When Kanye West isn’t displaying the symptoms of someone in need of clinical care, he can be an exciting and innovative talent who, in many ways, has been an enormously influential boundary breaker among urban music genres since the days of his award-winning genre blender, “Jesus Walks.” On his latest full album release, The Life of Pablo, West again returns to the themes and inspiring material that once made him more than a Kardashian accessory and a media punchline. The most elevated of the controversial album which has already been pirated at gold status in two weeks since its exclusive Tidal (and Internet leak) release, is an inspirational hip hop gospel soul cut unusually titled “Ultralight Beam.”
Taking on the latest urban music trend of prolonged, deconstructed compositions that are loose on melody line, but tight on mood and atmosphere, “Ultralight Beam” featuring Kelly Price, The Dream, Kirk Franklin, Chance the Rapper, and a most awesome gospel choir, unfolds like a funeral dirge and is instantly heavy in the pathos of both The Dream and West’s emotionally shaken voices but leavened by the humor of a four-year-old child rebuking the Devil on the song’s opening with all the fire and brimstone of a Southern Baptist preacher. Gospel purists may bristle at some of the cursing sprinkled throughout a worship call about God, salvation, and redemption, but for a generation that drops “F-bombs” with the nonchalance of using the word “and,” the profanity here reads as street authenticity. What Chance’s rapid fire flow is to contemporary backpack rap, Kelly Price is to soul and she brings the fullness of her gospel background to her verses about those who gain their strength from putting down the weak and meek of the Earth. Kirk too shows up fully with an altar call to those who feel like redemption has limits, encouraging them to come to God despite the numerous broken bargains and backslidings. The whole affair feels both stream of consciousness and even disjointed, yet somehow the song is held together as something vaguely cohesive by the burning sincerity in every voice, the piercing lyrics of familiar human failings, and the sheer talent of everyone involved. It’s messy and beautiful and a little crazy, much like its creator.
By L. Michael Gipson
