Album Review: Various - Kanye West Presents Good Music Cruel Summer

Question: How do you follow a career-defining record like 2010's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy? Answer: You don't. With new release Cruel Summer, Kanye has both his label boss and artist hats on to deliver an album curated by and featuring himself, but this is not otherwise a Kanye West release. That said, Cruel Summer is without a doubt an album from the hand of Kanye. The vocoder; the wall of sounds and textures; the eclectic roster; the cleverly layered production; and the unnecessarily abundant Lamborghini references combine to form a record which at times makes total sense, and at others suffers from a frustrating lack of cohesion.

The middle section sits most comfortably with New God Flow featuring Ghostface Killah stretching in to Raekwon's verse on The Morning. It doesn't take GZA The Genius to presuppose the sonic compatibility of Wu-Tang's heaviest heavyweights, but it does serve to highlight track progression like a truck driver's gear change elsewhere on the record. Individually, the cinematic Sin City feels like All Of The Lights Part Two, in a good way, complete with Rihanna-gram Marsha Ambrosius. But what's with the grating drum tracks on Don't Like and Clique? A few trusty reggae samples (Barrington Levy, Super Beagle, Dave and Ansel Collins) here and there are what's needed to soothe the senses, and luckily Kanye provides.

Taken as a label sampler, Cruel Summer is an innovative if sometimes incoherent collection of tracks, but as a standalone album the verdict has to be A.V.E.R.A.G.E.