AMerica, divided into racial and political lines and led by her own Herod, faces an invisible plague and a public trial against her history of violence. It is in this biblical context that Kanye West imagines the next apocalyptic event, in one of its most focused and dazzling themes for years.
Wash Us in the Blood sees the rapper ask for a blood shower to free America’s black man from evil. We are at the point, perhaps, where normal water will not wash off; An emergency where we need something stronger. That sense of alarm is amplified by the two-note siren motif, a flattened version of the feedback sound in The Life of Pablo’s Feedback or Yeezus’s Send It Up, another of his warnings that puts the listener on high alert. Your blood is going up.
Blood, of course, pulsed through another historical Kanye track, Blood on the Leaves from Yeezus, which remains one of the most controversial and daring moments in its catalog for its apparent equation of violence and lynching (via his sample Strange Fruit) with the chaos of celebrity and marriage analyzed. He had such operatic audacity and brilliant production that Kanye possibly took him away, although many are still not convinced.
But his blood motif is now sharper, perhaps in the wake of Jesus Is King, his 2019 gospel-influenced album. This was a slightly underrated release, with robust tunes (particularly on Use This Gospel) and glimpses of the crafty old Kanye wit (apologizing for the high prices of his clothes with the reasoning that he didn’t want to end up on the reality show Dancing with the Stars), although he certainly had his longueurs too. But by taking the clarity of faith gained from that project and returning to the industrial circle to the industrial techno of his masterpiece Yeezus, Kanye could find some of his greatest power for the upcoming album God’s Country (that surely ironic title hints at potentially lacerating content) .
Obviously, it evokes the blood plagues in the books of Exodus and Revelation. “Rain on us,” begs Kanye, “wash us in the blood.” Antagonistic racists may interpret this as a call for violent insurrection, but it is not someone who delights in gore, Slayer-style, but asks for liberation through the sacrifice of Jesus. In the repetition and invocation of God, there is a touch of the spiritual that, through blues, the gospel, the soul and more, sits at the root of Kanye’s musical DNA.
Those spirituals were, of course, forged in the horrors of slavery, and in Wash Us in the Blood, the blood of Jesus mixes with that shed on Earth as well. “All their lives they are thugs / No choice, selling drugs / Genocide, what they do / Slavery, what they do”, he concludes: violence and crime, even within the black community, is a legacy of the trauma that has been inflicted from the same time. early america. The disproportionate imprisonment of black people is also mentioned, and guest rapper Travis Scott criticizes the death penalty: “Thirty states still execute / won’t kill.” Artist Arthur Jafa’s video amplifies the interrogation of the race and the police, with fleeting snippets from Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, the latter heartbreaking and happy, along with black people struggling to breathe.
Where could liberation come from other than God? Even in a small and fleeting way, it could be on the dance floor. “South, let it ring,” he orders from the start, presumably to the black community in his native Chicago: Ultimately, it’s a club anthem, perhaps the most direct from The Life of Pablo house track, Fade. The top lines are derived from techno, pulsing at a high-speed 4/4 speed, but are offset by a paused beat, while a steady hand drum line maintains sustained tension. This is absolutely masterful drum programming, and the low tones are like blood pumping through your brain.
Meanwhile, the Jafa video shows people releasing fireworks and pulling dangerous donuts in sports cars, hinting that these high states can also be a respite from stress. However, it closes with images of Kanye’s Sunday Service choir practice, and her daughter North West dancing in the purely expressive and embodied way that we forget (or resist) as adults. Become like little children, maybe this is a route to salvation.
“They don’t want Kanye to be Kanye,” he says at one point, a proper third-party use, yes, although he obviously has a way of this, and warns: “They want me to calm down … try to sign a calm Ye. Nobody He wants her to suffer another debilitating mental health episode, and her inability to calm her feelings and articulate them clearly has led to damaging exaggerations in recent years, such as saying slavery was an election. As her recent defense of voting for Donald Trump demonstrated. Essentially because he can, he values freedom for the sake of freedom, and that urge to do anything has led to some half-unfocused material recently.
However, Wash Us in the Blood has Kanye channeling his emancipated mind to the sharpest point. He is most powerful when he does not try to be calm, but instead corners his anger. There is a broader lesson there, perhaps, as the United States faces its own moment of revelation.
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