Lou Reed Really Enjoyed Kanye’s Yeezus (Well, Besides The Blowjob Lyrics)

Former Velvet Underground frontman and general rock legend Lou Reed is no stranger to adjectives like “challenging”, “jarring”, “visceral”, “disconcerting” and “menacing” — his 1975 buzzsaw epic Metal Machine Music is probably the most famous example of a pop star giving the world a two-fingered salute with a noisy slab of unlistenable provocation. (Rolling Stone at the time described it as “masochism” and compared it to a night spent at a smalltown bus terminal).

So perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise that he’s found a spiritual brother in Kanye West. Overnight, the 71-year-old penned a lengthy review of Yeezy’s controversial Yeezus for music site The Talkhouse, and boy does he like it. In the almost 2,000-word screed, Reed glowingly describes the album as “un-fucking-believable. It’s fantastic…” and each track as “making a movie”, compares ‘New Slaves’ favourably to the “end of the new Superman movie” (Lou Reed watched Man Of Steel!), and, weirdly, says “[Kanye] could kill Taylor Swift and it would all be over”, which is the worst advice ever. Let’s take a closer look inside the mind of Lou Reed Listening To Yeezus…

He thinks Kanye is really, really, really talented

“There are moments of supreme beauty and greatness on this record, and then some of it is the same old shit.  But the guy really, really, really is talented.  He’s really trying to raise the bar.  No one’s near doing what he’s doing, it’s not even on the same planet.”

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He thinks Kanye is the new Axl Rose (actually Kanye already said this himself)

“He seems to have insinuated in a recent New York Times interview that My Beautiful Dark, Twisted Fantasy was to make up for stupid shit he’d done.  And now, with this album, it’s “Now that you like me, I’m going to make you unlike me.”  It’s a dare.  It’s braggadoccio.  Axl Rose has done that too, lots of people have.  “I Am a God” — I mean, with a song title like that, he’s just begging people to attack him.”

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He’s not too sure about the farting, though

“But why he starts the album off with that typical synth buzzsaw sound is beyond me, but what a sound it is, all gussied up and processed.  I can’t figure out why he would do that.  It’s like farting.  It’s another dare — I dare you to like this.  Very perverse.”

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Or some of the blowjob lyrics

“Many lyrics seem like the same old b.s. Maybe because he made up so much of it at the last minute.  But it’s the energy behind it, the aggression.  Usually the Kanye lyrics I like are funny, and he’s very funny here.  Although he thinks that getting head from nuns and eating Asian pussy with sweet and sour sauce is funny, and it might be, to a 14-year-old — but it has nothing to do with me. Then there’s the obligatory endless blowjobs and menages-a-trois… Or he says “I’d rather be a dick than a swallower” — but then he does a whole chorus with Frank Ocean.  What he says and what he does are often two different things.”

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Also, Kanye’s classic manic-depressive, guys

“Hold My Liquor: At first, West says “I can hold my liquor” and then he says “I can’t hold my liquor.”  This is classic — classic manic-depressive, going back and forth. Or as the great Delmore Schwartz said, “Being a manic depressive is like having brown hair.”

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Haha, “brown hair”, good one, Lou. Anyway, this was actually very informative; can’t wait to hear his thoughts on Magna Carta Holy Grail. It’s like listening to a cool grandpa.