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This is Undaunted Life of Man's Podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
0:45
All right, guys. This is going to be a first on this podcast. This is a first time ever that I
0:49
have reviewed an album that is a music album. And surprisingly enough, it is the newest album
0:56
from Kanye West called Jesus is King. Now, I know some of you guys, some of you guys already,
1:00
you're like, I don't want to listen to this. He's going to do a review Kanye West. He hasn't even
1:04
done a review. Conway, Twitter, I don't want to listen to it. I get it. I get it. I get it. Just
1:08
just hang with me because in a lot of ways, this isn't just an album, right? This isn't just,
1:14
you know, what it's categorized as a gospel album. This isn't whether you consider it a hip hop
1:17
album. It's not just that. It's something bigger than that. It's become a little bit of a cultural
1:22
phenomenon. And I'm recording this just a few days after its release. And it has just been
1:27
everywhere. And everyone's been talking about it. So for those of you who don't know Kanye West,
1:31
yes, he is an incredibly influential artist. He's probably one of the most influential pop
1:36
and hip hop artists in the last 20 years. I would probably say that that's probably fair.
1:40
This is his ninth studio album. It's only 27 minutes long. So it's a brief album. It's not
1:45
really long. It's 11 songs, 27 minutes. It was released late. There were entire albums that
1:51
were apparently scrapped along the way. But even albums that normally drop, you know, at midnight
1:55
on Fridays or whatever, this one went well into the morning because they were still making edits
2:00
or whatever the situation might be. But it really has taken the entire world by storm. And it's
2:05
trending everywhere. It could be trending. So it's trending on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter.
2:10
It's topped every chart that's possible to chart. I mean, the Billboard 200 hasn't quite come out
2:15
yet, but it's going to be at number one. Spotify kind of has a top 10 list or like a top 100 list
2:21
or something like that. Nine songs off of this album are in the top 10 right now in Spotify.
2:26
So by the time you're listening to this, it'll probably be a little bit different. I mean,
2:29
to date, this is the craziest thing about my audience. As soon as I think I understand my
2:34
audience, something like this happens because we're 102 episodes in now. And I've not gotten a request
2:41
to talk about an individual subject more than I've been given, getting requests to talk about
2:47
this album. I mean, so we've got major things happening in the world of politics, major things
2:53
happening in the world of sports, you know, in, in the Christian church, we've got stuff happening
2:57
all over the globe. And I've guys say, Hey, I want you to talk about this. Hey, can you talk about
3:01
this on your next Q and A? Hey, can you do that? You can do that. But I've been just like, absolutely
3:05
inundated with, Hey, what do you think of the new Kanye album? I'm getting texts and emails and
3:09
all kinds of things. It's just like, Hey, what are you going to do? Or how are you going to talk
3:13
about this? I want to know what you think about this and not just musically and whatever. So,
3:17
so here we go. All right, I'm scrapping what I had planned for episode 102. We're going to push
3:22
that back just so we can talk about this. But before we really get into Jesus's king, which is the
3:27
name of the album. I'm not sure I said that yet. Kanye West has had a really unbelievable last
3:33
couple of years. I mean, from the beginning of 2018 to where we are here in October of 2019.
3:38
So it's been a little crazy for Kanye West, but just kind of give you a little bit of a recap.
3:43
So he started to kind of give full bore support to the BLEXIT movement. So that's B-L-E-X-I-T. So
3:49
that's a word play off of the Brexit movement. But this is basically black people leaving the
3:54
Democratic Party. Right. So Candace Owens is big on that and turning point USA. They're big on kind
3:59
of that. But but really that that caught full bore with with Kanye West. So he was seen wearing
4:04
a MAGA hat and you know, let's make America great again hat supporting Donald Trump doing meetings in
4:08
the Oval Office. You have his wife Kim Kardashian West going to the Oval Office and talking about
4:14
prison reform and actually getting some people that were in prison supposedly for life going to
4:17
be getting them off and getting them out and all kinds of stuff like that. And around that same time
4:22
that all this was going down, he released Yay. And so that's Y-E. So he has his name short to Yay
4:27
and Yeezy and Yeezas and all this stuff. We're going to get into it. But he released that album
4:31
and on that album, it wasn't that great of an album according to me. But basically it just
4:35
talked a lot about his mental health issues. A lot of people were saying the only reason why he did
4:39
this MAGA hat, Donald Trump support, Brexit stuff was to basically sell albums, which if you're in
4:45
the hip hop space, that's probably not the thing you want to do. So it was one of the dumber takes
4:49
that I saw people have. Then you see this change and the change started at the beginning of 2019.
4:55
And that was he started doing something at his house called Sunday Service. Okay, so this was an
5:01
invite only thing at his incredibly fanciest state in Calabasas out in California. But the
5:07
thing about it is these were not overtly Christian meetings, right? There was no gospel being preached,
5:14
there was no altar call, there was no prayer. But to people that were there, and I'm pretty
5:18
sure that Kim Kardashian West was putting stuff on Instagram, basically just describing it as like
5:24
spiritual music sessions. I mean, so these things would last for a couple hours, maybe several hours,
5:29
but there would be a choir and they would sing some songs. But as you can see in some of Kanye West's
5:34
music all throughout his entire career, you can see that there was some sort of a Christian undertone
5:38
that there was this thing almost haunting him. And it was just this, and for us, we know that
5:42
that's a Holy Spirit kind of prompting him. But it's just like this thing that's kind of hovering
5:46
over his life. But then apparently in April of this year, according to Kanye West, he says that he
5:51
found Jesus that he became a Christian, right? Which for those of you that just heard me say that,
5:56
the only, you know, I guess emotion you should be feeling is excitement when I say something like
6:01
that. But I know that that's not the case. So we're going to get more into that a little bit later.
6:05
But apparently this was around the same time he did that concert at Coachella. It was kind of weird.
6:11
A lot of people talked about it because it was him dressing these, this big purple outfit and all
6:15
his people in the choir were in these big purple outfits. I mean, it looked like a cult meeting.
6:20
It was on Easter Sunday. He called it an Easter Sunday service. But you know, just a few years
6:24
earlier, he had released an album called Jesus where he compared himself to a God. I think that
6:28
was in 2013. And so a lot of weirdness kind of happening around that time period. But most people
6:33
just kind of wrote it off. Ah, that's just Kanye being Kanye. You know, he's just doing something
6:36
crazy. But apparently behind the scenes, you know, he was seeking out pastors. So he specifically
6:42
saw it out a pastor named Adam Tyson. And that's, and he's a lead pastor of Placerita or Placerita.
6:48
I'm not sure exactly which, but we'll go with Placerita Bible Church in New Hall, California.
6:53
And so basically one day Kanye just came to church, right? He just came in there and sat in and
6:59
listened to the pastor Adam Tyson do his thing. And after the sermon, I guess some people maybe
7:05
from the staff or some other people said, Hey, you know, pastor Tyson, did you see? Did you see
7:10
who was at the service today? And he's like, no, who? And he's, they're like, Kanye West. And he's
7:14
just kind of like, well, who's that? You know, it's kind of one of those situations. Like, I'm not
7:17
sure he was actually fully up on on who was there. But those two actually connected. And apparently
7:22
they had several long sessions, you know, two, three hour long conversations where pastor Adam
7:28
Tyson took him through the Bible and took him through the gospel and was showing him things and
7:31
you know, treating them like you would disciple a new believer. They did weekly Bible studies up
7:37
into the point that Kanye, I think full time moved to Wyoming. And according to him, he's been,
7:42
he's been quoted as saying this in several interviews that he sees a lot of fruit in Kanye's life.
7:47
Because that's kind of the number one question everyone seems to give this pastor's.
7:50
Well, is this for real? Is this a real thing that's actually happening? Or can we really trust
7:55
that he's found Jesus? And according to, you know, him, he's like, look, we can't know. Like, as, as,
8:01
you know, other people watching his life, we can't know for certain. But, you know, you can know by
8:05
the fruits and Kanye seems to see a lot of fruit there. And so the thing about this album is it took
8:12
forever. So even from the moment that he started meeting with pastor Adam Tyson and, you know,
8:18
going to church and doing his thing, he started doing the Sunday things, I think at his house a
8:22
little bit more. But the thing was, is this entire time, there's this album and there's this ground
8:27
swell for this album that people were ready to come out. And it was supposed to come out, you know,
8:32
in September and then it was delayed. And then it was delayed again. And then it was released
8:36
that it was going to be called Jesus is King. And people are like, what's up with that? And then
8:39
apparently the entire album got scrapped somewhere in this, I might be messing up the timeline. But
8:44
then on Friday of last week, October 25 2019, we finally see it. He drops the album, Jesus is King.
8:51
And so, I mean, it's been news since the moment of the release, but there's just been headline
8:57
after headline after headline and everyone's got an opinion on this. No matter who you are,
9:02
no matter what you do, you seemingly have an opinion on this album. It doesn't matter what
9:05
kind of a new site you you run. It doesn't matter what kind of an entertainment thing you run.
9:10
Everyone's got an opinion on this. And so, I just did a quick Google search and I found a bunch of
9:14
different just headlines. And these are all articles that I actually did end up reading. But I just
9:18
want to kind of give you the headlines just to kind of give you kind of the overall, you know,
9:23
breath of things that people are saying. So, New York Times had an article called Kanye West,
9:27
Heretic by Nature finds God. The LA Times has Kanye West hawks faith on Jesus is King. And
9:34
another LA Times article says Kanye West preaches a message of love and faith on Jesus is King
9:40
too bad about the messenger. Then we have Yahoo posted this. Kanye West is an unreliable pastor
9:45
on Jesus is King. The AV Club, I'm not sure what AV stands for, but they posted this. The Church of
9:51
Satan responds to Jesus is King. Satan is the best friend Kanye has ever had. We have the Hollywood
9:57
reporter saying this Kanye West's Jesus is King is a dull dead end spiritual quest. Billboard says
10:03
Kanye West Jesus is King album aiming for number one debut on Billboard 200 charted and almost
10:08
certainly will do that. The Daily Wire had this closed on Sunday Kanye West's Ode to Chick-fil-A
10:14
draws hate because there was a song where he talked about Chick-fil-A. So obviously everyone's
10:18
going to hop on that. The Christian Post did this is Kanye really born again or is it just
10:23
another publicity stunt surprise, surprise on that one. And then the Daily Bee said this Kanye West
10:27
Jesus is King is fake Christianity at its finest. So you're going to see this all over the place.
10:32
The majority of those are negative, right? But everybody had an opinion. I did find some positive
10:38
opinions in there, but you know, it just kind of is what it is. So from the beginning here, I just
10:42
want to kind of give you my personal opinion on the album. I'll just give you my review of the
10:47
album because I've listened to it several times since last Friday, mainly because you guys wouldn't
10:51
shut up and leave me alone about it. So here it goes. So if you're like a, you know, zero to five
10:56
stars, you know, scale type person, I'd give this about 3.5 out of five stars. Okay, good, but not
11:02
great. You know, I guess on a A to F scale, that'd be like a B minus, you know, on the rotten tomato
11:07
scale, I'd give it a tomato. I'd give it a thumbs up. The thing is, is the best word that I've seen
11:12
used to describe this album. And again, I've read a lot of reviews and talked to several people
11:16
about it is undercooked, undercooked. I felt like that was a great word that encapsulated this
11:21
album. Because again, it's 11 songs, 27 minutes long. So it is not a very long album. Some tracks
11:28
seemed like they were going somewhere and then didn't end up going anywhere. Some of the tracks
11:33
ended up sounding a lot the same. But there were some really, really good tracks on this album
11:39
that I really enjoyed that I can listen to over and over. And so I guess my favorite tracks, I'll
11:44
just kind of go through them here. I'll talk about four specifically that I really like. The first
11:48
three right out of the gate, I really like all three of those. The first one is called Every Hour.
11:53
And so this is a song featuring the Sunday service choir. So this is a choir that I guess he had in
11:58
his house for these Sunday services that he was doing. And it's a straight up gospel intro. I mean,
12:05
Kanye isn't even on the track. I mean, if he is, he's singing way in the background or something
12:09
like that. But this is just a tremendous, you would expect this if you walked into a traditionally
12:15
black church or something like that, you would expect this kind of singing. And to be honest
12:19
with you, that's some of my favorite. Like, I don't really get into the Hillsong type stuff.
12:23
I kind of like more of the big, robust, you know, gospel choir. That's kind of what I'm into. Well,
12:27
that's how this album starts. And so this whole time you're hearing, okay, Connie's about to drop
12:31
a gospel album. He's dropping a gospel album. It's not a hip hop album. And then you have this as
12:34
the first track. So it hits you right in the eyes, but I found it very enjoyable. But that goes right
12:38
into the second song, which is Sayla. And this is a first track with Kanye. It's very ominous.
12:44
The song is it builds it kind of crescendos at a different point, but it kind of stays low.
12:50
It doesn't really have this big explosion, but it does kind of stay low a little bit.
12:54
It's got some very interesting metaphors. And it flows really directly into the third song,
12:59
which is called Follow God. And so if you're a Kanye West fan and have been for a long time,
13:03
this is probably the song on the album that you're going to recognize his style the most.
13:07
Because you've seen, if you've been watching any interviews with Kanye recently, that he's
13:11
kind of called rap, you know, devil's music and you know, or something along those lines. And so
13:16
you can tell that he wanted to kind of let more of his hip hop style out in this album. But he kind
13:22
of like held it back. That was kind of like my read of it. But this song does have a little bit
13:26
more of that. But then my favorite song on the entire album is song number 10. And that is called
13:31
Use This Gospel. And it's featuring clips and Kenny G. Yes, I said Kenny G. So the thing is,
13:38
is the only other reason that I knew that Kanye kind of knew Kenny G is because Kanye, I think
13:44
he surprised his wife on her birthday or on Christmas or something like that and had a bunch
13:49
of roses in this foyer area. And then Kenny G's just like playing his clarinet or saxophone
13:53
or whatever, right there in the middle of the room. So I knew they kind of knew each other,
13:57
but they actually collaborated on this song. And again, like I said, this is my favorite song
14:01
from the entire album. One of the reasons why it's my favorite is because it has clips on it.
14:04
And so if you're not familiar with clips, this is a super underrated duo. It's a rap duo and it's
14:10
two brothers. It's Pusha T and No Malice. You should just be called Malice. But now he's No Malice.
14:15
And this song actually is a reunion of these two. So clips is again, like I said, very underrated.
14:21
But if you're a hip hop fan, you've ran across clips before. And I'm pretty sure that they
14:26
haven't done a song together since like 2010 or 2011. Pusha T has since, you know,
14:33
renounced some of his old ways in songwriting and misogyny and drugs and violence and all that
14:37
kind of stuff. And he's become a Christian. I think he wrote a memoir where he talks a lot about that
14:42
in there. But this song, it's the most enjoyable song for me in a lot of different ways. There are
14:48
people that really don't like this song very much because they feel like the Kenny G aspect of it
14:53
was just kind of like pushed in there. And again, it does seem like it was pasted into the song,
14:58
but I felt like it flowed pretty well, right? It's just kind of a little bit of an interlude
15:02
in the song itself. And so I felt like that was very, very beneficial. I really did like that song.
15:08
And now I'm going to kind of get into some of my favorite lyrics, some of my favorite
15:11
individual lyrics or bars from this album, because there were a lot of good ones. There were some
15:15
that were just kind of like stuck on there. One of the things about it is on some of the albums that
15:19
you know, had a very, very deep, or not I guess wouldn't say deep, but had a very much so a focus
15:24
on a Christian message or a biblical message. Some of those things were fairly elementary. It
15:30
reminded me a lot of worship music that I see today. But it was almost, I mean, these are the,
15:34
these are the writings of a new Christian of a baby believer, right? And so you shouldn't really
15:40
be expecting these deep theological truths, which we'll get more into a little bit later. But going
15:44
back to song number two, say, there was two bars here that I really liked. And so the first one was
15:49
this. Everybody wanted Yandie, then Jesus Christ did the laundry. They say the weak start on Monday,
15:54
but the strong start on Sunday. Okay, so again, the context there is the album that was apparently
16:00
scrapped before he wrote and recorded Jesus, his king was called Yandie, right? So that's a,
16:05
a play on his name that he goes by, you know, Kanye West and, you know, Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi,
16:10
or Mahatma Gandhi, whatever. And so it, it's a play on that. And so you could see he goes from
16:15
Jesus to Yandie. And so he's kind of doing this kind of cult leader movement, central point thing.
16:21
But then again, he says, then Jesus did the laundry. I felt like that was a really good line. When
16:25
I've listened to it the first time, that was probably the line that stuck out the most on this album.
16:30
And on the song as well said this, everything old child now become new. The leaves will be green
16:35
bearing the fruit, love God in our neighbor as written in Luke, the army of God, and we are the
16:40
truth. And so again, you can see some stuff here, you can see obviously some, some biblical literacy
16:45
here, because he's talking about, you know, that's one of the major themes that Jesus uses throughout
16:49
the Bible is about trees bearing good fruit. And you know, just the opposite if they're not
16:54
bearing fruit, those types of things. And so you can see that he's dug into some of the gospels
16:57
here and you kind of get that hint here from that, from that lyric there. And then in song number six,
17:01
that was the song called everything we need. And I was featuring Ty Dolla sign, believe it or not,
17:05
and a guy named Ant Clemens. And so this was the lyric here that I pulled out and it's switch my
17:11
switch my attitude. I'm so I'm so radical. All these people mad at dude. This is for who it matter to.
17:17
What if Eve made apple juice, you gonna do what Adam do or say, baby, let's put this back on the
17:23
tree, because we have everything we need. Okay, so again, when you get into the actual album and
17:27
listen to it, that's a lot better than just me sitting here, reading it. But again, we've heard
17:31
about Adam and Eve so much we've heard about the apple. But have you ever thought of something like
17:35
what have you made apple juice? Right? Like, like what would Adam do? Right. And so but he's
17:40
also putting it towards you. It's like you go and do what Adam do? Like, are you gonna act in that way?
17:44
So that was one for me as I was listening to the album, but also reading the lyrics as the music
17:49
was going. That was one that caught me that I didn't necessarily catch the first time as I was
17:53
listening to it. But I was actually when I was listening to it the second time in the car with my
17:56
wife, she actually pulled out that lyric as well. But that was pretty neat. And so then we have on
18:02
track number nine, that's hands on. So that was free featuring Fred Hammond. And it was this,
18:06
I'm not trying to lead you to visas. But if I try to lead you to Jesus, we get called halfway
18:11
believers, only halfway red Ephesians, only if they knew what I knew, I never knew till I knew of
18:17
the true and living God Yeshua, the true and living God. And so the interesting thing about this is
18:23
this kind of goes into a lot of the things about him. But I want to really pull out this one line.
18:27
If I try to lead you to Jesus, we get called halfway believers. And so I'll talk about this a lot
18:31
more later. But it's like when a guy like Kanye West claims, you know, a Christian worldview claims
18:38
to be a follower of Christ. It's it's really interesting to see the people that come out and
18:41
come after him. Right. And so we'll get a little bit more into that here now. But I had a bunch of random
18:46
thoughts. Okay. So as I'm listening to this album, as I'm talking to other people about this album,
18:52
as I'm reading about it online, as I'm listening to interviews, as I'm getting all these different
18:57
people's opinions on it, right? And I mean, it's hours and hours and hours spent thinking about
19:01
this album and all those things. I got a bunch of random thoughts. And I typically try to put
19:05
these in at least a little bit of a narrative order. So I did my best, but I'm just going to kind of
19:09
flow in a bunch of random thoughts here about this album, because hopefully, whatever you were
19:13
wondering about it, hopefully I hit on something like that. Okay. So one of the things I wondered
19:17
is, you know, it almost doesn't even matter if the album is any good. Right. Just the fact that
19:23
the album was released is enough. Because this is kind of a big deal. Again, we're sitting here
19:29
talking about I've scrapped basically two weeks worth of podcast and pushed up and changed the
19:34
change the whole schedule just because of you guys asking about it. It struck a chord. It certainly
19:39
has struck a chord. But the thing is, and again, I'm just going to kind of flow in all these in order,
19:43
but can you imagine how many people will end up finding Jesus because of this album?
19:48
And some people are like, Oh my gosh, how could you even say something like that? Like,
19:52
why would you say something like that? I mean, just just think about the number of times Jesus
19:57
is king has been typed into Google since Friday and will continue to be typed into Google from here.
20:05
Now, right now, if you type in Jesus is king, you're just going to get a deluge a Kanye West stuff,
20:10
right? But we all know how Google changes and you have, you know, different things that pop up in
20:14
the search at different times. That's not always going to be the case. And so we are going to have
20:19
people that, you know, figure out who Jesus is and find Jesus because of this album, right? I think
20:25
that's pretty incredible. And I guess the other thing I thought about as well is because again,
20:29
like I said, this is about a 3.5 out of out of five type album. I didn't think it was great. It's
20:34
not really up to some of the other things. You know, there was an album I'm trying to remember
20:37
the name of it is like my my dark twisted fantasy. I think it was, you know, from my 10 years ago,
20:43
or, you know, 808s and heartbreak, some of those seminal works of Kanye West or, or, you know,
20:48
all those those things were, you know, 808s and heartbreak, whenever that album came out,
20:51
nothing really sounded like that at the time. And it's kind of stood the test of time in my
20:55
personal opinion. But you know, there's a lot of things about Kanye West where he's kind of
20:59
sending music in a lot of different directions. But this is his first time taking on the idea of
21:04
an entirely gospel album. So for me, you know, if this is a true transformation in Kanye's
21:11
in Kanye's life, I would fully expect that the second gospel album that he puts out will likely
21:15
be way better. So so if he puts out another album and if it's a gospel album, I would assume it
21:20
would get better. I wouldn't assume that his work would get worse because again, this is a guy that's
21:25
tried to test the limits of music and do some things that other people are not doing. And so
21:29
we can assume he would do the same thing here. And just to be honest, this album as it sits right
21:34
now in its form, its 27 minute form, I think it's already way more interesting than most Christian
21:39
music that's out there. And you've heard me talk about this as well in a lot of different contexts,
21:44
but most worship music is absolute garbage. And I'm not talking about I'm not talking about the
21:50
people that make the music. I'm not talking about the people that put the music on the radio. I'm
21:54
just saying the music itself sucks. It doesn't get me going. It doesn't get me excited. It certainly
21:58
doesn't bring me closer to Jesus. Maybe there's something broken inside my brain because a lot of
22:02
you guys listening to this, you can definitely get a lot more out of worship music than I seemingly
22:07
do. But it's just not interesting. I think it's the one thing, right? You know, what is country music?
22:11
It's three chords in the truth or something like that. You know, Christian music seems to be three
22:16
chords in, you know, the chorus saying 70 times in one song. It's just, it's just not that interesting
22:22
to me. And it's easy to pick on a lot of people that don't like Christianity, they point at
22:26
specifically Christian music and say, well, look at their music. Everything about its corny and it's
22:30
not even that good. It's not even creative. And so I feel like this is at least a creative move.
22:35
And Kanye's big time, like it doesn't really get much bigger than Kanye in a musical context
22:42
and a pop culture context. And so you're going to have a lot of artists, like a lot of very,
22:46
very powerful artists that are looking at this. And so I'm really excited to see kind of where he
22:52
takes this music from here. If he continues down this path. And again, I mentioned this earlier,
22:57
he released an album called Jesus in 2013, where he, you know, he likened himself to a God he had
23:02
a track on there called, I am a God, even the concert he did, you know, it showed him like talking
23:08
to Jesus, like almost like they were in the same, the same plane and all that kind of thing. And so
23:13
the one thing that's just interesting is, you know, following an artist that in, you know, six years
23:17
of transition in his life, you know, I think he's 42 years old now, he's got four kids, you know,
23:21
all those different things, you know, his transition as a man has seen seemingly been pretty interesting,
23:27
right? I mean, to go from Jesus to literally turning to Jesus, that that's a pretty important
23:31
thing. The other thing I kind of thought about notice is a lot of the negativity about this album
23:37
and or, you know, Kanye's apparent turn to Jesus is kind of this deep, seated hatred from people
23:45
of God, of Jesus, of Donald Trump. And okay, I'm not conflating those three God Jesus and
23:52
Donald Trump. So don't quote me as saying that. But at the same time, a lot of people just hate
23:57
God. They hate the idea of a deity like Jesus. They, they hate Donald Trump and what he represents.
24:03
And then they see Kanye, a recent convert to Christianity. So there's God in Jesus,
24:09
and he wears a MAGA hat, right? Or war a MAGA hat, where he says these things that are heterodox
24:14
to people that are find themselves on the political left, right? So it's at least interesting. But
24:19
a lot of that goes into when you're looking at some of these album reviews. So some of the album
24:24
reviews that I read, it seemed like they weren't talking about the music as much as they were
24:28
talking about Kanye West, which, you know, obviously those are inextricably linked things. But they
24:34
were talking about his politics and they were talking about, you know, what, what he's changed
24:37
in his personal life. They weren't necessarily talking about the music. And yet they were doing
24:41
a music review, right? So I'm not going to work for Rolling Stone or Billboard Magazine or something
24:46
like that and do some sort of deep dive deep dive on someone's political philosophies or
24:51
theological ideologies or whatever the situation might be. But a lot of these people were doing that.
24:56
I also saw some media outlets that were very slyly doing this, but they were attacking Kanye's
25:02
mental health struggles, right? They were kind of bringing that up. They were just kind of dropping
25:06
that into the conversation almost to be like they didn't want to just straight up come out and say,
25:11
well, you know, of course he considers himself a Christian. Now, of course he believes in
25:15
Christianity. Now I'm doing air quotes here in my studio because he's got mental health problems
25:20
because a lot of these people that are anti-Christians or atheists or agnostic or something like that,
25:25
they see themselves as high-minded, sophisticated, right? And they wouldn't dare lower themselves
25:30
to believing in some spaghetti monster in the sky. And so obviously the only reason why Kanye
25:35
is doing that now is because he has these mental health problems, you see. And I'm so woke and I'm
25:40
so progressive that I've recognized his mental health problems and I'm going to give him an out,
25:44
but I'm not going to come right out and say it. So I thought that was interesting. It's also been
25:48
interesting to watch how amazing it is to see that people have have said of Kanye that he's kind of
25:54
lost his black credentials, if you will, because of his Trump support or the lyrics on this album.
25:59
I have seen several people kind of come out and almost without saying it again, it's kind of
26:03
underhanded that he's not almost not black anymore, right? Because you can't be black and not vote
26:08
Democrat. You can't be black and think that a woman shouldn't kill the baby inside of her womb.
26:13
You can't be black and support a guy like Donald Trump. It's overtly racist when people do that,
26:18
but again, they try to hide it behind this veil of, oh, no, no, no, no. I'm just, I'm giving you
26:22
commentary on this music or I'm giving social commentary, right? I'm not being racist. If anyone's
26:28
being racist here, it's you for thinking that way. You know, it's kind of that, you know, backhanded
26:32
type of type of way of doing things. But another thing I've seen is there's a lot of people saying
26:38
that this isn't about Jesus at all. This is about Kanye, right? And they're specifically looking at
26:44
the album. So when someone's specifically looking at the album and the contents therein, I kind of
26:48
take that opinion with a little bit more heft. But there are several songs where it seems like
26:53
he's referring to himself a lot, but he's referring to himself as a person in a story of a spiritual
26:59
transition. That that's what I heard because I've been on that transition myself. Obviously,
27:04
we haven't led anything even seemingly close to a similar life. But a lot of people are just saying
27:10
this isn't about Jesus. It's about Kanye. And it really goes into the next thing, which is basically,
27:14
there's a lot of people saying that this is a marketing ploy. You see people on the Christian
27:18
side, you see people on the non Christian side. Oh, this is just a marketing ploy. You know,
27:21
whenever you release a yay, he was just talking about the MAGA stuff. So people would talk about
27:25
him. So they buy his album, right? That's all he wanted to do. But they're just saying it's a
27:31
marketing ploy, but they're not providing any evidence. Like they're certainly not getting down
27:36
in in the the muck in the mire of having a theological discussion as to whether or not Kanye is actually
27:42
saved as if they could figure that out on their own. But I was just a marketing ploy based on what
27:47
doesn't make any sense. The other thing is he did an interview with a guy named Big Boy. So he's
27:53
he's a big, a big radio host guy. And so he's got a show called Big Boy TV. And you've seen this clip
27:59
probably going around, but he said a lot of things in this one, you know, kind of 15 second little
28:03
soliloquy he did. And he said this, this was his quotes, a quote, we're brainwashed out here,
28:07
bro. Come on, man, this is a free man talking. Democrats had us voting for Democrats with food
28:13
stamps for years. What are you talking about guns in the eighties talking, taking fathers out the
28:18
home plan B, lowering our votes, making us aboard our children. Okay, so this is one of those things
28:24
where people are kind of getting on to him because he's very heterodox and some of the things that
28:28
he says, some of the things that he said about slavery and all that I can't really give him the
28:31
benefit of the doubt on because some of the stuff he said is just flat wrong. It's, you know, it is
28:35
kind of revisionist history on some of the aspects. But this is a guy who's basically seeing that the
28:39
Democratic Party, right, which on this podcast, I said is, you know, the party of death and satanic,
28:44
I've said all those things about the things that this party believes in, you know, they have tried
28:48
to keep certain people groups on the dole. That's why this intersectionality is so prevalent in
28:54
the democratic communities, because they don't want to see us as individualized people that are
28:58
responsible for our own actions on our own selves. They want us to be seen as people groups,
29:03
as white people, black people, trans people, gay people, because when you talk about people in a
29:09
group, which is more of a Marxist ideology, then you can move to grab more power as a government to
29:14
say we're not going to allow this oppression of these people groups, which we all know from history
29:19
that that the exact opposite of that happens. But he talked about a lot of things here. He talked
29:23
about Democrats keeping people in food stamps. He talked about gun violence in the 80s,
29:26
removing black fathers from the home, which again, this isn't a deep dive into whether or not that's
29:31
true and any of that stuff around that. But he talked about the plan B pill. He talked about,
29:36
you know, making us aboard our children. Again, we talked about abortion a lot on this podcast.
29:40
We've talked about, you know, the state of New York a lot, how more black babies are
29:44
aborted in that state than are actually born. And if you go back to Margaret Sanger, who is the
29:48
founder of Planned Parenthood, you know, she was a radical racist. She was somebody that wanted to
29:55
put her clinics in poor neighborhoods where there was basically black and brown people to basically
30:00
eradicate them or to lower them to the point of basically being completely unreliable or, you know,
30:06
just not even need to be thought about, right? And so Kanye West is talking about these things.
30:12
And he's talking about to a guy and big boy that doesn't really subscribe to that belief system.
30:15
He would find himself way on the other side of that belief system, you know, hardened Democrat,
30:19
you know, supports a lot of people that supposedly do things for the black community that end up not
30:23
doing things for the black community. And here he is talking about that. But that was on the heels
30:27
of this album coming out that kind of gave him the runway to talk about that and all those other
30:32
things. The other thing that I've seen, I've seen this online quite a bit, you know, we have this
30:36
idea that, you know, Jesus can save anyone, but probably not Kanye. He probably didn't save Kanye.
30:44
And here's the thing is I'm sitting here in my studio recording this and I don't know if Kanye
30:50
West has been saved by Jesus. I don't know if he has accepted the free gift of salvation. I mean,
30:56
all you Calvinists out there, you assume that you know, but I'm saying I don't know. I just don't
31:01
know that for sure. And neither do you, neither do you. You don't know, you know, we go around and
31:10
we say Jesus can save anybody. There's no one that is outside of his site that can be saved. We say
31:15
all these things. But then the moment someone like Kanye West accepts Jesus, which he says that he
31:20
did, we're like, I don't know, I don't know about that. That doesn't really sound right to me.
31:26
And if you're one of those people, you need to do some self discovery. You need to look inside
31:32
yourself and wonder where the heck did that come from? Because what if Kanye was your friend?
31:39
Like, would you have the same reaction if you could actually see the fruits in his life? You know,
31:44
what would send you to the left or the right of that particular thing towards yes or towards no?
31:48
And here's the other thing about Christians. Christians are already hitting Kanye for not being
31:54
deologically deep enough, certainly in his lyrical content on this album, but also in his interviews.
32:00
He's just not deep enough or he said this and that doesn't exactly flow right in the, you know,
32:05
the exegesis on this isn't quite the same as if you had gone back to this version of the
32:09
thing about it is, is we should not be discouraging new believers from sharing the gospel or giving
32:16
their testimony. Now, to all you people that out there, all you were formed, guys, I just got real
32:21
boat up. Like, what's Kyle about to say? Here's the thing. He's straight up saying that he's not a
32:26
theologian in an interview. I think he did with a beats one. He said that he's not a theologian.
32:31
He's a recent convert. Go back to before you were just basically sitting there, reading Spurgeon
32:36
and talking to all your friends about how smart you were. Think about how spiritually adept and
32:41
theologically advanced you were seven months after you got saved. Think about that. I was a dumb,
32:49
dumb. Now, I was a sponge. I was trying to soak up everything that I could, but I probably said
32:54
just a myriad of ridiculous things. And if I'd had Twitter, I would have tweeted a myriad of
32:58
stupid things that made no theological sense. So if Kanye says something in an interview or in an
33:05
album that doesn't exactly ring true, that doesn't mean we should ignore it. That doesn't mean that
33:10
we should accept it as our own new personal gospel, because yay said so. That's not what we should be
33:16
doing. But at the same time, we should be able to have the posture of wanting to correct him
33:23
in a nice and loving way, all the while realizing that Kanye West is not in our lives. Like we are
33:30
not his pastor, right? We are also not part of his flock. Like he's, he's not a pastor. So there's,
33:37
there's no way, certainly not through Twitter or Instagram, that we're going to be able to correct
33:41
his understanding about these things. But it does provide a good discussion point for you and the
33:46
people that are in your sphere of influence or in your family to say, Hey, you know what Kanye West
33:50
said this in his, in his song, I can see why he said this. This isn't exactly correct. Let me
33:56
point out to you why and for whatever reason, if you do run across Kanye West, and he says one
34:02
of those things and you know he's wrong, it would be your responsibility to point him in the right
34:06
direction to lovingly nudge him towards the truth. But I just, I just don't have a lot of sympathy
34:14
for Christians right now. Oh, well, you know, Kanye West said this wrong. So that clearly means he's
34:18
not a Christian. You don't know that. He's a young guy in the faith. So give him some runway,
34:25
give him some tide to figure this out. Okay. Now the, the one take that I probably liked
34:31
more than anything, and this was on rapzilla. So rapzilla is kind of a Christian hip hop site.
34:35
Um, they posted a blog before this album even came out, right? So, because again,
34:41
we thought Yandy was coming out and then you know, you know, it was told that it was going to be
34:44
a Jesus is king. And you know, just kind of is what it is. And so I went back and found this
34:48
article that was released. I don't know if it was a few days or a few weeks before the album dropped,
34:52
but I'd loved the take here towards the end of this article. So, and I tried to find the author
34:55
for whatever, whatever reason I couldn't find it. I'd like to give them some props here, but I'm
34:59
just going to go ahead and read this and maybe one of y'all can figure it out later for me.
35:02
It's this whether Wes come to Jesus moment is genuine or not, consider Jesus's words in response
35:09
to the John and Luke nine, 49 and 50. John answered, master, we saw someone casting out demons in your
35:16
name and we tried to stop him. Do not stop him for the one who is not against you is for you.
35:23
For the sake of argument, say that Kanye West's reawakening is an opportunistic business scheme,
35:29
but maintains a strong faith based tone with a push towards Christ. In this case,
35:35
Wes would fall under those who are quote, not against you, unquote, and Christians would fall
35:41
into the same category as the disciples. Although Yeezy may not fit the mold of a conventional
35:47
Christian artist using his talents to proclaim Christ, even if it is just for a moment in time,
35:54
Jesus's King can be a vehicle for the advancement of the gospel. So I really did like that take from
36:00
rapzilla. But as we wrap up the podcast here, I want to get into some reasons for caution that
36:05
are surrounding this whole situation. Also some reasons for excitement and then some reasons for
36:11
both. So let's start with the reasons for caution. So the first reason for caution here is the name
36:16
of the album that he scrapped for Jesus, his King was called Yandy. Right. I talked about that
36:22
earlier. So I got to be real honest with you guys. Right. So for any of y'all that are
36:26
think I'm out here being a Kanye West apologist, like just listen to me here, I am a little scared
36:31
that he might turn into a cult leader. I'm a little scared. Right. So his Coachella performance
36:35
with all the people dancing around him always all kind of wearing the same purple jumpsuits.
36:39
You know, even the stuff he's doing right now in his Sunday services, where he's got his entire
36:43
choir wearing white and all those different things. I could see that happening. I certainly would
36:49
pray that that it wouldn't happen. But this is a guy that is an ins, you know, crazy narcissist.
36:54
And I don't mean crazy in the sense that he's he's nuts. I'm not his psychologist or whatever.
36:58
But this is a guy that is a narcissist. It's kind of hard to get to to this level of super
37:04
stardom and not be a narcissist. Kind of like you can't really get to the upper echelons of
37:09
politics unless you're like some sort of insane narcissist. But you know, that's one reason for
37:13
caution for all this. I would be scared to. Okay. The second reason for caution is he's a high
37:19
backslide risk, right? So if I'm Vegas and I'm taking bets on people that, you know, would backslide
37:24
out of Christendom, I'd put him towards the top of that list, right? You're not, you're gonna
37:28
have to put a lot of money down to make a hundred bucks on that bet, right? Because here's the thing
37:31
about Kanye West and about all the people around him, crazy money, just insane amounts of money,
37:37
money amounts of money that you can't even fathom. I've seen places where he's worth, you know,
37:41
a quarter of a billion dollars like he is worth insane amounts of money. He is so close to Hollywood,
37:47
right? You know, he's got in a state or a ranch out in Wyoming now that he supposedly lives out
37:51
full time. But you know, he's gonna be touring apparently on the Jesus is King album. So he's
37:56
gonna be all over the place on the road doing the things that could come with that, that family
38:00
that he's a part of. Obviously the Kardashians, the whole keeping up with the Kardashians thing and,
38:05
you know, Bruce now Caitlin Jenner, that whole thing. There's a whole lot of depravity in that
38:10
family. There's a whole lot of baggage even going all the way back to the OJ Simpson trial with the
38:14
father Kardashian, right? I mean, there's a lot of baggage inside that family. There are the mental
38:19
health issues, right? You know, Kanye West has talked about them himself. So I don't really care
38:24
about what someone's opinion of Kanye West mental struggles are. I'd rather kind of listen to Kanye
38:28
about that to see where he feels like he's at. But he is a backslide risk. So if he is truly saved,
38:34
there is this thing where Jesus is King might be the high point and he could fall back. Again,
38:39
I pray that that doesn't happen. But that's at least a reason for caution. Now for the reasons
38:43
for excitement. Again, if he is truly saved, the first thing is he's a main stream example of God's
38:50
power. Because God doesn't need a mainstream example, but seemingly some people do. Because
38:57
they're going to look around at the Christians that are in their world and maybe they don't like
39:00
them that much. Maybe they're kind of jerks to him. Maybe they're not that smart. Maybe they're not
39:04
that pretty. Maybe they're not that talented. Maybe they don't have enough money. They think,
39:08
well, I have this God is real. They would have this again. That's bad theology. That's stupid.
39:12
But that's how some people's minds work. But it doesn't get much more mainstream than Kanye West.
39:18
I mean, Kanye West is known worldwide. Your grandma probably knows who Kanye West is,
39:23
right? But he's a mainstream example of God's power that God got that guy, the guy who literally
39:30
has it all. Like the superstar wife, all the glitz in the glamour. Every album he's released
39:36
up to this one has gone platinum. All eight of them, right? And this might be number nine. He's got
39:41
everything seemingly, but he didn't have God. He didn't accept the blood of Jesus. And that's
39:50
pretty exciting. The next side of that is is another reason for excitement, rather, is that
39:55
he has the potential to almost single handedly change Christian music forever. Again, I've talked
40:02
about my my issues with Christian music ad nauseam. And I still haven't done a full-on podcast about
40:06
that. Y'all probably been waiting a couple of years for that. Don't worry. I'll get to it eventually.
40:10
But Kanye West is a generationally creative person. I mean, he's a generation defining
40:16
creativity, right? That's just kind of who he is. And it goes into a lot of different areas.
40:21
And so his influence on Christian music could be felt for a long time to come, because let's just
40:27
say that he stays in the gospel side of things, because he spent eight albums really changing
40:32
what a lot of people think about hip hop, what people think about pop, what people think about,
40:36
you know, just a lot of things concerning music. What if he does that for gospel music? I mean,
40:41
that's a reason to be excited. But here's kind of my catch 22 category. So here's the reasons for
40:46
both for both, you know, caution and excitement. The first thing is that Kanye West can captivate
40:52
an audience like no other worship artist can. So I was watching something and I'll give you a link
40:59
to it. It was of the quote unquote Sunday service that he did in the LA forum. I think it was this
41:03
past Sunday. I mean, it might be the day before I'm recording this. And the audience, like some
41:08
people, I guess, I don't know if you could have your phone in there, but someone had their phone
41:11
in there and they were taking video of it. But when they would scan the crowd, I mean, no one was
41:15
looking down at their phones. Like, but no one was talking to their neighbor. They were absolutely
41:21
transfixed on the choir and Kanye West. But it's not just in concert that he captivates people. He
41:28
captivates their attention on social media. When he posts something on Twitter, when he posts something
41:32
on Instagram, I mean, it goes everywhere. When Kim Kardashian posts something about her husband
41:37
on any of those social media sites, it goes everywhere. Also in fashion, right? I mean, he's got
41:43
he's got off white. He's got the Yeezys with Adidas. He's got stuff with Louis Vuitton. Like,
41:47
he's got stuff all over the place. He can hold someone's attention in a way that I can't name
41:52
another Christian group that can do that. Because here's the thing is, if you don't like Hillsong,
41:58
they're not going to hold your attention. Like, if you sent me to a Hillsong concert,
42:02
I'm going to get really bored pretty fast, right? And people are going to have a good time. They're
42:05
going to raise their hands. They're going to do all that stuff and they're going to sing the songs.
42:08
They're going to sing the chorus 84 times in a row. They're going to do that, right? But at the same
42:12
time, like, they're not going to carry the generalized public's attention with their music and certainly
42:18
not their message. Kanye West can do that. That's why it's a reason to be excited and a reason to be
42:23
cautious. Because if he goes full board prosperity gospel, if he goes kind of like half Jesus, half
42:30
my own made up thing, right? You know, he kind of does his own little form of Mormonism or something
42:35
like that. It could be incredibly damaging. Because you're going to have a lot of young
42:39
impressionable people that are following every word that Kanye West says. And then it's not going
42:43
to work out for him in the back end. So reason to be cautious and excited. The second thing is,
42:48
is this is that Kanye immediately became the most culturally relevant Christian the moment he
42:55
accepted Jesus. And that is exciting. And it's also terrifying, right? Because again, his influence
43:03
far exceeds anything that anyone else in Christian, um, can do or say right now.
43:09
Because everyone's looking to Kanye right now, when it comes to what it means to be a Christian,
43:15
right? And, and gosh, that's, I wish they would look somewhere else, but they're not,
43:19
they're looking at Kanye West. He has a unique ability to literally create a revival.
43:27
And I'm not being hyperbolic when I say that. Because when you watch the Sunday service that
43:32
I'm going to provide here in the links, it looks like a crusade. And I'm not the one that came up
43:36
with that. A lot of other people say that it said that it looks like a crusade. I mean,
43:40
and I'm not about to call him, you know, the, you know, the new age Billy Graham or something like
43:44
that. Because obviously they're, they're just way, way different people, way different backgrounds.
43:48
They use media in completely different ways. But the impact that Billy Graham has had is going to
43:52
be felt for generations and generations. Kanye West has that ability because of his, he's got a
44:00
gravitational pull to the things that he produces and the things that he says. So again, that makes
44:06
me really, really excited and really, really terrified and cautious all at the same time. So,
44:10
if I were to wrap this podcast up in a bow, I would say that this isn't that positive
44:17
as of right now where I'm sitting right now, this is a net positive because this is a major person
44:22
talking about how Jesus saved them. And the thing is, is the way that I feel like that could be
44:29
ruined is if six months from now, Kanye West did, you know, he posted something on, on Instagram
44:33
and said, hi, I got you suckers. Look at all you Christians I made by my album. I don't believe
44:37
in this nonsense. Yeah, then he duped us and we're all dummies. But if this is all true,
44:43
how could it be a negative thing? I just haven't heard a compelling argument yet. That would say
44:49
that this is a net negative for, for, for Christ net negative for the kingdom. I just don't see it.
44:55
I'll tell you what, I'm going to be praying for Kanye West. I'm going to be praying for his family,
45:00
for his four children, for his wife, for all the people that are part of that big jacked up family.
45:06
I'm going to be praying for those people because there are, you know, again, God doesn't need this,
45:11
but for some of us, we need more mainstream people that are quote unquote on our side
45:15
that believe the same way that we do that are on our side when people are pointing fingers and saying,
45:21
look at those dummies. Look at those bigots. Look at those haters, right? It's good to have people
45:26
like that on your side, not because you can't be defended otherwise, just because it's a positive.
45:31
It's a positive overall to have those people. All right. So guys, before we let you out of here,
45:35
we are going to do a quick resilience boost. As you know, by now, we are a men's ministry
45:39
and our mission is cultivating manly resilience. And specifically, we do that by providing content
45:44
that for just spiritual, mental and physical toughness. So for today, rather, I'm going to
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kind of give you a rundown of everything we got for you. So if you've not heard the album yet,
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I've got a link here to iTunes, Apple music and Spotify. So if that's where you get your music,
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you can find it there everywhere else that you get your music, it's going to be there as well.
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Then I also have a link here to the Sunday service experience. So one thing I didn't mention with
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all this is there was an iMacs movie that was released at the same time as this. And I don't know
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a whole lot about that. But there is kind of this big experience that he's been doing called the
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Sunday service. And so it's like almost a two hour long YouTube video of one of these services.
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And I've watched about 30, 45 minutes of it. I mean, it got me excited. You know, I mean,
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it was a lot of the songs from the album. And then he has clips in Kenny G come out at one point.
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Like it's pretty interesting. So if you got the time, I would definitely check that out.
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Then I also included an interview that he did called Jesus is King Sunday service and being
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born again. He did this with Apple music and beats one. So I've got that here. I made mention of the
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big boy TV interview that he did. I've got the link to that here. And then I've got what else I got
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here. So I've got one thing here called Kanye West talks losing fans getting canceled and more
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with big boy. And so this is complex.com. They did basically a shortened versions and a bunch
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of clips of the big boy interview. So I thought if you don't have time to watch the entire big boy
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interview or listen to it, you can just look at the clips. And then I posted two reviews or kind
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of news stories. One is from a surprising source. Another one might be surprising, but one is from
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the New York Times. It's called I mentioned it earlier. It's Kanye West, Heretic by Nature finds God.
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This is surprising to even hear myself say this, but I felt like this was a very, very fair article
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to Kanye West from the New York Times. I don't read a lot of New York Times articles that are fair.
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I felt like this one was so that's why I included it. But then also also the gospel coalition. I know
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some of you have some problems with the gospel coalition that's not what this podcast is about.
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They just released one today, I believe called Kanye West from I am God to Jesus is King. So it's
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going to take you on a lot of the same areas into a lot of same areas that we talked about today.
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But I thought that that was an interesting link to go ahead and include. Thank you guys for listening
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to the podcast. We really do appreciate it. If you would, please subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud,
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Spotify or Google Play and refer your friends to listen and share this on social media.
47:52
Guys, if we deserve a five star review, please take a few minutes right now to go ahead and leave us
47:57
five stars in a few sentences, letting us know why you like the content. I'm currently booking
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speaking engagements for the entirety of 2020. So if you want me to come speak on your podcast
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at your men's event, at your conference to your team, whatever, hit me up via email info at undaunted
48:11
dot life. That's I N F O at undaunted dot life. The website is www dot undaunted dot life. You can
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follow us on Instagram and Twitter at undaunted life or Facebook dot com backslash undaunted life.
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Check out our free devotionals on the U version Bible app. Just search undaunted life under plans.
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And as always, we want to thank the band August Burns read for allowing us to use their entire music
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library for our content. The intro outro track on this podcast is our song King of Sorrow,
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which is off their latest record entitled Phantom Anthem. The links are in the description.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience,
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keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical toughness. Keep seeking the lion of Judah.