 2
‘Ye’: No one does Kanye West like Kanye West
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Refinery 29
Ye sounds like West is still grappling with how to accept being just the voice of Kanye West, and make that enough.
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The Star (Kenya)
Always expect anything from Kanye West.
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The Diamondback
Ultimately, ye is a paint-by-numbers album from an artist who's given us masterpiece after masterpiece.
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Crack
ye suffers from a dearth of profundity, the artist spinning his wheels in the lap of Wyoming wealth, hoping nobody will notice he’s run of out ideas.
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Pulse
'Ye' packs brilliant moments but doesn't validate its hype
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First Post
While ye isn't nearly as experimental or extravagant as Kanye's earlier releases like My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Yeezus or The Life of Pablo, it is an important Kanye release.
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The Washington Post
Ye’ is the unedited ramblings of the world’s oldest adolescent
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HipHop-N-More
For everything to like on this album there is also something to hate. Ye is an album that is hard to call bad, but it’s nearly impossible to not feel disappointed.
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Chicago Tribune
“Ye” isn’t so much a musical statement as a 23-minute, seven-track therapy session.
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Medium
The production is Kanye at his best — everything feels tight and polished. Looking at the album itself without even thinking of Kanye West’s previous work, ye is solid.
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UPROXX
It’s neither good nor bad — it just is, inert and meaningless, an afterthought.
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Vox
Kanye West has made it impossible to separate Ye from his most recent public persona
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Varsity
Kanye is at his best when he isn’t self-deifying. Thankfully, ye largely avoids that
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Culture Kings
The candid project by Ye is very open and honest about his internal thought processes.
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We Plug Good Music
On this project, his amazing production and skill for sample choices are showcased superbly.
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The Outline
Kanye West is finally out of ideas. His new album is stale and boring — words that never used to describe his music.
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Niner Times
“Ye” makes you feel West’s paranoia and the power his bipolar disorder has over him.
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Golden Plec
Better than an average album, but nowhere near Kanye standards. Disappointing but unsurprising.
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RTE
At best, Ye sounds like a petulant case of "will this do?"and at worse, it’s just a booming and bombastic case of sonic indigestion.
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Clash
‘ye’ is by no means Kanye West’s finest moment, but it’s a reminder not to count him out just yet.
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The Yorker (UK)
The album is raw and confused as Kanye struggles to effect an unholy union from his messy contradictions.
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The Times (UK)
The result is a messy, mercifully short album that sounds more like something to keep the whole façade going than the astonishing art of which West is capable.
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Soul In Stereo
Much like a Kanye Twitter rant, ye sometimes sounds good but rarely makes sense.
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musicOMH
The Kanye West show has already rolled on, but some of the magic of yesteryear has been left behind.
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USA Today
Ye will almost certainly disappoint.
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Financial Times
Scrappy songs
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KSDB FM
The big fundamental problem with this album compared to other two 7-track projects is that there are too many slow burners and boring moments to really make this that enjoyable of a listen.
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The Block
He's back, to take over the world carrying 7 songs as his weapon. Many people say Kanye has lost his mind, but I say it's a thin line between genius and insane.
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The Musical Hype
Ye has its moments, but fails to be cohesive, commercial, or as memorable as his best, full-length LPs.
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Live Wire
If Yeezus was Kanye at the height of his ego and power trip, Ye is Kanye at the bottom of it, as he sounds more human and natural than ever before.
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The Globe and Mail
There is no doubt a great deal of uncomfortable honesty on Ye. And certain of its sentiments are scarily recognizable.
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Now Toronto
As he struggles to find his footing in a strange new world, there is still merit in a work like Ye if you can somehow look past the self-destructive celebrity behind it.
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Juice
Kanye West’s new album ‘ye’ is a compact triumph.
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AllMusic
Ye offers a bittersweet reflection of its creator, who is confused, searching, and at a crossroads.
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U DOU
“Ye”—A Humanizing and Intimate Representation of Kanye West
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The Fader
A lot of chaos for an ultimately anti-climactic release.
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Exclaim!
If West had better delved into his emotional and psychological turmoil in ye's lyrics, instead of getting bogged down with click-baity asides, then this LP would've been a classic.
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Beat
Even with its setbacks, Ye isn’t a terrible album. It’s listenable but not inspiring- cohesive, but incredibly self-indulgent.
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Sound Digest
Kanye West’s Ye Album Is As Polarizing As He Is
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Superego World
Controversy aside and coming from a non-biased standpoint, the music sounds amazing.
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Brooklyn Vegan
Ye often plays out like a therapy session, and it’s not always comfortable to hear.
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City in 3
It's an album that grows on you and I think 'Ye' will be one of Ye's greatest works.
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Shifter
Authentic
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Hot Press
Album number eight sees the world's most talked-about rapper getting back to what he does best, though, and that's make thrilling and challenging music.
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Noisey
There are great musical moments on ye, but more than ever before, those moments seem to come from West’s collaborators more than himself.
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Vulture Hound (UK)
For the first time in Kanye’s career, it feels like the music was an afterthought like ye was just an obligation rather than a true artistic statement.
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Slate
On his beautiful, troubling new album, Kanye West plays with fire and denies he’s getting burned.
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The Arts Desk
Suicidal ideation, greed, marital strife and paternal sexual obsessions as entertainment: just another day chez West
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Substream
‘Ye’ is the summary of Kanye West’s disorganization of thought and creative process
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The Fresh Committee
Although a solid effort, ye leaves a fleeting impression.
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The Economist
“Ye”, the rapper’s latest album, is not musically interesting enough to atone for his sins
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The 730 Review
The best aspect of ye is the production, which makes it all the more maddening that the exquisite beats are ruined by Kanye’s own self-indulgent and ill-defined ideology.
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The Book of Man
Despite the continual tabloid furore, this richly produced album is a very considered, even mature work. Seven tracks though? Hard to view it as classic.
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Irish Times
Big-hearted and introspective
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LA Times
Kanye West's 'Ye' unintentionally illustrates the limits of alpha-male bravado
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Sputnik Music
Ye is a sound (lol) depiction of mental illness on its own terms – uncompromising, confusing, contraindicating.
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