Is that hypocritical? I don’t know, so I’ll leave that up to you guys. But the facts don’t lie, and for an album that Kanye West touted as being “gospel,” The Life Of Pablo certainly has its fair share of explicit language and vulgar verbiage.
Would Jesus be fond of Ye’s rhetoric? No clue. Didn’t know the guy. But these awesome graphs from the guys over at Mic paint a pretty neat statistical picture of how Kanye’s music has evolved throughout his discography, highlighting multiple facets such as how many co-writers West had each album, the number of times he reference himself, and of course, as alluded to, the number of curse words he dropped AND the amount of biblical references made, as can be seen below.
The most significant change is in his use of the word “bitch.” Over the course of his first four albums, he uses the word a grand total of eight times. Compare that to The Life of Pablo, where he raps the word “bitch/bitches” 20 times.
From West’s first album, he’s always saved a place for the Lord on his records. His struggles with faith have served as an ongoing subplot throughout his records and has a huge presence on the trap/gospel fusion he created for The Life of Pablo. It’s by far his most religious album, with 17 mentions of God and Jesus, followed by 15 for The College Dropout.
So, what do you think? Can music be “gospel” while talking about getting a model’s asshole bleach on your t-shirt? According to Kanye, it can..
[via MIC]