The best albums of 2013: No 1 – Yeezus by Kanye West

In all the many interviews he has given recently, distracted by the need to engage with the substantive issue of why he is not currently the creative director of Yves Saint Laurent, Kanye West hasn't talked much about Yeezus. He has discussed some of the concepts therein: the idea, articulated in the song New Slaves, that rich black Americans of the modern age are still exploited by a white power structure (one whose most pernicious behaviours, you are led to believe, occur in houses of haute couture); or the belief that because West is Steve Jobs, Walt Disney and Bill Gates combined, it's OK for him to rip off Billie Holliday's Strange Fruit for a jam about disputed alimony. Of the rest, not much has been said and, therefore, the role of Will Ferrell in Yeezus has passed largely unremarked.

Ferrell, playing Chazz Michael Michaels in Blades of Glory, is sampled halfway through Niggas in Paris, a song from West's Watch the Throne project of 2011 and a track that closely matches the styles he would develop in Yeezus. "I don't even know what that means!" wails Chazz's ice-dance partner as he is told they will only dance to My Humps by Black Eyed Peas in future. "Nobody knows what it means," replies Chazz, "but it's provocative, gets the people going." That's Yeezus in a nutshell.

While much discussion has been made of the West persona, both in public and on record, the most immediately provocative element of Yeezus is its sound. In the very first second of opener On Sight, you are left alone in a field of distortion, a squelch of 303ish acid that rolls up and down a scale before settling into a loop of abrasive snarls. That sets the tone for what follows. There's the whining, flared synthesisers of Send It Up, the distorted glam-rock stomp of Black Skinhead, and the neutered drone of I'm in It. Most hip-hop and pop this year has had the club in its mind, all 4/4 rhythms and extended technicolour drops. Yeezus was apparently conceived for a BDSM dungeon.

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That is one of the ways in which his sixth solo album divided West's public. For some listeners, the sound is simply too unpleasant. For others it's a betrayal of the soul-infused style that made his name. Even these responses acknowledge that Yeezus is difficult to ignore: once heard, it's hardly forgotten. When it comes to the lyrical content, meanwhile, people hear an egocentric fit played out on record, the undeserved pique of someone genuinely angry at the absence of his damn croissants. Others hear lyrics full of grandstanding and aggression (quite frequently sexual), a deadened desensitisation, and conclude they want no part.

That Yeezus might be a work of art deliberately designed to provoke such responses doesn't seem to get much consideration. "Yeezus" – as in the character doing the rapping – is a construct as much as any beat on the album. It may be constructed from parts of West's psyche, for sure, but it is also constructed by him. Any conflation of the character with the man denies West the right to create art. It also unwittingly drags listeners (let's face it, white ones) into the very issues of black American identity that West is keen to discuss.

The grand provocations in Yeezus are matched, step for step, by its craftsmanship. There are only 10 songs and each one, as deliberately discomfiting as it might be, contains the essential properties of a pop song. This is not by accident and for those who could endure the style, or even enjoy it, there were powerful hooks and melodies to latch on to and emulate awkwardly while waiting for the bus (try singing the tune to Send It Up without looking like a weasel drinking vinegar). The process by which these songs were created is already the subject of a semi-mythology. First West would solicit music from, it seems, all the world's upcoming producers. He'd then strip them for parts, just as earlier hip-hop producers would mine funk seven-inches for samples. These songs would be reconfigured, vocals added, perhaps – Frank Ocean might be good for 25 seconds at the end of a track – in the company of more renowned producers. Their work was then further, finally revised by Rick Rubin in his cliffside retreat in California. By that point the sound was so refined, so reduced, that it was like a classical French stock. It was bouilla-bass.

If that pun is terrible, then it's only fitting, because there are tonnes of similar efforts on Yeezus ("I'm a rap-lic priest", he says on I'm In It, "I be speaking Swag-hili"). There's also endless innuendo – "Yeezus just rose again" – and the odd wry confession: "I slightly scratched your Corolla [pause], OK I smashed your Corolla." That is to say there's a sense of humour in there and a love of wordplay, too. In turn, that is matched by an attention to the key part of the rapper's craft: twinning sound and meaning with meter to best effect. The final verse of New Slaves, which rails against entrenched white privilege, is unsettling and incoherent but boy is it powerful, pulling you along on its staccato rhythms and emphatic repetitions.

All its provocations mean that Yeezus will never be as beloved by as many people as, say, The College Dropout. But I haven't been able to stop thinking about it for six months. I've listened again and again, found new details, new jokes, new coinages that make me puzzle about the character who's uttering them. Yeezus is undoubtedly the work of one of the greatest creative minds working today. The fact that he's messing with you throughout only makes it more exhilarating.