The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page H03

PHILLY.COM SUNDAY, APRIL 10, 2016 THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER H5 PHIFE DAWG, "NUTSHELL" Posthumous single by the "undefeated, unblemished, underrated" late A Tribe Called Quest rapper is a beyond-the-grave collaboration with producer Dilla, who died in 2006. Partial proceeds go to the American Diabetes Association and National Kidney Foundation. DAN DeLUCA delucadan Ever the perfectionist Kanye West, like countless artists before him, can't stop tinkering with his latest offering. Kanye West's "The Life of Pablo," his follow-up to 2013's "Yeezus," was due in February, but didn't materialize. It's now available for streaming and may still be a work in progress, ethan miller Getty images have successfully done in recent years, and as Canadian rapper Drake is expected to do any day with the long-awaited Views From the 6.

With streaming music gaining traction and actual music ownership on the downswing, West has (probably accidentally) happened on a strategy of altering his music according to his whims which are many, so this could get wearying and keeping the work evolving long after the official release date has passed. Since the advent of file-sharing at the turn of the century, there's been much blather about the death of the album, despite the continued impulse of artists of stature like West to think in terms of musical statements that involve groups of sequenced songs rather than just individual jams. But by putting the "living breathing art project idea" into practice, West, or anyone else who chooses to work that way, can potentially give an album new life by continually reshaping it like a musical software update. (Or, left to their own devices, they could ruin it through obsessive tinkering.) Like Maurice Prendergast at his patron's house, West can go back to the studio any time he likes to add a verse, beef up a beat, or include more songs, as he did when he decided to put the Kendrick Lamar-guesting "No More Parties in L.A." on Pablo after all. That's the track that gives Pablo its name.

On it when he's not mocking his own immaturity by calling himself "a 38-year-old 8-year-old," or fixating on his Philly-raised ex, Amber Rose West repeatedly compares himself to a Pablo we can safely assume is Picasso, an uncontested genius worthy of the association in West's mind. "I feel like Pablo when I'm working on my shoes," he raps. "I feel like Pablo when I see me on the news." Unlike West, the protean Spanish artist whose current show at the Barnes is called The Great War, Experimentation and Change didn't get to create in the age of digital technology, where altering one's work and delivering it to a mass audience can be managed with a few clicks. Picasso had plenty of ideas about never fully letting go of his precious creations, though. "To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense!" the great man, who's also featured in the Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible group show at the new Met Breuer museum in Manhattan, once said.

"To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to be rid of its soul." The Life of Pablo strategy for nurturing art takes those words to heart: The best way to keep the music alive is to keep trying to perfect it, forever. E3 ddelucaphillynews.com 215-854-5628 (ffidelucadan www.philly.cominthemix Deadlines are a nuisance. There's a story I heard on the audio tour at the Barnes Foundation that like most discussions of great art eventually will bring me back to subject of Kanye West. One of Dr. Albert Barnes' favorite artists was Maurice Pren-dergast, the American post-impressionist who has 21 paintings in the museum on the Ben Franklin Parkway.

The story goes that Prendergast was frequently tempted to alter his own works. Once, while dining chez Barnes, he sneaked off to add a few brushstrokes to one of his paintings hanging on the wall at the doctor's Merion manse. It might have looked perfectly fine to everyone else, but in the eyes of the artist, the piece was unfinished. That brings to mind one of the great, still-not-done projects of the 20th century, now carrying on well into the 21st: Robert Ca-ro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson books. The first biographical volume was published in 1982, and the fourth in 2012.

In 2002, Caro talked in an interview about his frustration, as a lowly newspaper reporter, with having to let go of a story as a deadline approached: "They'd give you a week, they'd give you a month, but at the end of the month, I'd always have more questions." So far, the now-80-year-old Caro has been working on answering his LBJ questions for four decades. Hopefully, one of these years, he'll publish the fifth and maybe final volume. What's all that got to do with The Life of Pablo? Everything. After he changed the title several times, West's long-awaited follow-up to 2013's Yeezus was expected to be available as a finished product on Feb. 11.

That, of course, did not happen. Instead, it soon became apparent West had blown his own deadline. After staging a fashion showlistening party at Madison Square Garden on the release day, the multitasker tweeted later that night that he was back in the studio with Chance the Rapper, the Chicago comer who rhymes on "Waves," a song once meant to be the album's title cut, then dropped from it altogether, and then ultimately included. That was just the beginning of what has turned into one of the most botched or brilliant album rollouts ever by a major artist. For weeks, West continued to add songs and change others on the album, which was not for sale (but which was widely pirated and shared) and available only as a stream on Tidal, the Jay Z-helmed music service that comes in a distant third behind Spotify and Apple Music in terms of subscriber reach.

As of April Fools' Day, The Life of Pablo was available to buy for $20 on KanyeWest.com and could be Pablo Picasso was famously dismissive of the idea of artists' ever letting go of their works. APFiie PABLO PABLO PABLO PABLO PABLO PABLO TH 5-e THE LIFE OF PABLO WHICH ONE WHICH ONE WHICH ONE WHICH ONE WHICH ONE WHICH ONE 1 1 ONE WHICH I ONE WHICH 1 ONE I ONE Az-StXH I ONE 'CH I ONE CH I ONE WHICH I ONE One version of cover art for "The Life Of PablO." Def Jam Recordings is the plan to let the album continue to develop long after the conventional release date has passed. "In the months to come, Kanye will release new updates, new versions, and new iterations of the album," the Def Jam statement reads. "An innovative, continuous process, the album will be a living, evolving art project." As West put it on Twitter: "Life of Pablo is a living breathing changing creative expression." That's an idea that West and artists of all stripes who just can't bear the idea of being done with whatever endeavor is obsessing them can easily get behind. Social-media marketing and instant Internet distribution have given artists the flexibility to suddenly spring music on their fans, as everyone from Radiohead to Beyonce to Wilco THE LIFE OF THE LIFE OF THE LIFE OF The Kills play Union Transfer.

The Kills. Hard-edged duo of American singer Alison Mosshart who also teams with Jack White in the Dead Weather and English guitarist and Kate Moss husband Jamie Hince. Ash Ice, the band's first album in five years, is due in June. With Kim the Created. Monday at Union Transfer.

Jackie Neale, SubwaySeries. An artist talk at the Free Library with photographer Neale, whose superb photographs of New York City travelers caught in their own private commuter worlds are on display at the Print and Picture Collection Hallway Gallery on the second floor. 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Parkway Central Library. Paul Bowles, "Music of Morocco," recorded in 1959.

The American expatriate novelist author of The Sheltering Sky and composer who studied under Aaron Copland was sent on a north African recording expedition in 1959 by the Library of Congress. The trance-inducing results are on four discs gathered in a suave, faux cigar-box package, with notes by Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo. On the Dust-to-Digital label. John Doe and Tom DeSavia, "Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal Story of L.A. Punk." Doe, singer and guitarist of the band who just released another fine solo album, The Westerner weaves together the story of first-wave California punk with the help of DeSavia and chapters penned by Dave Alvin of the Blasters, Mike Watt of the Minutemen, and Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Gos, among others.

Da Capo. Bleached. Sisters Jennifer and Jessie Clavin lead Bleached, a Los Angeles rock trio who were standouts at SXSW. They build on the Southern California fuzz-rock tradition that runs from the Go-Gos to Best Coast. Thursday at Johnny Brenda's.

1 Hot Pink Blues Album listened to on all the major streaming services. But does that mean it's actually done? Hardly. TLOP may not have come out when and how it as supposed to because West was too busy designing sneakers and going on head-scratching Twitter rants about Bill Cosby's innocence to turn it in on time. And though it contains brilliantly self-aware moments like "I Love Kanye" and effectively paranoid ones such as "Wolves," it also intentionally or not sounds far more unfinished than any previous Kanye album. But that work in progress has, probably by accident, led to artistic opportunity.

West's label, Def Jam, now refers to the Pablo rollout as part of a "groundbreaking windowed release strategy." That may just be PR-speak, but what is genuinely intriguing about The Life of Pablo Ratings: Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor Pet Shop Boys Super (Kobalt Super is the second of a planned three albums pairing eudite 1980s British dance-pop duo Pet Shop Boys with (former Madonna) electronic producer Stuart Price. Like 2013's Electric, Musiq Soulchild Life on Earth (eOne My Block Toward the end of Philly's neo-soul sweep in the 1990s, creamy singerspacey producer Musiq Soulchild (Philly-born Taalib Johnson) came, saw, and conquered then kept K. Michelle More Issues Than Vogue (Atlantic Records K. Michelle's whole life is a performance. The R.

Kelly mentee's been a regular cast member on Love Hip Hop, both the New York and Atlanta iterations. On her third LP, Kimberly Michelle Pate Super keeps its foot to the floor, upping the beats per minute and avoiding the orchestrated ennui that dragged down 2012's Elysium. And though Super isn't quite as super, songwise, as Electric, it's still effective at combining dance-floor momentum with the droll and sometimes disquieting lyrical perspective of talk-singer Neil Tennant. He's still expert at overlaying unabashedly synthy musical textures with actual human emotion. On Super, written in London and Berlin and recorded in Los Angeles, Tennant and silent partner Chris Lowe display empathy with the growing pains of millennials.

The EDM pioneers allow themselves to grow nostalgic for the early '90s on "The Pop Kids," which celebrates poptimistic club culture with Tennantian understatement: "We were young but imagined ourselves so sophisticated Telling everyone we knew that rock was overrated." Elsewhere, Tennant imagines himself a bored totalitarian ruler, longing to be toppled would be such a relief not to give another in "The Dictator Decides," another early highlight on an album that loses some steam down the home stretch. Dan DeLuca moving forward with his smoothly melodic, rhythmically punchy, and occasionally experimental brand of galactic, romantic Maybe there weren't jagged edges or bluesy avant-garde twists (e.g., fellow Phi My singer Bilal) in his sobriety, but Musiq was solid. Even after his major-label run ended in 2011, Soulchild played it cool by toying with indie-recorded reggae tracks and, now, by rejiggering his original recipe to add a bit of swagger. Take "I Do," a jazzy, Dexter Wanselish track. Soulchild may sound chill and loving at first, but dig deeper and you find the crooner-composer is willing to admit he doesn't like his intended all that much.

That soulful, Drambuie-drenched duality, electric-piano swirl, and subtle hip-hop rhythm also float behind the singer on the chuffed "Changed My Mind" and the sultry-but-stammering "Wait a Minute." Find the deluxe version of Life on Earth and dig the interstellar atmospheres and caramel-coated beats of "Outer Space." Add it all up and you'll find Soulchild is the same as he ever was, only more so. A.D. Amorosi can't hide behind reality TV and the result is impressive. Down to the cover art, of a seemingly tiresome male trapped in her bugglegum sphere and words like THOT, bipolar, and fake booty plastered in the background, this record is tongue-in-cheek fun. The Tennessee girl has professed a love of country, and her trailer-park-theme video for the outstanding lead track, "Mindful" (produced by T-Pain), is a blast.

Still, there's no detectable country in these 12 tracks, only full-on urban and hip-hop. Maybe a country record's in the cards someday. "Got Em Like" features production from Andre 3000 and Big Boi. My favorite, "Rich," features Yo Gotti and Trina and slays with lines like "I got rich-people problems." Jason Derulo's here, too, duetting with Michelle on the flirty "Make the Bed." Is this an overt grab at FM notoriety? Perhaps, but it probably won't work. The singles "Not a Little Bit" and "Ain't You" are slow, delicate numbers that shine a light on her qualified pipes (her vocal coach also trained Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears) but don't capture the irreverence laced throughout this record.

Bill Chenevert Cate Le Bon, Crab Day; PJ Harvey, The Hope Six Demolition Project; Dilla, The Diary; Keb' Mo', Live: That FOR SALE FRIDAY.