The most famous (and perhaps narcissistic) man in hip-hop is back, yet again, with a new release. Kanye West returns with a Hip-Hop release (ie no auto-tune, thank fuck). The first single off Kanye West‘s upcoming album release was leaked late last week and quickly picked up swiftly by yours truly and a large portion of the music community.
Power has a decent beat and features samples from King Crimson giving the track a heavy rock swagger compared to West’s usual style. The vocal delivery is standard Kanye and almost feels lazy at times. It lacks conviction and, ironically, the power of his earlier work.
The track is just a little underwhelming coming from an extremely talented artist. Power just sounds like a diluted version of Stronger and perhaps should have been included on the Graduation EP as a b-side. The production is tight but there is really nothing new going on here. Symptomatic perhaps of a man torn between the quality hip hop he produced early in his career and the regretful transition to his auto-tune saturated “singing” from the previous record that almost singlehandedly reformed the sound of pop music for the next two years. He has put out 5 albums in 6 years, so maybe Kanye is running out of ideas?
Maybe he should just stick to production?
What do you think?
Kanye’s 5th EP Good Ass Job is due out in the next few months with no precise release date specified.
Happy Music 