In case you missed it, Kanye West not-so-quietly released a new track called “Facts” over New Year’s Eve. It is not good.
Now, I realize I hold Yeezy to a higher standard than pretty much every other artist, a result of the Chicago-raised rapper providing an unmatched career’s worth of six incredible, genre-expanding and innnovative albums. So getting a ramshackle, boring cut that pretty much asks what would happen if Drake and Future’s “Jumpman” was a glorified shoe commercial for Adidas is kind of a bummer. With all that masterful work in the past and likely the future, why can’t I just let Mr. West drop a piecemeal freestyle like every other rapper?
Here’s why: Only two minor things about “Facts” stand out. As the Chicago Reader’s Leor Galil notes, besides a sample of D.C. soul outfit Father’s Children’s “Dirt and Grime” and a memorial to the tragic death of local DJ Timbuck2, “everything else needs work.” It doesn’t. Instead, it offers West’s awkward, maniacally out-of-breath flow, the Jay Z-in-“Picasso Baby”-relatable lines like, “10 thousand dollar fur for Nori, I just copped it” and confusing name drops of Bill Cosby and Steve Harvey. To be fair, though, I admit I chuckled at the quip, “I give ’em Grey Poupon on a DJ Mustard.”
With that said, the critical response to the song mostly has been a collective shrug emoji—and not just from overworked music bloggers who had to delay their NYE plans to get a news post published. HipHopDX’s Andre Grant wrote, “The most disheartening thing is that Ye’ seems to have put this one without much thought” while the Atlantic’s Spencer Kornhaber, who was remarkably positive about the track, still said, “Most of the song is not very clever, though I do like the ruthlessness of him bragging about outfitting his toddler in $10,000 furs.” To paraphrase my Twitter timeline over the New Year: “I love Kanye West, but “Facts” is bad.”
However, there is one small group of unabashed “Facts” fans: the Los Angeles Lakers. Guard Nick “Swaggy P” Young, an arbiter of taste who’s known for his .380 field goal percentage this year and proposing to Iggy Azalea, credits the song’s shout-out, “James Harden, Swaggy P runnin’ up the budget” as the sole reason the astonishingly disappointing basketball team has won three games in a row. He’s probably right: If Kanye West gave me a positive mention in a track I’d have enough motivation to get a Pulitzer in a month.
If there’s one good thing about “Facts,” it’s that West is one step closer to releasing his long-teased “Yeezus” follow-up album “SWISH.” Though there’s no confirmed tracklist, many of his recently shared songs like “Only One,” “Fade,” “Wolves,” and “All Day” point to a promising 2016. Yes, this freestyle hit my ears like a wet blanket, but West hasn’t disappointed me yet with an album. I’m still firmly on board for Yeezy’s 2020 run.
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