Kanye West has gone ahead and gifted us all a very special present this Christmas in the form of his brand new surprise EP, Emmanuel.
The release of the new album comes exactly one year after his last album, he released Jesus is Born on 25 December, 2019.
West has made no secret of his Christian faith, so it is no coincidence that the EP was dropped on Christmas Day. Press materials state that Emmanuel means “God is with us” and that the album was released in “celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.”.
The EP consists of five songs and according to the press release it “introduces a composition of a new sound, inspired by ancient and Latin music.”
West produced and composed the album himself and, like Jesus is Born, Emmanuel is being put out by Vydia, a “New Jersey-based distributor,” instead of going through a major record label.
The tracklist of Emmanuel is:
- ‘Requiem Aeternam’
- ‘O Mira Nox’
- ‘O Magnum Mysterium’
- ‘Puer’
- ‘Gloria’
When West released Jesus is Born, he originally received a lot of criticism. Pitchfork’s album review was particularly scathing: “Kanye albums used to stretch our perspectives and imaginations. Now they illuminate the contours of his increasingly shrunken world.”
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However, the album won a range of accolades at the Billboard awards this year. Jesus is Born took home the Top Christian Album, Top Gospel Album and Top Gospel Song for, ‘Follow God’. The album also debuted at No. 2 on Billboard’s Top Gospel Albums chart.
Last year West announced that he was only producing religious gospel music from then on.
“I take offence when somebody calls me secular,” West said at a Sunday Service session in LA. “Y’all can look at the domes that we was building, affordable homes, y’all call that bizarre. Y’all can take the picture of me painting it silver, y’all can call that what y’all want,” he said at a Sunday Service session.
“But don’t call me secular ’cause secular is trying to say that I’ll do anything for anyone other than Christ. That’s where they got it messed up. That’s where they got it twisted.”
