David vs. Goliath; the underdog versus the master.
After all the talk, June 18th finally arrived and both J. Cole and Kanye West released their latest gems. Both albums had leaked in advance, giving most fans the opportunity to listen to them in their entirety, and clearly people have taken sides. But now that all the dust has settled, who really made the better album?
Let’s start with J. Cole’s Born Sinner. This is the album all Hip-Hop fans were hoping he would make way back in 2011 with his debut album Cole World: The Sideline Story. That album was sadly a lot more “commercial” than Hip-Hop fans had hoped (after all it did have the weakest song of his career, “Workout”); a fact he addresses on the song titled “Let Nas Down.”
On the song he acknowledges that he succumbed to pressure from his label, causing him to make a weak album. But with Born Sinner, J. Cole was more focused, in an effort to win his fans back. And he has succeeded.
It has all the things we love about J. Cole; the storytelling (Let Nas Down), the lush productions (Rich N****z), and the uplifting messages (Crooked Smile). All that combined with his focus on making a more cohesive & genuine album resulted in a stellar project that is certain to be one of the albums of the year.
As for Yeezus…
Now here’s an album that is not as simple to breakdown. Your first listen of Yeezus will concurrently scare you, confuse you, and put you off. From the crazy schizophrenia of the On Site, to the wild screams on I Am A God, to the albums extremely dark lyrics and sound; this album is less easy on the ears than Born Sinner. But to judge Yeezus on one listen would be missing the point.
Kanye West is looking to change the way people think with this album; from the way he promoted the album (with no singles or videos), to the music itself. He teamed up with Rick Rubin (who produced Jay-Z’s 99 Problems) and Daft Punk, which explains why the album sounds less like a rap album and more like something Marylin Manson would make. But despite all that, there are still more positives than negatives.
New Slaves and Black Skinhead have Kanye tackling race relations in America, and Send It Up has one of the best head-nodding instrumentals you will hear all year. And and amidst all the gloom, Kanye closes the album out with a soulful song called Bound 2 (dedicated to his “one good girl worth a thousand b*****s”).
No it is not your regular Kanye (or Hip-Hop) album; and that’s the point. Kanye has never been about following rules, and he breaks all the rules in the book with this album. It’s that renegade attitude that he takes with his art that has earned him all the respect he gets, regardless who he has to p*** off in the process.
So when its all said and done: who really made the better album?
I have to go with J. Cole, simply because Born Sinner is a more accurate representation of Hip-Hop in 2013. Plus i’m a sucker for great lyrics and J. Cole can rap waaay better than Kanye; plus his production has improved incredibly. BUT, and this is a big but (hence the capital letters), I feel like four or five years down the line Hip-Hop is going to sound a lot like Yeezus. So while Born Sinner is THE Hip-Hop album of 2013, Yeezus is the Hip-Hop template for the future.