#Makaveli album review how to#
#Makaveli album review full#

#Makaveli album review full#

If anything, itвЂ™s inspiring how heвЂ™s been able to make a full career as an elite rapper out of those few ingredients, like a great painter who only uses the same three colors in every work.

But PushaвЂ™s relentless focus doesnвЂ™t make him a limited writer. As ever, Pusha remains focused on his favorite subjects: on his past life dealing drugs, on the things that he could buy because he was dealing drugs, on his own vertiginous rise out of dealing drugs, on how good he is at rapping (about dealing drugs). That briefness and sparsity has brought the absolute best out of Pusha, a writer who has always tried to say as much as possible without wasting words. ItвЂ™s a piece of music that creates its own stark and unforgiving atmosphere, and even if itвЂ™s shorter than an episode of Roseanne without commericials, itвЂ™s still a complete experience. In this Rolling Stone interview, Pusha talks about the desire to make something hard and concise, to avoid inflating streaming numbers by cramming it with filler: вЂњWeвЂ™re respecting your time.вЂќ And Daytona actually makes good on that promise.

(Pusha billed Fear Of God II as an EP, and itвЂ™s twice as long as Daytona.) To that, I say: Who cares? Daytona is an album if Pusha says itвЂ™s an album. ThereвЂ™s already a lot of social-media debate over whether we should call Daytona an album or an EP.

Daytona is nothing but that.Дaytona, as youвЂ™re doubtless aware already, only spans seven songs and only lasts 21 minutes. The authoritarian stomp-claps of вЂњGrindinвЂ™,вЂќ the hovering-spaceship bloops of вЂњWhat Happened To That Boy?,вЂќ the lonely guitar wails and itchy percussion of вЂњNosestalgiaвЂќ - thatвЂ™s where PushaвЂ™s at home. (Think of 2011вЂ™s Fear Of God II, on which Pusha attempted to reinvent himself as a generic trap-rapper and came off totally forgettable.) Pusha thrives in the context of spiky minimalism - of strange production experiments that build knife-edge tension through negative space and otherworldly sounds. But in the wrong context, Pusha can sound lost. For the past 16 years - Lil PumpвЂ™s entire lifetime, pretty much - Pusha has dependably been one of our nastiest rappers, a near-endless source of overstated drug-talk and sneering hauteur. That doesnвЂ™t make up for everything else - not even close - but itвЂ™s still a relief. Whatever dark paths West has been down in the past few years, he remains capable of a thing like this. With PushaвЂ™s voice over it and WestвЂ™s drums under it, it sounds glorious. ItвЂ™s still a very deep cut, the type of song that a rap producer would only know if that producer was very, very into mining old music for perfect sounds. ThatвЂ™s a song that was completely, utterly forgotten before 2014, when it appeared on a Numero Group compilation called Wayfaring Strangers: Darkscorch Canticles. That sample comes from Air - not Air, the French retro-electronic group, but Air, the obscure witchcraft-besotted early-вЂ™70s heavy rock band from Ypsilanti, Michigan. ItвЂ™s an absolutely beautiful sound, and it pays off all the tension that the opening built up. This time around, the sample in question is a towering wave of organ, a pure musical dopamine rush that floods through the track. But the 36-second mark is where everything changes. PushaвЂ™s writing remains as lean and crisp and forbidding as ever - вЂњYou donвЂ™t take these type of risks, boy / Cuz this boy been throwing the D like Rich BoyвЂќ - and his rapping has never lost its fire-eyed intensity. For the first 35 seconds of Daytona, Pusha raps over a few MPC hiccups and hi-hat tics. But that brokenness doesnвЂ™t extend to beat construction, which, after all, is the original reason that anyone learned Kanye WestвЂ™s name in the first place. For the past few months, West has been careening from one baffling PR disaster to the next, giving off the distinct impression that, somewhere along the way, heвЂ™s fully and irreparably broken his brain.

#Makaveli album review how to#

Thirty-six seconds into Daytona, Pusha-TвЂ™s new seven-song album, something becomes abundantly clear: Kanye West still knows how to produce rap music.