Tuesday, April 5, 2022

Kanye West - Love Everyone (2018)

In May 2017 news began to surface that Kanye West was working in seclusion on his new album "on top of a mountain in Wyoming". In March 2018, similar reports emerged through various artists, including West himself, that he was in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and a release date for the new album was being expected for either 2018 or 2019. In April 2018, West met with Rick Rubin. who was the executive producer on West's previous two studio albums, in West's office in Calabasas, and that same month he previewed the album for radio host Charlamagne tha God, announcing the album's planned release date of June 1, 2018. Revealing it to include seven tracks, and he later tweeted out a text conversation between him and Wes Lang, in which he shared the initial cover for the album, and an explanation of its concept, followed by him asking for help naming the album. Lang replied "LOVE EVERYONE," to which West replied "I love that". The cover art showed plastic surgeon Jan Adams, who had performed a liposuction and mammoplasty operation on West's mother, Donda West, which led to complications and eventually her death a day later. Within the texts, West explained that he wanted to "forgive and stop hating", implying that he was ready to forgive the plastic surgeon for the situation regarding his mother's death, but Adams responded to the news of the cover in the form of an open letter, asking West to "cease and desist using my photo or any image of me to promote your album or any of your work", while noting his willingness to sit down with West for a face to face conversation. West returned to Wyoming in May 2018 for more recording sessions, as outside of his own albums he was also executive producing, producing, and providing guest vocals for all of the albums by other artists that came out of these "Wyoming Sessions". However, shortly before the proposed release date for 'Love Everyone', West scrapped the whole album, and recorded a new batch of songs which was released as 'Ye' on 01 June 2018. In an interview conducted during the listening party for 'Ye', West stated that he redid the whole album after a controversial interview with the tabloid news website TMZ in May 2018, during which he revealed that he was addicted to opioids after getting liposuction, and made controversial comments about slavery, as well as suggesting that the entire 'Ye' album was recorded in a month, following the scrapping of 'Love Everyone'. As with many of West's unreleased albums, a definitive track listing doesn't exist, and even though it was stated that it included seven tracks, most of the leaked songs are fairly short, meaning that it would have been a brief thirty minute album at the most. I've therefore combined four or five suggested track listings to make a 40-minute album, and it contains most of the songs that the general consensus says should have been included, while omitting early versions of tracks that later turned up on 'Ye'.  



Track listing

01 Love Yourself
02 Lift Yourself 2049
03 Take Me To The Light (feat. Francis And The Lights & Bon Iver)
04 Queen Bitch
05 Ye vs. The People (Starring TI as The People)
06 Shoot Up (feat. Bon Iver & Santigold)
07 Fine Line (feat. Bon Iver)
08 XTCY (feat. Ty Dolla $ign)
09 Simulation Baptize (feat. A$AP Rocky & Pardison Fontaine)
10 In Your Arms (feat. The-Dream & Caroline Shaw)
11 Lovely (feat. Ant Clemons & Jeremiah)
12 Brothers (feat. Charlie Wilson)

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