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Welcome to Switched On Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan.

I want to talk about a difficult subject.

All right. Something that you and I have discussed at Nazium, off mic, but have ignored on the show.

What could this be? Is it that mole I showed you the other day?

Essential musical stuff. It's a song that bends a lot of the sort of pop rules and conventions that you and I geek out on all the time. And yet we passed over it.

That's Kanye West's follow God. I suppose we didn't delve into this song or West's last record because it is such a kind of hot button issue in the music industry.

It's almost easier in a way to gloss over this controversial artist rather than deal head on with his music.

Yeah, I mean, we are in a postmaga embracing Kanye. There's the Kardashian relationship narrative. You have him starting a cold dish celebrity church. I mean, I really sort of tuned out.

What I want to do today is explore the things that we have missed. And in the first half, I want to look at some of the musical innovations that Kanye has created.

And in the second half, I want to see how Kanye applies his creativity as a producer when he uses the sound of gospel music.

We last covered the life of Pablo, his record that came out in 2016, but he said four albums since then. They were successful albums. And last fall, he put out his ninth consecutive number one debut album on the Billboard 200.

Jesus is king. Wow. It's an album about his sort of Christian conversion and finding God.

This Christmas, he put out Jesus is born a gospel album with his Sunday service choir. And it succeeded on the gospel charts. It was number two in the gospel charts, number 73 on the Billboard.

And has a much more church oriented sound.

This is Father Stratchus song that he first released on life of Pablo and one that he is updated with the Sunday service choir.

While I've been in relative lockdown at home, I've been eating a lot of comfort food and listening to a lot of comfort music. And actually Kanye is one of those artists, you know, someone from me who going back to our college years, early Kanye stuff that I really vibe on. And yet I totally passed over this work.

And I want to figure like was it because the music was bad or is it simply that I've sort of reached peak Kanye capacity given all of the larger stuff. And I feel like it sort of compels us to think about his music.

You know, a lot of us are probably wanting through the wire.

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