【The Life Of Pablo】Pitchfork乐评翻译
巴勃罗的一生
Ultralight Beam音频：00:0005:20
Famous
Pablo Picasso and Kanye West share many qualities—impatience with formal schooling, insatiable and complicated sexual appetites, a vampiric fascination with beautiful women as muses—but Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole. Kanye, specifically, toasted them. The Life of Pablo's namesake is a provocation, a mystery, a sly acknowledgement of multitudes: Drug lord Pablo Escobar is a permanent fixture of rap culture, but the mystery of "which one?" set Twitter theorists down fascinating rabbit holes, drawing up convincing stand-ins for Kanye's Blue Period (808s & Heartbreak), his Rose Period (My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy), and his Crystal Period (Yeezus). If Kanye is comparable to Picasso, The Life of Pablo is the moment, after a turbulent life leaving many artistic revolutions and mistreated women in his wake, that the artist finally settles down. In this formulation, Kim Kardashian is Jacqueline Roque, Picasso's final muse and the woman to whom he remained faithful (she even kinda looks like a Kardashian), and the record is the sound of a celebrated megalomaniac settling for his place in history.
巴勃罗·毕加索和坎耶·韦斯特有着许多相同的特质——厌学，无上限又复杂的性欲，对美丽女性比如女神缪斯吸血鬼般的痴迷——但是毕加索可从来没有被人叫做混蛋 。而坎耶反而还给跟他一样的混蛋们敬酒。专辑名《The Life Of Pablo》的含义是一种挑衅，一个谜团，一个面对大众的狡猾承认：毒枭巴勃罗·埃斯科巴是嘻哈文化中一个永恒象征，但关于封面上“WHICH ONE”的谜团让很多推特上的理论家们都沉溺于疑问与思考，他们勾画了坎耶忧郁时期专辑《808s & Heartbreak》，全盛时期专辑《My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy》及零碎时期的专辑《Yeezus》的许多令人信服的替代品。但若真要将坎耶与毕加索相提并论，专辑《The Life Of Pablo》就是坎耶在经历动荡一生，给音乐艺术界带来众多革新，枕边女人换了又换后终于安定下来的那一关键时刻。在这样的剧本下，金·卡戴珊对坎耶的意义就像是杰奎琳·罗克对毕加索的意义一样。杰奎琳是毕加索最后一位仰慕及忠诚于的女人（她甚至于金·卡戴珊还有一些神似）。这张专辑可以说是一个恶名昭彰的狂妄症患者宣告他的伟大历史地位的一次尝试。
I'ma let you finish
Famous音频：00:0003:14
“
The Life of Pablo is, accordingly, the first Kanye West album that's just an album: No major statements, no reinventions, no zeitgeist wheelie-popping. It's probably his first full-length that won't activate a new sleeper cell of 17-year-old would-be rappers and artists. He's changed the genre's DNA with every album, to the point where each has inspired a generation of direct offspring, and now everywhere he looks, he sees mirrors. "See, I invented Kanye, it wasn't any Kanyes, and now I look and look around and there's so many Kanyes," he raps wryly on "I Love Kanye." The message seems clear: He's through creating new Kanyes, at least for now. He's content to just stand among them, both those of his own creation and their various devotees.
Kanye's second child Saint was born in early December, and there's something distinctly preoccupied about this whole project—it feels wry, hurried, mostly good-natured, and somewhat sloppy. Like a lot of new parents, Kanye feels laser-focused on big stuff—love, serenity, forgiveness, karma—and a little frazzled on the details. "Ultralight Beam" opens with the sound of a 4-year-old preaching gospel, some organ, and a church choir: "This is a God dream," goes the refrain. But everything about the album's presentation—the churning tracklist, the broken promises to premiere it here or there, the scribbled guest list—feels like Kanye ran across town to deliver a half-wrapped gift to a group birthday party to which he was 10 minutes late.
《巴勃罗的一生》，相对地，是坎耶音乐生涯第一张纯粹的专辑：没有任何声明，没有再创造，没有时代精神号召。这或许还是他的第一张不会启发新一代的年轻说唱歌手和艺术家的录音室专辑。众所周知，坎耶的每一张专辑都改变了说唱这个流派的基因，都直接启发一代又一代的艺人，以至于他俯瞰整个音乐产业，都能看到自己的影子。“看我创造了坎耶，他是独一无二的，而我现在眺望四周我都能看到无数的坎耶模仿者”，坎耶在歌曲《I Love Kanye》上幽默地唱道。他要表达的意思一目了然：他已经给这个世界带来了无数坎耶，至少现在，他可以满足地坐在由他塑造的坎耶和他的忠诚信徒构成的王座上。
坎耶的第二个孩子Saint在临近12月的时候出生了，专辑的制作过程可能直接受到影响，因此听起来令人感觉有点仓促，整体质量高但感觉略微有些潦草。就像大多新手父母们一样，坎耶专注于更大的格局——爱，宁静，宽恕，回报，而选择了忽略疲惫地纠结音乐细节。歌曲《Ultralight Beam》以一个四岁小孩的福音式诵唱开篇，伴随着其他伴奏和一段重复的教堂乐团和声：“这是神之梦”。但是一切关于专辑的展示——零乱的歌曲曲目，坎耶的失信与专辑的多次延期，潦草地助阵歌手名单——专辑给人第一感觉像是坎耶跨城去参加一个组合的生日派对所带上的一个不那么上心的礼物，而且，他还迟到了10分钟。
I met Kanye West I'm never going to fail
Wolves音频：00:0003:58
Thankfully, he's bringing a Kanye album, and Kanye albums make pretty goddamn good gifts. His devotion to the craft of album-making remains his greatest talent. Albums are his legacy, what he knows, deep down, will endure after the circus of attention he maintains around him subsides. His ability to package hundreds of stray threads into a whole that feels not just thrilling, but *inevitable—*at this, he is better than everyone, and he throws all of his best tricks into The Life of Pablo to remind us. He picks the right guests and gives them idealized settings, making people you don't care about sound fantastic and people you do care about sound immortal. Chance the Rapper, a spiritual heir to backpack-and-a-Benz Kanye if there ever was one, is given the spotlight on the opener "Ultralight Beam," and uses his dazed, happy verse to quote both "Otis" and the bonus track to Late Registration. His joy is palpable, and it's clear he has waited his entire adult life to be featured on a Kanye album. On the other hand, "Fade" pits Future knockoff Post Malone, of all people, against a sample of Chicago house legend Larry Heard's "Mystery of Love" and a flip of Motown blues rock band Rare Earth's "I Know I'm Losing You" and rigs the mix so that Malone, somehow, sounds more important than both of them.
谢天谢地，坎耶带来了一张纯正的坎耶专辑，纯正的坎耶专辑是充满着那么多的惊喜。坎耶这张专辑仍然保持着高制作水平，他自内心深处就知道，专辑就是他的遗产，在他周遭发生的争议平息后会永远被传颂的艺术品。坎耶的那种能将数百种相对独立的音乐元素融合进同一首歌中的能力是不仅是令人震惊的，但这就是他与生俱来的。在这种天赋和能力上，他比任何人都要强，而他在专辑中那极佳的创作选择也证明了这一点。坎耶挑选了合适的助阵歌手并根据他们的风格为其创造了发挥空间，让那些无名小卒也能一展身手，让那些产业大咖也能献上最佳表现。
Chance the Rapper，一个被称作是背包派和奢华派坎耶的精神继承人（如果有的话）。他被给予了开篇曲目《Ultralight Beam》中相对多的部分并用他那慵懒，轻快的腔调提及了《Otis》和坎耶的专辑《Late Registration》中的加曲。他的愉悦掩盖不住，大家都知道，他为了和坎耶合作这一刻已经等了快五六年了。另外，与说唱歌手Future的复制品波兹·马龙合作的歌曲《Fade》采样了人尽皆知的芝加哥浩室音乐传奇拉里·赫德的《Mystery Of Love》和底特律蓝调摇滚乐队Rare Earth的《I Know I’m Losing You》的片段并融合于一起，正因如此，马龙的部分才能比这采样还要耀眼。
FML音频：00:0003:56
This moment is also a reminder of Kanye's audacious touch with huge, immediately recognizable pieces of musical history—his best work as a producer has always drawn from iconic songs so venerated most sane people wouldn't dare touch them, from "Gold Digger" to "Blood on the Leaves" and beyond. He doesn't just sample these songs, he climbs in and joyrides them like the Maybach in the "Otis" video. On "Famous," he does it twice, first by matching up Nina Simone's "Do What You Gotta Do" with Rihanna, who sings the song's hook before Nina does, and then with Sister Nancy's "Bam Bam," which gets flipped so it sits atop a chorale-like chord progression. It sounds like a dancehall remix of Pachelbel's Canon, and it's the most joyful two minutes of music on the album.
"Waves," a song that made the tracklist at the last second at Chance the Rapper's insistence, has a similar energy. You can hear why Chance, specifically, might've wanted it back: It is a throwback to the Rainbow Road maximalism of "We Major," and it is so warmly redemptive it even makes Chris Brown, who sings the hook, sound momentarily benevolent. "Waves" is hardly the only last-second change made: The Kendrick Lamar collaboration "No More Parties In L.A." is back on here, as is an inexplicable minute-long voicemail from imprisoned rapper Max B, granting Kanye permission to use his popular slang term "wavy." Such last-second fidgets seem to say something about The Life of Pablo itself. After years of agonizing over how to follow up the conceptually triumphant 808s & Heartbreak, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and Yeezus, he seems to have settled upon eternal flux as a resting place, and the album plays like Kanye might still be remixing it furiously in your headphones while you listen.
这一刻也让我们回想起坎耶在音乐历史上对那些伟大的，有辨识度的音乐作品的大胆尝试——说起坎耶作为制作人的所制作的最佳作品，人们肯定会想到那些普通人根本制作不出的现象级歌曲，从《Gold Digger》到《Blood on the Leaves》，数不胜数。侃耶不仅仅是采样了音乐，更像是开着迈巴赫在这些采样上自由驰骋，就像他在歌曲《Otis》的Music Video中一样。在歌曲《Famous》中，他两度完美呈现了他那超凡的采样艺术，第一次是他为这Nina Simone的歌曲《Do What You Gotta Do》采样找到了绝佳的人选，蕾哈娜，并让其随着Nina的唱腔完成了这首歌的副歌部分。第二次是侃耶采样了Sister Nancy的歌曲《Bam Bam》，并完全换了一个调，让其听起来像是一组赞美诗般的和弦。最终呈现出来的效果就像是一首舞曲混音版的卡农，这真是这张专辑里最令人愉悦的两分钟。
最终，在Chance the Rapper的坚决要求下，歌曲《Waves》被添加进了这张专辑中，而这些歌也像《Famous》那样有着愉悦的听感。在你聆听过后，你会明白为什么Chance为什么特别想拿回这首歌：歌曲给人一种类似于极繁主义制作的代表《We Major》（收录于专辑《Late Registration》中）的复古听感，那种暖心的救赎感甚至都能让唱副歌Chris Brown听起来有那么片刻的仁慈。《Waves》并非是专辑唯一一首最后才添加进来的歌曲，和Kendrick Lamar合作的《No More Parties In L.A.》同样也是：正在狱中的说唱歌手Max B给侃耶发了一封费解的语音邮件，表示他允许侃耶使用他的专属俚语：wavy，随后歌曲才得以发布。专辑这匆匆忙忙的加曲似乎也说明了《The Life Of Pablo》本身的含义。继神专《808s & Heartbreak》,《My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy》和《Yeezus》后，侃耶一直挣扎着如何做出像上面这样专辑概念和歌曲本身同样卓越的作品，而他似乎已是将涌流不息的长河中作为自己的栖息地。专辑给你的第一听感就是侃耶一边给你听歌，一边还在你的耳机里给歌曲混音。
Pt. 2音频：00:0002:09
"Father Stretch My Hands" tosses a sample from Southside Chicago icon, activist, and one-time fraud convict Pastor T.L. Barrett into a gurgling trash compactor alongside some pigeon-cooed backing vocals and an entire undigested verse from another Future knockoff, Brooklyn upstart Desiigner. It's the least-finished-sounding piece of music to ever feature on a Kanye album. This is the logical endpoint to the sort of obsessive perfectionism that led West to make 75 near-identical mix downs of "Stronger," and in the song's lyrics, Kanye admits that the same workaholism that made his father a distant figure in his childhood now keeps him from his family. On "FML," he name-checks the antidepressant Lexapro on record for the second time in a year, and alludes to something that sounds an awful lot like a manic episode. The life of a creative visionary has dark undercurrents ("name me one genius who ain't crazy," Kanye demands on "Feedback") and it's possible that The Life of Pablo title serves as much private warning as boastful declaration.
The album's most humane moments come when he reaches for his family: "I just want to wake up with you in my eyes," he pleads at the end of "Father Stretch My Hands." On "FML," a bleak song about resisting sexual temptation, he sings to Kim, "They don't want to see me love you." "Real Friends" reprises his "Welcome to Heartbreak" role as the unhappy outsider at his own family events, squirming through reunions and posing for pictures "before it's back to business"; it's maybe the saddest he's ever sounded on record.
歌曲《Father Stretch My Hands》采样了南芝加哥著名艺术家，曾经的诈骗犯Pastor T.L. Barrett的话语，混音成了好像被咯吱响的垃圾压缩机压过的鸽子叫声，回荡在耳畔。在歌曲的pt.2版本中，侃耶令人费解地将Desiigner，这来自布鲁克林的Future复刻人的热单《Panda》混音进来，这和专辑中其他助阵歌手的部分一比，简直是格格不入且粗制滥造。正是这种癫狂完美主义的逻辑点，使得侃耶在发行歌曲《Stronger》之前，将其重复混音了75次，而在歌曲的歌词中侃耶提到，正是这种对工作的痴迷和醉心让他和他的父亲关系越来越疏远，而现在同样的情况也发生在他和他的家人身上。在歌曲《FML》中，侃耶提到了抗抑郁药物依地普仑，这已经是他今年第二次提及抗抑郁剂了，而这也暗示着一些关于狂躁症发作的事宜。一个有创意的梦想家的生活也会充满着未知的暗流（“说出一个不癫狂的天才的名字我听听”，侃耶在歌曲《Feedback》中要求道。）所以《The Life Of Pablo》这一专辑名既是一个自我警醒，又算是一个自吹自擂。
专辑中最暖心的时刻毋庸置疑是侃耶谈及他的家庭状况的时候：“我只想一觉醒来看见你依偎在我身旁”，他在《Father Stretch My Hands》的结尾处说道。在《FML》这阴暗的关于抵制性诱惑的歌曲中，侃耶对他的妻子金·卡戴珊唱道：“人们都对我于你之爱嫉妒不已”。而当侃耶陷入与家人愈发疏远，只能在工作前匆匆忙忙地与家人拍上那么一张集体照的境况时，歌曲《Real Friends》也重现了他那“欢迎来到心碎之地”的身份。这可能是这张专辑中最悲伤的一部分了。
Real Friends音频：00:0004:11
Tuning into the humanity in Kanye's music amid bursts of boorish static can be difficult, and the most prominent example of assholery on Pablo comes from the instantly infamous jab "I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex," which feels like a piece of bathroom graffiti made to purposefully reignite the most racially-charged rivalry in 21st-century pop. But there's lots more where that came from, sneaking in behind the headline: "If I fuck this model/ And she just bleached her asshole/ And I get bleach on my T-shirt/ I'mma feel like an asshole" is maybe the most unforgivably stupid thing Kanye West has ever rapped. And on the bonus track "30 Hours," he takes a moment to sneer, "My ex said she gave me the best years of her life/ I saw a recent picture of her, I guess she was right."
At moments like this, you sense the airlessness of super-celebrity closing in around him. Even when he was being loathsome, Kanye's behavior always felt rooted in something messy and relatable. During the wild scrum of The Life of Pablo's press cycle—when he tweeted "I own your child!!" at Wiz Khalifa in response to a minor misunderstanding, or his "BILL COSBY INNOCENT !!!!!!!!!!" tweet, for instance—there was a prevailing sense that Kanye had entered such a consequence-free zone that we can never truly relate to him anymore. Once upon a time, he was The Asshole Incarnate, the self-described "douchebag" that we couldn't look away from. But there are moments here where he just sounds like another asshole.
但如果你想在重重粗俗话语干扰下细细聆听侃耶歌曲的暖心人性，那着实是有点难，而专辑中那最恶名昭彰的一句歌词就是歌曲《Famous》中的“I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex”,就像是在卧室墙上写下的一派胡言，仿佛是要重燃21世纪流行乐坛最具种族色彩的战火。但此外，还有更多跟这一样恶劣的歌词：“If I fuck this model/ And she just bleached her asshole/ And I get bleach on my T-shirt/ I'mma feel like an asshole（如果我和这模特上了床，而她也刚刚给自己的后庭消了毒，那我给我的t恤消消毒，我也感觉我自己变成了个混蛋了）”。这可能是侃耶有史以来说过的最不可原谅的蠢话了。而在加曲《30 Hours》中，他嘲笑道：“我的前任说她和我在一起的年月是她一生中最棒的日子/我看了看她最近的照片，她说的确实是对的。”
在这样的时刻中，你可以感觉到侃耶那超级巨星身份周围包裹的那窒息感。即使是侃耶做出一些令人作呕的行为的时候，他的举动也是植根在一些混乱又相关的东西中。贯穿《The Life Of Pablo》这放荡不羁的压迫循环中，侃耶在推特回应了与Wiz Khalifa的一个小误会：你的孩子是我的；也发过推说比尔·科斯比是无辜的，更例如，有这么一种普遍的说法是侃耶已经踏入了一个不顾后果之境地，我们再也无法理解他的一举一动了。曾几何时，侃耶就是混蛋的化身，他自称自己是一位万众瞩目的人渣。但在这张专辑里，侃耶听起来像是另外一个混蛋。
Low Lights音频：00:0002:11
And yet, as it always does in Kanye's essentially crowd-pleasing, deeply Christian music, the light wins out over the darkness. A madcap sense of humor animates all his best work, and The Life of Pablo has a freewheeling energy that is infectious and unique to his discography. Somehow, it comes off as both his most labored-over and unfinished album, full of asterisks and corrections and footnotes. "It was my idea to have an open relationship, now a nigga mad," he jokes on "30 Hours," sending up his own masculine fragility. "I need every bad bitch up in Equinox/ I need to know right now if you a freak or not," he jokes on "Highlights."
And with The Life of Pablo, this humor isn't just in the verses, it's in the rollout, too. Somewhere between the record's several title changes, it started to feel like Kanye had decided to turn his troubled-blockbuster-syndrome into performance art. "We still don't have a title," Kim Kardashian tweeted, days before the announced rollout. The day after he rented out Madison Square Garden so he could plug in his laptop, it was suddenly unclear, again, if the album was coming out at all; the mess was so profound that a tweet noting "Young Thug claimed on Periscope it was coming out on SNL tomorrow" suddenly seemed like solid intel. Chaos reigned, and as the twists and turns mounted, it was hard to keep from laughing helplessly.
然而，这样的情况经常发生在侃耶迎合大众的举动中：深刻的基督教音乐，光明终将战胜黑暗的主题。偏执狂的幽默感是推动侃耶制作出优秀作品的动力，而那种随心所欲的能量让《The Life Of Pablo》成为侃耶作品中最具感染力、最独特的一张专辑。也不知怎么的，专辑释出后也成为了他最用力过猛和完成度最低的专辑，作品中充满着各种星号，各种修改的痕迹和脚注。“拥有一段开放的关系是我最初的想法，现在我却对此感到懊恼”，他在《30 Hours》中开玩笑道，传递着他那关于男人的脆弱。“我要在昼夜平分时召集所有的坏女人，我现在就想知道你是不是一个怪人”，他在《Highlights》里唱道。
关于《The Life Of Pablo》，笑话不仅仅是在歌曲里，更是在专辑的推广中。在侃耶多次更改专辑标题的举动中，这开始让人感觉侃耶决定是要让他那“麻烦制造者综合症”转变成一种行为艺术。“我们还是没有决定好专辑的标题”，在专辑宣传发布的几天后，侃耶的妻子在推特上说道。在他为了以便于给笔记本充电，把麦迪逊广场花园租出去的第二天，专辑的释出时间再度成了一个谜。大众舆论一片混乱，而此时一条关于“Young Thug在Periscope平台上表示侃耶的专辑会在明天的周六夜现场节目发布”的推特又让人不得不相信。人们议论纷纷，对专辑的期待感被吊着跌宕起伏，真的蚌埠住了。
I Love Kanye音频：00:0000:44
Around this point, the joke became clear: This whole thing—album cycles, first-week sales, release dates, the album-as-statement, the album itself—is ridiculous. The only other recent marquee star to allow something this messy to bear their name was Rihanna, whose ANTI was released into the world last month in a similarly slipshod manner. Both stars are jewels in the late-period Roc-A-Fella dynasty, their careers forged in the dying embers of the old-school music industry where promotional campaigns were telegraphed months in advance, where singles and video rollouts were executed with airstrike precision, where release dates loomed like skyscrapers. In the ensuing industry freefall, Kanye and Rihanna have weathered every absurdity imaginable—platinum plaques handed out by Samsung, biometric suitcases carrying leakproof records, artist-owned streaming services that put up their records for a few minutes by accident. Watching the sea of confusion and despair on news feeds and timelines, you can almost hear them chuckling: None of this matters, because none of it is real.
If there was a larger message behind all this impulsive last-second lurching and heaving, that was it. "We on an ultralight beam/ This is a God dream" reads like an affirmation that we live in a world touched by divinity—but it could also mean the universe is a trick of the light, and we're nothing but a figment in a higher being's imagination. Nothing is as it seems, nothing is safe from revision, and nothing lasts: In one last rug pull, Kanye claimed that the "Pablo" of the title was neither Escobar nor Picasso, but St. Paul of Tarsus ("Pablo" in Spanish). The claim slots neatly with his assertion that The Life of Pablo is a "gospel album," and on "Wolves," he offers a resonant, lonely image: Kim and Kanye as Mary and Joseph, alone in the manger and surrounded by the void. "Cover Nori in lamb's wool/ We surrounded by/ The fuckin wolves," he raps. If Pablo is indeed St. Paul, Kanye might have a passage on his mind from Corinthians, Chapter 13 verse 2: "If I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing."
在这个点上，笑话就很明显了。这一系列的事情——专辑周期，首周销量，发布日期，专辑声明以及专辑本身——都是荒谬至极的。另一位这样溜粉的明星还得是山东天后蕾哈娜，她的专辑《ANTI》在上个月也是以同样潦草的方式发布的。这两位明星都是Roc-A-Fella 唱片公司王朝后期的两颗明珠，他们的音乐生涯都是在老派音乐产业的余烬下铸就的；专辑的宣发都是经过提前几个月的铺垫进行的，空降单曲和音乐MV作为宣传是家常便饭，专辑发布日期就像云层中的摩天大楼一样不可窥视。在随后的行业衰落与改革中，侃耶和蕾哈娜都经受住了各种可以想象的荒谬事件——由三星公司分发的音乐白金认证，装着防泄露唱片的生物识别行李箱，歌手专属的流媒体服务账号，有时他们还会不小心上传了他们的作品。看着新闻推送和时间轴上那令人疑惑又绝望的一系列事件，你似乎都能听到那被传播着的消息的嬉笑声：“我们都是无关紧要的，因为我们啊，全都是fake news。”
如果说在这最后一秒的冲动颠簸和起伏背后有什么更重要的信息的话，那就是它。“我们在上帝的圣光之下/这是神之梦”，这读起来像是一种肯定，我们生活在一个与神密切相连的世界——但它也可能意味着宇宙的概念是光的一个小把戏，而我们只是一个更高等的存在所塑造的虚构人物。没有什么事物是表面看起来的那样，没有什么是不可以被篡改的，也没有什么是永恒的:坎耶最后一次声称，专辑名中的“巴勃罗”既不是Escobar也不是毕加索，而是Tarsus的圣保罗(西班牙语中的“巴勃罗”)。侃耶说《The Life Of Pablo》是一张“福音专辑”。在歌曲《Wolves》中，他呈现了一幅引人共鸣的、孤独的画面:金·卡戴珊和坎耶扮演玛丽和约瑟夫，独自在马槽里劳作，被空虚寂寞包围着。“给诺瑞披上羊皮/我们被/该死的狼包围，”他说道道。如果Pablo真的是圣保罗，坎耶可能会想起哥林多前书第13章第2节的一段话:“即便我能有移山的信念，但如果没有爱，我什么都不是。”
