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By Agnes Davidson and C.C. Burnikel
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
12/04/18

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

12/04/18

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Tuesday, December 4, 2018

ACROSS
1 Fights (for)
5 “Whip It” rock
band
9 __-slapper: funny
joke
13 On the road
14 Biblical paradise
15 Dr. Hahn on
“Grey’s Anatomy”
16 Hesitation from
Sylvester?
18 Center of activity
19 Fireplace
receptacle
20 Accomplishment
by Porky?
22 Former Fox TV
series set in
Newport Beach
23 Curly cabbage
24 Minor flap
25 Ringing organ, at
times
26 Detergent brand
28 ’60s hallucinogen
30 Pierre’s negative
31 Near-failing mark
33 Reach its
destination, as
a trip
35 Slim candle
37 Affirmative from
Tony?
40 Royal crown
42 Slim fish
43 Tech sch. near
Albany, N.Y.
46 Win, place or
show
47 Seasonal shelf
sitter
49 __ moment’s
notice
51 Curved shape
53 “Frozen” sister
55 Charged
particles
57 One of Crayola’s
hundreds
59 Story from
Remy?
61 Greek goddess of
wisdom
62 “Don’t Cry for
Me Argentina”
musical
63 Water source for
Simba?
65 Fainthearted
66 Fairy tale heavy
67 Out of the wind
68 “Frozen” reindeer
69 “That was close!”
70 Scottish
monster’s loch

DOWN
1 Obey an eviction
notice
2 “He scammed
me!”
3 Neon diner sign
4 Food service
giant
5 College faculty
head
6 End of a
professor’s URL
7 Italian scooter
8 Playwright
Eugene
9 Emmy winner
Steve of “60
Minutes”
10 “Good shot!”
11 Quito’s country
12 Crayola
Factory’s
Pennsylvania
home
15 Trains over the
street
17 Running rate
21 Unified whole, in
psychology
23 Film title
“Citizen”
27 Trappings of
royalty
29 One of a
calendar septet

32 Incoming flight
info
34 “The Chronic”
rapper, familiarly
36 Each
38 Rage
39 Red and Yellow
40 Israeli port on the
Mediterranean
41 “The hour has
arrived”
44 Brewpub draft
45 Unexpected
turns of events

46 Special Forces
headgear
48 Abide by
50 Plays a part
52 Construction site
sights
54 “The Lord of the
Rings” actor Sean
56 Horse’s
mouthful?
58 “Not again!”
60 Smidgen
61 From the top
64 Portland’s st.

Surely the Second Coming
of ‘Yeezus’ is approaching

November has come and gone,
and Yandhi left with it. Despite
enthusiastic words from Kim
Kardashian, it was no surprise
that Kanye West’s supposed
ninth studio album did not
appear on streaming services this
Black Friday — a fact his legions
had earlier been forced to come
to terms with after Mr. West took
to Twitter to go back on his wife’s
promise.
All signs point to Yandhi
being a spiritual sequel of sorts
to Kanye’s 2013 output, Yeezus,
(the similar title and cover art
are the biggest clues) but taking
into account how much Kanye’s
career trajectory has changed in
the half decade since the release
of Yeezus, this act of continuation
all seems a farce.
If there’s one thing Kanye
has done well, it’s constantly
evolving and pushing boundaries
as an artist while still keeping
everything
precisely
Kanye.
Prior to this year’s ye, each of
his albums ushered in a distinct
era for the man: in his music,
his fashion, his character. The
best part of this was that Kanye
always seemed to know when to
pivot, when rockstar Kanye or
soulful Kanye had overstayed
their welcome, and to break
down, rebuild and rebrand.
I would argue that no Kanye
album ever needs a sequel. (Yes,
I know The College Dropout,
Late Registration and Graduation
form a trilogy of sorts, but
while thematically and slightly
musically similar, they all have
their own defining sound and
Kanye himself was a much
different person in 2004 than
he was in 2007). And therein
lies the core frustration with
Yandhi. Any attempt to recreate
the minimalist panache of Yeezus
will result in failure. Yeezus is
the culmination of every Kanye
West we’ve ever known and
every album he has ever offered,
combined and distilled to the
barest form. It is Kanye at his
most complete.
Setting
the
contemporary
politics of Kanye aside for the
slightest moment, what little he
has revealed about Yandhi spells
unfulfillment.
Starting
with
the two aforementioned chains
which bind it to Yeezus, the name
and the cover, one can infer the
only reason for the similarity was
to drive hype, in the same way that
the first release date we got (“9 29
18”) turned out to be a ploy to get
the Kanye faithful to tune into
a “Saturday Night Live” season
premiere the same day, trading
high attention and ratings for a
surreal performance of “I Love
It” with Lil Pump. But, in order
to dive into Yandhi, one first has
to understand Yeezus and what it
represents, and what happened to
Kanye in the meantime.
Yeezus’s
cover,
or
lack
thereof, is the perfect primer
to the musical equivalent of a
dental drill which lies within.
As noted in a phenomenal Daily
article regarding the album’s
relationship with architecture
and an interview Kanye did with
The New York Times, Yeezus was
in part recorded in an acoustically
terrible Paris apartment, forcing
the songs “to be super simple,
because if you turned up some
complicated sound and a track
with too much bass, it’s not going
to work in that space.” The cover
is perhaps the simplest you can
be, and speaking about the sparse
promotion of the album Kanye
echoes the same sentiment: “Shit,
we ain’t even got no cover. We just
made some real music.”
Regardless of the critical art
theory lens through which the
cover can be viewed, it’s clear
that sound is Yeezus’s main,
and perhaps only, focus. Which
is almost ironic considering it
came during the peak of Kanye’s
arrogance: The days of VMA-
interrupting
Kanye,
whom
Barack Obama even freely called
a jackass, had somehow been
eclipsed, replaced with a man
who appeared to have seen it
all, teetering between insanity
and earnestness as he drilled

hours
of
apocalyptic
gospel
and sublime self-affirmation to
unready radio hosts. So, when
you hear this variant of Kanye is
releasing an album comparing
himself to a savior revered by
billions of people right from the
title, you can’t help but roll your
eyes, all while buckling up for the
absolute.
And
Yeezus
immediately
thrusts you into a car crash, as
“On Sight” is every part abrasive
and
boundary-pushing
while
still retaining a certain charm,
everything a Kanye song should
be. The industrial soundscape of
this introduction is interrupted
halfway
by
something
that
defined
early
Kanye
(what
is
“soul,”
Alex?)
when
the
synthesizers give way to a choir
chanting “He’ll give us what
we need / it may not be what
we want.” This austere contrast
of “On Sight” is a microcosm
of everything Yeezus is: the
intersection between harsh noise
and soothing melodies, Kanye
honing his craft of dredging up
the most obscure yet pertinent
samples and music as the starkest
representation of the self.
There is no defining sound
of Yeezus other than abstract
sound itself. The sirens and
distortion of “Send It Up” make it
a more approachable “On Sight;”
“Black Skinhead” would fit right
in with Graduation and My
Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’s
stadium rap anthems, save the
zealous manifesto against the
establishment and its racism;
and “Guilt Trip” and its Kid
Cudi croons feel an extension
of the love and loss present on
808s & Heartbreak. Each song
starts with a single sound, be it
the soft press of a piano key or
a grisly drone, and then takes
that sound and smashes it open,
layering the space inside with
Kanye’s vocals and stripped-
down drum patterns. And while
Yeezus definitely pulls from the
prior discography, it is as much a
synthesis as it is a reconstruction.
The primary instrument of
the album is the voice, whether
that of Kanye, a collaborating
artist or a sample. The artist’s
full vocal range is on display,
from his booming, grumbling
bars on “I Am A God” to the
auto-tuned trill found late in
“Blood On The Leaves.” It is
underpinned by a wealth of other
singers and rappers — Chief
Keef, Frank Ocean and Bon
Iver, to name a few. The prolific
samples themselves take on a
life of their own, as Kanye and
his legendary production team
revive everything from Nina
Simone’s rendition of “Strange
Fruit” to a Hungarian rock power
ballad. The kicker? The only
official featured artist is God
himself. Kanye is at the absolute
forefront, asserting himself as
the divinely untouchable and
smashing open the musical ore to
reveal 10 disparate crystals and
their translucent mystery.
Yeezus is at the same time
everything
and
nothing,
an
amalgamation and a destruction.
I’ve talked about the progression
of Kanye in a way that could
make
him
seem
like
some
“Split”-esque host for multiple
personalities, whereas in reality
all of these different Kanyes
are just manifestations of some
facet of his personality blown up
to larger-than-life proportions.
Work with me here, but consider
Kanye West as a cow: Each cut
of meat represents the Kanye
associated
with
a
specific
album. They all vary in flavor
and tenderness, but at their core
they are all the same, all some
sort of beef. Yeezus is the meat
grinder into which everything
was shoved in an attempt to make
the perfect blend, employing
each cut’s idiosyncratic taste and
cutting out the fat.
But what do you do with the
sonic sausage that pops out of
the grinder? In The Life of Pablo’s
case, you throw it in the trash.
Yeezus
broke
Kanye’s
music
down and fashioned together
something more complete with
the resultant shards, but Pablo
shattered everything completely.
It’s hard to expand on perfect, so
Kanye did what any perfectionist

would do. He started anew on
the quest to reach perfection,
again. And with this blank slate,
Kanye continued to find ways to
innovate, literally going beyond
the boundaries of an album.
While it’s completely valid to
dismiss The Life of Pablo as
messy and unfinished (“Ima fix
wolves”), the constant updates
and abstract, jagged nature of
it make sense when you view it
as, in Kanye’s words, “a living
breathing
changing
creative
expression.”
While the initial reception to
The Life of Pablo was mixed for a
Kanye album, after people started
to spend more time and live in
conjunction with music, Kanye’s
status as a genius auteur was not
challenged. However, and it was
hard to see then, chinks in the
armor were beginning to expose
themselves.
This
vulnerability
can
be
primarily found in some of the
songs on Pablo. The production
is excellent, as always, but for
an album themed around the
interplay between West’s public
and private lives and reconciling
with oneself, some of the lyrics
are downright terrible. Yeezus
has a few incendiary lines here
and there (“Eatin’ Asian pussy,
all I need was sweet and sour
sauce” and “get this bitch shaking
like Parkinson’s” surely stick
with the listener) but they came
off as an ironic self-awareness
of West’s penchant to provoke.
Yet on Pablo you get thought
provoking verses like “I bet me
and Ray J would be friends / if
we ain’t love the same bitch” and,
of course, the infamous “Now if
I fuck this model / and she just
bleached her asshole / and I get
bleach on my T-shirt / I’mma
feel like an asshole.” On Yeezus,
Kanye asserted he’d “rather be
a dick than a swallower,” but it
resonated because his blunt and
brash bravado was the point.
He broke meaning down to the
nitty-gritty but still conveyed
exactly what he was thinking
and feeling. He was a little lost
with Pablo, and anyone looking
for anything profound started
to grasp at straws; Kanye being
gross and ridiculous was nothing
more than Kanye being gross and
ridiculous.
When The Life of Pablo was
released, the president who called
Kanye West a jackass was still in
office, and things — Kanye, our
country — were OK. Nonetheless,
it only took a few months for both
of them to backslide. Kanye’s
appearances on the Saint Pablo
Tour became more a space for
him to orate increasingly neurotic
rants, culminating in a Nov. 17
performance where he stated “If
I would have voted, I would have
voted for (Donald) Trump” and
one two days later where he held
the crowd verbally hostage and
launched into a tirade against
Hillary Clinton, Facebook and
Jay-Z, among other things, after
only performing three songs. The
rest of the tour was cancelled
shortly after, citing stress and
exhaustion — ironically, the two
feelings most of the country
was wrought with after election
night.
The ensuing spiral pulled
Kanye down further and further.
He was hospitalized for sleep
deprivation
and
dehydration
following the cancellation of
the tour, and his first public
resurfacing was in the lobby of
Trump Tower, where West and
the
president-elect
discussed
“life.” It soon became clear
that Kanye was suffering from
severe mental health issues, but
this led to the most fervent fans
defending him and rephrasing
his endorsement as something
out of his control, a by-product
of the toll stress, depression and
paranoia exacted on him.
And as Kanye got worse,
he made it harder and harder
for himself to detach from the
controversy. After a year of
relative silence, he returned to
Twitter in spring of this year,
tweeting support of conservative
personality
Candace
Owens.
This snowballed into an erratic
appearance
on
TMZ,
where
he made headlines for saying
slavery “sounds like a choice.”

ROBERT MANSUETTI
Daily Arts Writer

MUSIC NOTEBOOK
The summer gave us more
doses of “dragon energy,” and
at “SNL”’s season premiere in
Sept. he quickly swapped his
Perrier bottle cosplay for that red
Make America Great Again hat
to throw a rambling Pro-Trump
speech at an uncomfortable cast
and audience, inciting criticism
from Kenan Thompson and even
Lana Del Rey.
The situation was dire for
Kanye stans, with tons jumping
ship and even more expressing
some form of betrayal. Some still
held on that this did not spell the
end for Kanye West and he would
persevere, acknowledge his faults
and grow from them. Then came
what they thought was the nail in
the coffin, his absolutely surreal
conversation
with
President
Trump in the Oval Office, which
covered topics like the “iPlane 1”
and the superhero armor Kanye
felt the MAGA hat bestowed
upon him. It seemed the only
people left supporting him where
the same ones who levelled racist
comments against him for his
nationally televised remark that
“George Bush doesn’t care about
Black people.”
Supporting
Donald
Trump
doesn’t automatically make you
a bad person. Falling prey to his
treacherous rhetoric and being
pulled
into
the
inescapable
hurricane of which Trump is the
eye is when it starts to get ugly,
and that’s precisely what Kanye
did. Now, if this was a hip-hop
artist of similar merit who had
openly embraced conservative
views for their whole career, this
would be a different story, but
this is Kanye West we are talking
about.
Kanye West, the man who
rapped “How we stop the Black
Panthers?
/
Ronald
Reagan
cooked up an answer / You hear
that? What Gil Scott was hearin’ /
When our heroes or heroines got
hooked on heroin / crack raised
the murder rate in D.C. and
Maryland / we invested in that,
it’s like we got Merrill Lynched
/ and we been hangin’ from the
same tree ever since.” The man
who gave a giant middle finger to
the one percent on Yeezus, telling
people like Trump “Fuck you and
your Hampton house.” Kanye’s
fans looked up to him not only
for his musical prowess but for
him using his platform to call out
those in power when no one else
was holding them accountable
and give a voice to the voiceless,
however loud-mouthed it may
be. And now this man makes a
complete 180° to support the man
who called African countries
“shitholes,”
who
said
there
was “very fine people on both
sides” after white nationalists
attacked and even killed counter-
protestors in Charlottesville and
who preferred the term “son of a
bitch” for Colin Kaepernick and
other NFL players who chose
not to stand for an anthem that
romanticizes a country doing
little to fight against police

brutality, racial injustice and
systematic oppression.
Vocally
and
passionately
supporting the president makes
everything that Kanye had been
saying for decades sound like
an empty lie. Kanye West, once
Yeezus, to many Lord and Savior,
denied us three times, and many
more after that.
However, on Oct. 30, supposed
salvation arrived on the limbs of
140 characters. Ye, his preferred
name on Twitter, proclaimed
he had “been used to spread
messages (he doesn’t believe in)”
and he was trading politics for a
refocused creative spirit. Hip-
hop hypebeasts and the general
public could finally breathe the
collective sigh of relief; Kanye’s
long national nightmare was
over. Except, the Kanye we got
back wasn’t the same one who
left us.
Pre-2016, I was always one to
speak out against Kanye slander,
arguing that the man who many
saw as just a narcissistic asshole
was
a
complex
artist
with
complex problems, overinflating
his ego to try and cope with battles
against anxiety and self-image all
while pushing the envelope of
modern rap and giving us radical
genre-bending music. You could
make a case for every album of
his up to Yeezus as his best. But
when push came to shove and
the controversies centered less
around the person and more
their politics, I could no longer
let Kanye off the hook. Defending
him turned into an uphill battle
with an exponential incline, and
trying to push a boulder up it
would cause unnecessary stress
and harm to myself. I let it roll
down the hill. I gave up on Kanye
West, and you should too.
If there’s one thing though, at
least he finally gave me an album
I can assuredly place as his worst.
Every valid criticism about The
Life of Pablo and more can be
applied to ye: unfocused, sloppy,
forgettable. The gross lines are
multiplied (“Let me hit it raw like
fuck the outcome / ay, none of us
would be here without cum” is
about the deepest thought he can
muster and “I pray your body’s
draped more like mine and not
like your mommy’s” is a mind-
boggling thing to say about your
newborn daughter), the beats
are stagnant and uninspired
and there’s a puzzlingly high
amount of Ty Dolla $ign and
PARTYNEXTDOOR
on
the
record. On songs like “I Thought
About
Killing
You”
West
maunders about faux-highbrow,
superficial philosophy, coming
off as, for lack of a better word,
a cringe-inducing edgelord and
rapping version of the “Rick and
Morty” high IQ copypasta.
For
years,
fans
defiantly
believed Kanye knew what he
was doing, that behind his ever-
shifting, inflammatory persona
was someone who could see all,
do all, pull all the strings. Yet
when their favorite artist started

to support their least favorite
political figure, he was being
used. He was in the sunken place.
He was now a hostage rather
than a creation. In a Noisey
article of similar caliber, the
writer felt Kanye “made a deal
with the devil,” that in return for
being able to make Yeezus he had
to turn over the keys. Make no
mistake though, as every tweet
Kanye ever sent, every pro-Trump
statement he ever espoused was
done willfully. Upholding this
narrative of a Kanye possessed
can only become more dangerous
with time.
Still, this all makes me wonder
if Kanye knew what he was doing
in the first place. Did we all just
vastly misinterpret his outbursts,
his publicity stunts and his
music as incomprehensible for
us mere mortals instead of the
lucky doings of a fool? Parroting
Patrick Bateman’s rhetoric, there
is an idea of a Kanye West, but no
real Kanye.
I hope the one thing you take
away from this article is to turn
a blind eye to Kanye no longer,
especially when, or even if, Yandhi
is released. Not even considering
his politics, the album just seems
like a bad idea. With the title of
Yeezus, West embraced his god-
like status, enveloped himself
in it, but Yandhi sounds like the
best the people responsible for
the titles of the “Fast & Furious”
franchise could come up with if
given five minutes to think of a
title for a sequel to Yeezus. The
cover artwork feels lazy this time
around, only adding color, a more
intricate jewel case and a rainbow
sheen to follow up an album
defined by a lack of color and
the dynamics of black and white.
Now, I could be wrong, and he
could return with the undisputed
best album of his career, but even
still, in no way would it be an
act of redemption. The Kanye
West we thought we knew and
loved for so long is dead, and this
bizarro husk of Kanye West we
have in 2018 consciously killed
him. Premeditated murder.
Kanye would be hard-pressed
to find success on his second
quest for perfection. Yeezus was
the summation of a lifetime’s
work, and the natural response
to such a tight, dense work is
release. With The Life of Pablo
he did exactly that, but after
Kanye rode that horse until it
could go no more, for once in his
life, he had no idea where to go
next. ye was a wrong step in the
alt-right direction, and trying to
rekindle the flame of something
as singular as Yeezus with Yandhi
spells the end is “nigh.”
Returning to the gospel sample
of “On Sight” five years later —
“He’ll give us what we need /
it may not be what we want” —
more doubt is cast on the belief
Kanye gave us what we needed
with Yeezus. Now, he certainly
isn’t giving us what we need, and,
as much I hate to say it, he no
longer knows what we want.

6 — Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com