Kanye West new album 'ye' review: First listen and impressions live on the 7-track return

The first album since his 'breakdown', or as Kanye likes to call it, his "breakthrough"

Kanye West has released his eighth studio album, ye.

The lower case feels like a climbdown after the self-aggrandising title of his sixth, Yeezus, and is launched during perhaps the most turbulent moments of a turbulent career.

This time around at the listening party there was no Madison Square Garden grandeur as with The Life of Pablo, Kanye gathering friends, collaborators and press around a bonfire in rural Wyoming.

According to his wife, Kim Kardashian-West, Kanye shot the album cover - a snap of the surrounding Rocky Mountains - on his iPhone en route to the listening session. He scribbled 'I hate being Bi-Polar its awesome' (sic) over the top.

What follows isn't technically reactions on a first listen - as I was scrabbling for a recording of the party live stream like everyone else last night - but represents the first time the 7-track album has reached my ears in high quality.

Let's go. Post updated as I listen.

1. 'I Thought About Killing You'

We open the album with the processed vocals of Francis and the Lights, a low key melody somehow evocative of the artwork's view of the mountains at dusk.

Kanye West (spoken word):

The most beautiful thoughts are always besides the darkest

Today I seriously thought about killing you

I contemplated, premeditated murder

And I think about killing myself, and I love myself way more than I love you, so...

Following on from that album cover scrawl, this would seem to be Kanye talking to the mirror (a little like Kendrick Lamar on To Pimp A Buttefly's 'u'), a schizophrenic discussion with himself; Kanye unsure whether it's his true self he wants to destroy or merely the conceptual one.

It sounds kinda ad-lib.

"I think this is the part where I'm supposed to say something good to compensate it so it doesn't come off... bad," he says awkwardly, laughing sheepishly.

"But sometimes I think really bad things," he continues, the pitch of his vocals shifting down and down, "Really, really, really bad things". This is pretty raw.

Kanye switches to rapping and delivers the first verse as a bass line arrives, detailing his depression and how he "done had a bad case of too many bad days" spent using the floor for ashtrays.

But then he pivots, suggesting he wants to clear his name following the intense criticism he's come in for lately, as the beat completely switches. It presents a wholly difference space, you can almost imagine the mountains on the cover crumbling away.

Okay, this is a deceptively brilliant song. The way his flow switches from on to off the beat between the lines "How you gon' hate? N***a, we go way back" and "To when I had the braids and you had the wave cap" sounds so good on the ear. The whole track does in fact. Lyrically, it's not Kanye at his best, but then he hasn't been in this regard since My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

2. 'Yikes'

The kind of pop opening to a track we haven't heard Kanye since his 808s and Heartbreak days. Ye said recently that he was disappointed that The Life of Pablo wasn't playing on the radio, so perhaps this is an attempt to recapture some of the mainstream pick-up he enjoyed in the 'Stronger' and 'Gold Digger' days.

The hook doesn't stick around for long though, as we move into a chopped-up beat that reminds me of TLOP's 'Famous'. Riffing on different abbreviations (which isn't particularly smart/artful, admittedly) he discusses experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs, suggesting that perhaps it was these experiences that led to the stream of consciousness thought he's preferred of late and which has been so divisive.

Referencing the nadir - him suggesting that "slavery was a choice" on TMZ - he then brings up #metoo:

Russell Simmons wanna pray for me too

I'ma pray for him 'cause he got #MeToo'd

Thinkin' what if that happened to me too

Then I'm on E! News

Russell Simmons has publicly defended Kanye, claiming he is "suffering" and "unravelling in public". Simmons was also accused of sexual assault.

Kanye fretting over being implicated by the #MeToo movement perhaps isn't surprising as he has been brutally honest about verbally abusive past relationships in previous songs, along with his promiscuity. On TLOP's 'FML' he promised to "Give up the women / Before I lose half of what I own," perhaps alluding to infidelity within his marriage.

Ye must have been working on this album right up until its release, or else did some very last minute re-records. He's already referenced scandals from just a few weeks ago and on this line appears to nod to one from just a couple of days ago: "Hundred grand will make your best friends turn to opps" he spits, which sounds a lot like a reference to the $100k that Pusha T just claimed Drake has offered up for dirt on him as part of their ongoing beef.

The rest of the verse Kanye spends stunting, kinda unremarkably, and espousing his 'love everyone' mantra, claiming he could chill and smoke with Wiz Khalifa, who he previously had a very public argument with.

The third and final one gets quite bleak, as Kanye discusses how the same demons and addictions he experiences ended up killing Michael Jackson and Prince. Mentioning these spirits all around him, he says the "devil been tryna make an army / They been strategizin' to harm me / They don't know they dealin' with a zombie". What with all the drugs, prescribed and recreational, and mental health issues, Kanye feels like he's walking dead.

The outro takes a positive spin however, West describing his apparent bipolar disorder as a "superpower". A nice thought, but more of an inspirational tweet than a piece of poetry.

Damn we're not even at track three yet. Onwards!

3. 'All Mine'

Organ! The gothic, cathedral kind! Nothing pious about this track though, which is about sex, lust and infidelity.

Valee delivers a deeply weird, almost vaudeville-style hook I don't know what to make of, before Ty Dolla $ign is brought in, like he always is, to provide some filth.

Talking about his predilections for "girls that's basic", Kanye says "I could have Naomi Campbell / And still might want me a Stormy Daniels". He's treading familiar ground here, that line sounding a lot like 'Blame Game's "See I could have me a good girl / And still be addicted to them hood rats".

It's funny that Kanye is calling girls basic here, because his rhymes on this song aren't exactly intellectual. "I love your titties 'cause they prove I can focus on two things at once," he jokes, somehow topping that painful "bleach on my t-shirt" bit on TLOP.

Lyrically infantile though this track is, it's undeniably catchy. The production is sublime. Those crashes of sound on the "ay"s of the second verse! Kanye West's powers as a rapper and a philosopher might waver but damn does this guy always bring the heat in terms of production.

4. 'Wouldn't Leave'

Things take a soulful, Late Registration-tinged turn, with some twinkling keys and vocals from PARTYNEXTDOOR and Jeremih.

This is the inside story of the worst days of Kanye's tweetstorm, when he'd just reaffirmed his support of Trump and sounded off on TMZ.

"Now I'm on fifty blogs gettin' fifty calls / My wife callin', screamin', say, "We 'bout to lose it all!"" he raps, even suggesting that he and Kim nearly split after Kanye became a pariah.

She should have expected it. Kanye has always been a contrarian and provocateur, to the point where you wonder if he sets himself up for falls just so he has something to come back from. After all, there would have been no MBDTF without his VMAs ignominy.

Essentially the 'Sorry Kim I'm a jerk' song, this one just feels really underdeveloped, rushed.

5. 'No Mistakes'

After a promising start, you're losing me, Kanye. It's fun to hear shades of old 'Ye here, but also weird for a guy who sees it as his responsibility to push things forward.

Here he's talking about dusting himself off after being publicly slammed and having even some of his closest friends distance themselves from him, but everything's so literal, there's very little attempt to craft these thoughts into something artful and with a more ambiguous feel.

6. 'Ghost Town'

John Legend, who made nice with Kanye after initially despairing over his apparent support of Trump, sings the rambling intro here, before a chunky guitar line enters with some fat, wounded chords.

Kid Cudi, who Kanye is set to release a collab album with soon, sings:

I've been tryin' to make you love me

But everything I try just takes you further from me

I guess he's talking to the public and his fans here. I do believe there was a heartfelt message beneath Kanye's adoption of the MAGA slogan, that he was genuinely trying to reappropriate it and spread a message of love across a deeply, deeply divided America. He didn't go about it in a very thoughtful, informed way though, and it's a shame he's not acknowledged that here, instead complaining about being "caught between space and time" on a different plane to everyone else.

But hey, at least the outro has a tasty, 'Devil in a New Dress' reminiscent guitar lick! With stadium rock snare hits and 070 Shake singing "I feel kinda freeeeeee", it's an anthemic ending and this track could be a grower.

7. 'Violent Crimes'

In a surrendering, piano-based closer, Kanye reflects on how having a daughter has changed him and his fears for her growing up in an often cruel world, one that has definitely taken lumps out of him.

It's a low key ending to an album that felt energetic at the start but slid somewhat. We can interpret lyrics all we want but it fundamentally lacks bangers and is all over too quickly. At a time when trap stars are releasing 3-disc albums a short LP could be really refreshing, but here it feels like the record has been rushed out, incomplete, perhaps to try and head off the storm facing Kanye. It's surprisingly non-experimental, a pastiche of the different sounds Kanye has created over the years. Maybe it'll prove to be a grower, and there are several tracks I'm already looking forward to revisiting, but this doesn't look to be the major artistic statement Kanye needed to salvage his reputation.