After an entire year of delays, almost quitting rap because it’s “the devil’s music,” and completely surrounding himself with the teachings of Christianity, Kanye West has released his 9th studio album, “JESUS IS KING.” The album follows a Christian theme and sounds more gospel than anything West has put out previously. Wanting to make his music sound more gospel to “heal himself,” he put out an album in which features no cursing, no mention of drugs, no mention of anything that could be considered inappropriate. The album contains 11 songs, clocking in at just 27 minutes of music.

JESUS IS KING was “made to be an expression of the gospel and to share the gospel and the truth of what Jesus has done” which taking a look at the lyrics is true. From the track “Selah”, “Won’t be in bondage to any man, John 8:33. We the descendants of Abraham

Ye should be made free, John 8:36.” Even looking at some of the track titles you can tell this is his direction with titles like “Follow God,” “On God,” “Use this Gospel,” and “Jesus is Lord.” 

This new direction from no cursing, completely Christian music might turn off some long-time Kanye fans from the album, wanting more of the spastic, crazy Kanye. However, though this is a gospel album, Kanye still manages to incorporate that into the project. At the end of “Follow God”, Kanye does this weird demon screech which sounds just like something he would do on his 2018 album, “ye.” On the track “Closed on Sunday,” Kanye delivers this pretty funny line at the end where he just screams “Chick-Fil-A” which makes the song pretty memorable just for that.

The album starts off pretty weak with the song “Every Hour” featuring West’s Sunday Service Choir which he has been working with since the first Sunday of this year. It features his Sunday Service Choir over a pretty basic piano sound. It’s good for an introduction to the album, but listening to it on its own it does sound pretty bare. It doesn’t even transition into the next track of the album “Selah”, which is where the album picks up. 

Selah is a very interesting track and sounds really cinematic, especially the part where the Sunday Service Choir is chanting “Hallelujah” over and over. Kind of sounds like something you would hear in a movie trailer. Another interesting part of the track is when Kanye mentions his cancelled 2018-2019 project “Yhandi” saying “Everybody wanted Yhandi, then Jesus is Christ did the laundry.”

This is followed up by the song “Follow God.” which has a really interesting sample, bringing back the “chop up the soul Kanye” everyone has been wanting. It also has some funny lines like “I was screaming at the referee just like Mike,” referring to when Micahel Jordan argued with the referee. Also lines like “riding on a white bike, feeling like Excitebike.” 

“Closed on Sunday” unfortunately starts with a really boring guitar instrumental and not very interesting lyrics. The line “you’re my number one with the lemonade” is pretty corny. The last minute of the song however picks up a little with some actually good singing from West, which we don’t see very often.

 “On God” starts a long string of great songs on the album. The instrumental on this song is great. The song expresses many interesting topics, like West’s car crash in 2002, in which he broke his jaw, and his controversial stance on the 13th amendment, which he wants to abolish.

“Everything we Need” was a previously leaked song from his 2018-2019 project “Yhandi,” with the track name of “The Storm” featuring XXXTentacion. His verse was most likely dropped for his vulgarity, which didn’t fit the theme of this album. In this new version, Ty Dolla $ign and Ant Clemons do the chorus and it sounds really good. West’s energy on the track makes it really interesting, which also comes with some interesting lines like “What if Eve made apple juice? You gon’ do what Adam do? Or Say ‘Baby let’s put this back on the tree.’” It’s a good song, but the XXXTentacion feature on the old version made the track much better.

“Water” has a really chill instrumental with a chorus from Ant Clemons that sounds really nice. A minute in and West has a lot of lines beginning with the word “Jesus,” as he asks for forgiveness, wealth, grace, and safety. The track doesn’t have many interesting lines outside of that, but the chorus itself is what will always bring me back to this track.

“God Is” features another nice use of sampling and compliments the instrumentals and Kanye’s message of the song so well. This is definitely the most emotional track on the album, featuring more great singing from Kanye. West’s scratchy voice halfway through the song makes it sound like as if he was crying while singing it or something because he puts so much emotion into it. Everything about the track is great and is probably the best song on the entire project. The song includes some very interesting details about West, like how he’s going in this direction to break away from his addiction, referring to his addiction to opioids he was prescribed after getting liposuction and his pornography addiction. If you don’t feel like listening to the entire album, at least listen to this song, it’s amazing.

“Hands On” unfortunately follows up this streak of great songs. The track barely feels like a song, it’s more like West is just speaking to you. The quiet, empty instrumental makes it even worse, and the intro and outro with Fred Hammond doesn’t help much either. Periodically there are these weird distorted trumpet sounds, which are kind of interesting, but I don’t see that bringing up the track very much.

“Use This Gospel” is the most annoying track on the album, featuring a beat that sounds like when you’re in your car with the door open with the keys left in. If it wasn’t for that ear-grating sound, this track would actually be pretty amazing, but I can’t stand it. Some highlights however is the feature from Pusha T and No Malice which has a really good line about how “from the concrete grew a rose” and “they give you wraith talk, I give you faith talk” which slaps hard. The saxophone solo from Kenny G. is the best. If the car door sound was taken out and replaced with anything else, the track would have been a million times better. Actually, after the saxophone solo, the 27 seconds of the song features a nice beat drop with the car door type beat behind it, and it sounds really good and doesn’t kill my ears. If this instrumental was used for most of it instead, this track would have been way better.

The album ends off strong with the track “Jesus is Lord,” a 50 second outro to the album which has a nice, lively band instrumental. The short track according to Genius.com states that this track is about Jesus Christ coming back to the Earth during end times. It ends rather anti-climatically however, but that may be just because of the track’s length.

Jesus is King by Kanye West is overall a fine album, and not much different from his other projects in my opinion. The album is just like West’s 2016 album “The Life of Pablo,” except with less cursing. West addresses this himself, saying “[The Life of Pablo is] a gospel album with a whole lot of cursing.” However with West’s new more Christian attitude, he took it to the next level with releasing this album with no cursing, which isn’t a big deal. Cursing doesn’t determine if an album is good or not. This isn’t the first time West has put out a full clean album either. 2008’s “808’s and Heartbreak” by Kanye West featured no curse words, and is still considered a classic. Kanye has always had Christian themes in his music too. His first album “The College Dropout” featured a song called “Jesus Walks” and he’s talked about his faith sporadically in other albums. Like in Yeezus with, his pretty funny song, “I am a God (feat. God) saying “I am a God, even though I’m a man of God.” This is just different because this is the first time he’s expressed this side of him in this style. Instead of the songs being spread out, it’s now back to back to back in one album, and I don’t mind it.

A lot of the lyrics aren’t even just about Christianity, like the mention of his car crash in 2002 in “On God” and “Closed on Sunday” is all about Chick-Fil-A. The lyrics aren’t always on point though. Some corny lines are scattered, “you’re my number one with the lemonade” from “Closed on Sunday” comes to mind and him calling himself “radical” in “Everything We Need” feels so wrong. Instrumentals generally feel empty to me. They feel kind of “beachy” in a way, ironically it feels the most like that in “Water” and “Hands On.” I wish more sampling was used like in the tracks “Follow God” and “God Is.” Honestly if West did do that, it would make it seem even more gospel. One technical issue I feel many people noticed was the pretty bad mixing on the album. West sounds like he’s using some grainy cheap microphone, and it’s very noticeable on the quiet track “Hands On.” Pusha T and No Malice’s verse on “Use This Gospel” also sound like they were recorded from their iphone in their car, making it seemed rushed. It’s kind of ironic to me this album was pushed back like a month and Kanye is known to be a “perfectionist” but things like this are left in. However this will probably be updated soon, as Kanye does many times with his albums. West’s album “The Life Of Pablo” was released February 14, 2016, but was updated up until June 14, 2016. Knowing this information, Kanye may update the album anytime he wants, fixing this mistake.

Overall the album did grow on me after a couple of listens. I found when Kanye tries, he can actually sing pretty well. I also found that West can pull off making a Chrisitan album while also making everybody happy in the end, not pandering to just Christans, making it so where anyone can really listen to this without having to be a person of faith. Like West has said before, “I’m not here to… convert atheists into believers.” Though the album ends rather anti-climatically, West has also stated he plans on releasing another album on Christmas day titled “Jesus Is Lord,” which is the name of the last track on “JESUS IS KING,” so maybe there will be a linkage between the two albums, continuing this album.