Redemption Song: Unpacking Kanye's Jesus is King By Sheldon Taylor
"That wasn't a turning point in my life. I was born again a year earlier, in Anaheim It had nothing to do with no woman." ----Al Green (taken from an interview excerpt in Wax Poetics Magazine)
Despite making $50,000 to $60,000 a night, Green felt lost. ("I have been in an arena with 40,000 people but I was the loneliest man there"). Mentally drained and suicidal, Green drove miles, seeking out Pentecostal churches he'd attend in disguise, blowing his cover when overtaken by the spirit ("my glasses would fall off, wigs flying! Man, my incognito'd be gone").
To the frustration of his record company, concert promoters, and fans, Green slipped in spiritual-minded lyrics and songs on his albums and displayed his newfound religious fervor on stage.
In Soul Survivor: A Biography of Al Green, he recounts how he once emptied out a 3,000-seat casino gig in 1975, when he showed up on stage quoting scripture:
"When I stood on stage and said,
when you open the Bible to Deuteronomy....
I have never seen 3,000 people leaving a place so fast.
All the pimps and their ladies.....were gone."
Kanye West's own road to Damascus eerily intersects with Green's. Some point to the unexpected 2007 passing of his mother as the turning point blurring the lines between West's loveable but cocky eccentricities, bizarre rants, and public sightings.
Following a series of mostly well-received revivals around the world, he arrives with Jesus is King. Clocking in at just over 27 minutes, it's one of the shortest rap albums in history (Only Rev Run's Distortion and Pusha-T's Daytona are shorter). More like an EP, Jesus is King follows up last year's Ye, Nasir, and Daytona, a trilogy of West-produced albums steeped in a mist of brevity custom fit for today's streaming era.
Jesus is King is a loose sequel to 2004's massive Jesus Walks. Gospel legend Fred Hammond, rapper Ty Dollar Sign, and West artists Ant Clemons and Sunday Service join West as he raps, sings, and gets his Kirk Franklin on. The religious theme is strong as the day is long.
Every Hour's choir vocals soar like white doves to the heavens as churchy piano chords warm up the crowd before Rev. West addresses the congregation. Close your eyes at Selah's one-minute mark. The song's heavy drums double as open palms pounding an open Bible on a church podium.
West's rhymes are laced with fire and brimstone as explains his last-minute creative change of heart: "Everybody wanted Yahndi/til Jesus Christ did the laundry!" Follow God is classic 'Ye. Sampling Whole Truth's 1974 Can You Lose By Following God, West recounts tension-filled spiritual conversations with his father in his signature College Dropout era bouncy flow.
Closed On Sundays pushes back against superficial social media culture with a cryptic message that's private as it is public. God Is finds West pulling off Green's weary tenor/falsetto on a track that sounds like it was plucked from the Hi Records vault.
On God recalls All Falls Down's self-reflection. In between his Jesse Jackson I Am Somebody moments, West runs down his life in a powerful two-minute narrative, waxing poetic on everything from his post-Blueprint car wreck, his manic preoccupation with industry domination to his infamous materialism ("before the ranch/ I had horses in the garage"). He cites his growing family, financial challenges, and high producer fees as the reason for serving two financial masters: church tithes and the IRS.
Less we think West laid his ego down by the riverside---reflections of the old Yeezy show up in the water ("I can't be dancin' with the stars!"). Hands On dismantles hypocrites and haters with witty wordplay ("true and living god/YEshua") while acknowledging that his own spiritual conversion ("only halfway read Ephesians") is still a work in progress.
Use This Gospel features jazz saxman Kenny G and reunites the Clipse. As usual, the Thornton brothers deliver great verses. Their closing bars are most telling. Pusha-T contemplates his spiritual speculation with biting honesty ("who am I to judge?/I'm crooked as Vegas") while Big Brother No Malice reflects on arrogant crack-dealing days and its consequences ("caught with a trunk of Barry Manilows/ they sing a different tune when the slammer close") and offers up a poetic synopsis of their divergent paths:
"They give you wrath talk/I give you faith talk
Blindfolded on this road /watch me faith walk
Just hold on to your brother/ when his faith lost."
Kanye West isn't your first Christian Black entertainer to cross the bridge from secular to spiritual. There's Rev Run. Hammer, Kurtis Blow. Mase. Before that was Al Green. A generation ago was Little Richard. Taking in West's public pontifications, I'm transported back to 70's gems like Earth Wind and Fire's Open Our Eyes (1974), The O'Jays' A Prayer (1976), and Marvin Gaye's God is Love (1971).
I’ll listen before I’ll just jump into this conversation
ReplyDeleteCheck it. I went into it not wanting to like it. I had to exclude personal feelings and past catalog.
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