Pusha T raps clearer than Windex and still sounds like he’s on a burner trying to escape the enemy by reading from the KGB cocaine codex. He’s twenty years into drug raps that he earned with experience, and who knows if he still needs that work if Kanye is willing to produce a twenty-one minute set of seven songs (and call it an album, a true privilege). This is hard in every sense. Terrence is still the Thornton brother with all the confidence most MCs don’t even know how to ask for. Kanye is in his comfort zone here, finding the crack and the slap and the weird in his MPC without calling the choirs in.

– Sasha Frere-Jones