On “Hold On”, Pusha sneers about studio gangsters who never sold drugs, then cedes verse two to corrections officer turned crack rap kingpin Rick Ross. (2 Chainz wins here: “Entrepreneur/ Strip club connoisseur/ Hot fudge sundae/ Pour it on you, hallelujah”). Trap clown prince 2 Chainz and dick joke dispenser Big Sean are so outmatched on “Who I Am” that they hang back to play comic relief. Elsewhere a disembodied, wraithlike Chris Brown’s good life platitudes on “Sweet Serenade” are waylaid by at every turn by gun-toting mogul talk. He nets a beat from the-Dream and a lilting Kelly Rowland hook on “Let Me Love You” and effects a Mase flow so spot-on you’ll look for him in the liner notes. Frequent alley oops from singers scan as shots at offsetting the brass tacks boom bap of “Numbers on the Boards” and “Nosetalgia” with hooks, but Pusha seems wholly unfazed by any of it. Guests grace nearly every track, but where they gobbled up real estate that should’ve been Pusha’s on Fear of God II, on My Name Is My Name, they’re mostly tasked with giving Pusha’s impish abandon wings. My Name Is My Name makes concessions for radio accessibility, but it’s never rankled by them.
My Name Is My Name is borne out of the same minimal, uncompromising darkness as Yeezus, but its communion with radio rap values delivers on the accessibility that listeners put out by Yeezus’ monomaniacal hellishness clamored for. Kanye’s production with DJ Mano on “Who I Am” advances the dark, austere Yeezus vibe as it melds oft-used samples (the “Yeah!” from Mountain’s “Long Red” and the frantic lick from South Bronx dance-punk pioneers ESG’s “UFO”) and a swatch of Warp producer Kwes’ serene “LGOYH” into something leagues more sinister than its requisite elements. On opener “King Push”, Kanye and Sebastian Sartor reprise the vocal sample from the breakdown in “New Slaves”, pinching and distending it into funhouse versions of itself over horror movie synth stabs. The blaring fanfare and hyperactive drum programming Hudson Mohawke and Beewirks brought to “No Regrets” are direct descendants of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’s “All of the Lights”. Kanye never utters a word here, Auto-Tuned scatting on “Hold On” notwithstanding, but the sound and scope of the record are unmistakably Westian.
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