Endlessly useful source of lyrical annotations, news, innovative tech collaborations, artist information and more, Genius has now released an in-depth, yet easy-to-follow video detailing pretty every single edit made to Kanye West’s The Life Of Pablo since its release earlier this year.
The four-minute video traces the record back to its initial release, premiered live at Madison Square Garden, to West’s performance on Saturday Night Live and beyond. It then goes into detail looking at particular changes on tracks, playing old and new versions of snippets from songs including increasing the bass on Pt. 2, increasing the vocals on Waves, adding synths to Famous, changing backing vocals on FML and more. What’s more, he edited Chance‘s lyrics on Ultralight Beam and his own on Famous. The video then talks about how he changed some tracks to be more similar to their original pre-TLOP versions, most notably removing Frank Ocean from Wolves, adding Vic Mensa and Sia back to their original parts – while Ocean’s outro was given its own track, knowingly titled, Frank’s Track (this was a smart move. I have no doubt that there would’ve been a full on riot if anyone found out that Kanye was holding onto even a moment of unreleased, recorded Frank.)
The video then spoke about the downside of the ever-evolving release, which they cleverly described as being more like an app, or a game, with regular updates: not only did it not chart to Billboard, but around half a million people illegally downloaded it, meaning they wouldn’t have received the updated version released to Tidal.
Thank you Genius. You continuously prove yourselves to be the best site on the internet.
Read more: Kanye West and the Problem of Armchair Diagnosing
Image: Youtube/Genius