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Yeezus felt super blunt and rushed to me at first. I also thought it was more than Kanye was just getting lazy than that he was making some grand statement about music or culture, or deliberately trying to challenge people. That smelled like a bit of an excuse to me at the time, and I'm still irritated that the album had no cover art.
But it really makes quite a bit of sense to me now. I think it was deliberate. And I think it was a great fucking album... Exactly what hip-hop needed. It lit a fire under everyone's ass, and it plays from beginning to end with no let up. It's the culmination of his aesthetic protests that started with 808's. It was a reminder that you don't need glitz to make a great hip hop album. You don't need to make the best, or be the biggest or brightest to turn the genre on its head. All you need is passion, something to say (doesn't need to be Walt Fucking Whitman, just needs to matter to you), and Kanye had a lot to say on that album, about himself and his frustration and his image and his sadness.
Even if you hate it, you can't point to another rap album and say "Yeezus sounds like that" because it only sounds like Yeezus. Any time an artist can pull that off, it's a success. Yeezus started out as lower on my list of albums for 2013 than 12 Reasons to Die and The Terror. It ended at #1, and I've listened to it many times between 2013 and now. No so with those other albums. Not a bit.
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