TLOP is akin to many of the students I knew in college who were profoundly intelligent but would neglect their studies and turn in papers late. They end up getting a B- instead of the A+ they had the potential to reach. Yeezus was like this too, except it was a more coherent monochromatic sound, whereas TLOP is more random diverse and all-over-the-place.
TLOP was delayed numerous times, flirted numerous lead singles which didn't make the cut, had several working titles and several tracklists. It's launch was on a low-quality stream, the Tidal-only release resulted in record levels of piracy. The album isn't even finished. It was both routinely delayed and rushed at the last minute. With Kanye entering the fashion world and starting a family, he put less time into this project. TLOP still shows flashes of Kanye's brilliance when it wants to.
Ultralight Beam might be his best opening track ever, combining the soulful, the bars, the industrial, the experimental edge. It's certainly an inspirational visionary track, and feels like the most complete song on the album. Father Stretch My Hands is a mixed bag as well. It should have been combined into one track. There's a great beat, great sampling, great vocals and Kanye's 2nd verse is very good. But Kanye ruins it by talking about "bleached assholes", and the mixing was uneven all around. Famous is a very well rounded track. Strong beat, nice hook, funny lyrics. Feedback was all around great. Love love love the beat. Could've used a 2nd verse. Low Lights is just filler. Highlights is decent at best but has some good elements to it. Freestyle 4 has a nice great energetic industrial beat, vocal effs and guest vocals. But weak lyrics and it could've been turned into a full song rather than a fragment. Waves is good but generic as all h---. I Love Kanye was a very nice interlude, but I also could have imagined it being a full-length track about how his style and life has changed, with an actual beat and two other verses 30 Hours was a strong track, but could've been shortened by 1 minute. Silver Surfer Interlude wasn't necessary at all. Real Friends was perfect. No More Parties in LA is solid. Facts is delusional confident and energetic. Both a strength and weakness. The beat goes hard. Fade sounds decent but isn't really a Kanye song. Wolves had an awesome beat, concept, lyrics and such. I totally understand why he would defy expectations and remove the featured artists from it. But the new track, from an objective standpoint, was lazily done. The first bridge is missing. And after the singing is just one quickly laid verse. It's like he just cut out 2/3 the song and laid a verse. He didn't add any complexity to the standard beat loop at all, no outro, nothing.
There's so many things I loved on this album. Though it was a step up lyrically from his previous 2 albums, it's not on par with his first 2. He needed more bars, better singing, better mixing, more time recording in the studio and some ideas to add to some of his song fragments to make them complete.
This album is eclectic, diverse and chaotic. I like that. I love the direction it went in. But with each song, there were lots of little issues that could have been mitigated if more time and effort were spent on the project.
TLOP reminds me of that kid who would write a great essay in English class, one of the bests but the English teacher got angry at him because it didn't follow the guidelines
