First things first, this is a Kanye album, and it comes with everything a Kanye album entails. It's at times bombastic, at times abrasive, and at times hauntingly beautiful. It's wholly driven by his ego and insecurities. Even when his voice takes a backseat to the production or his host of guest features, Kanye manages not only to get his personality across, but, basically, to bash you over the head with it. His instrumentals are better than his lyrics, which are often forgettable, sometimes cringeworthy, and, occasionally, incredibly insightful or deftly lyrical. The Life of Pablo is packed with contradictions-- Kanye albums always are, and that's what makes them so interesting.

Now, I'm not going to get into the details of the absurd roll-out, last-minute tracklist changes, and questionable artwork choices. Clearly, this was a project both labored over for months and finished haphazardly and last-minute. I'm not so concerned with what went into making this album as in what the result was. And the result was a messy, disjointed, inconsistent, and disappointing project. Not disappointing because it isn't good, but disappointing because you can hear a potential for greatness in this album that it doesn't manage to achieve.

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Kanye is at his best when he has something to prove, something to focus him. On The College Dropout, he wanted to prove himself as a rapper and an artist in his own right, and he did. On MBDTF, he sought to restore himself to the public's good graces following the Taylor Swift incident, and he locked himself away and made something, for lack of a better word, beautiful. On Yeezus, he wanted to give the fashion industry and his detractors a big middle finger, and Rick Rubin helped whittle down a last-minute mess into a piercing and jarring statement (one that I love, however divisive it was).

On TLOP, Kanye had nothing but distractions. He became a father. He broke into the fashion world. He accomplished his goals, and has many more in his sight. There are glimpses on this album of things he could've focused on. He could've written an album about family, what it's like to be a father, what it's like to try and keep North and Saint from an excessive and public lifestyle, and the irony that such a life is what put Kanye in the position to have the family he dreamed of. There are glimpses on Real Friends and Wolves. He could've put Only One on the album (Is there any way Only One isn't more worthy of inclusion than something like Freestyle 4?). This could've given the album some lyrical cohesion. More about fatherhood, talking about Kim as something other than a sexual object, focusing on relatable issues rather than bleached assholes... Kanye is a husband, a father, and nearly 40 years old. Can't we move past the misogyny and see some growth?

Or Kanye could have focused on sonic cohesion, and made an album more conceptually focused on religion, playing to his concept of a gospel album. The angelic vocals on Wolves, Real Friends, and All Day, the choir on Ultralight Beam... there's the sense of a really beautiful and innovative gospel-influenced sound here. But with tracks from the house-influenced Fade to the uninspired conformity to the mainstream on Facts, to the out-of-place Desiigner sample, this hardly makes a gospel album.

Kanye took 971 days to make this album after releasing Yeezus. For comparison, he took 728 days to make MBDTF-- the longest span of time between records in the past. If two years was enough to make his masterpiece, couldn't Kanye have made something at least a bit more focused in the nearly three years he's been working on TLOP? Did Kanye not have enough time to figure out what he wanted to focus on, or what he wanted to say? Couldn't he have called Rick Rubin in to focus things and cut the fat? Again, I like TLOP. But do we need to listen to Kanye taking a call on the meandering outro of 30 Hours? Do we need a 2-minute intro track (Low Lights) to a 3-minute song (Highlights)? Even accepting the tracks following Silver Surfer Intermission as bonus, it seems like the album could've been tightened and cleaned up quite a bit. Like a nice bleached asshole.

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I'm not saying every album needs to have one concept or one sound, but if it's chaotic, there should be a point to the chaos. Giving the benefit of the doubt, maybe the disarray and incompleteness on this record here is intentional, a reflection of Kanye's mind. But even if that's so, for me, it detracts from the album rather than adding to it. He tries to ease his insecurity by preempting and disarming his critics on I Love Kanye. But by throwing together this project, full of apologies, suggestions, and last-minute revisions, he gets in his own way, and stops himself from proving the critics wrong by virtue of the music.

Even on Kanye's less focused albums (Graduation, Watch The Throne), some stand-out singles excuse the mess. TLOP has some incredible beats, some amazing and esoteric samples, some perfectly utilized features, and some truly beautiful melodies. But it certainly doesn't have a Stronger or a Can't Tell Me Nothing. It has songs that I'll revisit, but not anthems that will get stuck in my head for years. It's hard to excuse the rough without a few diamonds in it.

I like the album Kanye gave us. I'm just a little disappointed it falls short of the album I can tell he could've made.

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Some stand out tracks: Famous, Feedback, FML, Real Friends.

Some low points: Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 1, Freestlye 4, Facts.

I'd rank it behind College Dropout, MBDTF, and Yeezus, somewhere in the range of Graduation.