We're going to switch on pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding and I'm musicologist Nate Sloan.

And we're really lucky to be joined again by Andrew Morance from the New Yorker who's going to help us deconstruct Kanye West's The Life of Pablo.

Hey, what's up guys?

Andrew. So good to have you back, man.

Yeah. So Andrew, last time I saw you, you were egging me on to tackle this beast of an album Kanye's new Life of Pablo.

I was. I was egging you on pretty hard. And in fact, if I remember correctly, the analogy I made was Kanye is the Beatles of our moment.

Both choice of words.

What I meant by that is Kanye is the thing in pop music right now that it would be irresponsible to ignore.

Kanye is the musician who is in the popular realm right now who you are not cultured if you're not paying attention to what he's doing.

Okay, so basically you're accusing us of not doing our job if we pass over this essential album.

Yeah, there are certain people who are big, big stars who are sort of unmaskable, who are important in their own way.

But you can kind of miss an album here and there and be okay.

Like, right, Rihanna dropped an album recently.

You can ignore the Rihanna album and still get what Rihanna's all about and get what you represent in the culture and appreciate her who has a singer as a star.

Whatever. When Kanye drops an album, that's a moment.

You got to stop what you're doing and listen to that out.

I find that pretty persuasive.

Well, I have to say, Andrew, I feel like you've just given us this totally sycophine task, right?

Kanye's body of work is probably only outmatched by the size of his personality, right?

And the criticism of him ranges from Kanye, the genius producer on one end and Kanye, the misogynist media agitator on the other who's been known for speaking out off cue about issues ranging from George Bush's presidency to Taylor Swift, get the VMAs and more recently about Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Cosby.

Totally. And that duality you describe is maybe more explicit on this record, life of Pablo than maybe any other Kanye album.

You read the reviews of this album and they run the gamut from the negative, like dead and hip-hop calling it nothing short of confusing to the law datory where the New York Times is so bold as to claim that maybe the unfinished nature of this album is the new film.

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