Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (Mercury)
5/5
How am I even meant to write this review? It’s Kanye West’s new album for Christ’s sake! There’s absolutely nothing left to say about this man, everything that could be written has been and then it’s been re-worded and written all over again. The beyond innumerable stunts and public cock-ups, the ‘G.O.O.D. Friday’ releases that alone could be compiled into one of the albums of the year, the 35-minute Runaway movie, and all that ridiculous stuff that seems to happen to him simply because he’s Kanye West; we’re talking about the biggest personality in music. Anything I added to the overflowing landfill of pseudo-interrogative hack journalism on the subject of Mr. West would be both unremarkable and unnecessary.
By the fact that there’s everything to say about this man, we’ve reduced it to the point where someone tasked with reviewing My Beautful Dark Twisted Fantasy has nothing to work with. The discussion’s reached the point now where there is no middle ground, and only the polarities of brilliant success and brilliant failure remain. I don’t need to be telling this, you knew it before you heard the record; My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was only ever going to be the worst album of the year or the best album of the year.
Some points to take into consideration:
- This record will put to the sword any arguments that people have attempted to make since the release of 808s and Heartbreaks – namely that that particular album was merely a detour in the grand arc of Kanye’s career. The paranoia and naked fragility of that record bleeds all over this one to the extent that realising that this is the same man who created the arms-wide-exuberance of ‘Touch the Sky’ and ‘Good Life’ makes you a little uncomfortable.
- Compared to The College Dropout, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy sounds like it was recorded in a lift in Siberia. The record’s so claustrophobic and stifling that at times it’s downright terrifying.
- Pitchfork were wrong – this album doesn’t sound anything like a ‘Best Of’, because as a listener it’s almost impossible to cope with the intensity of this particular Kanye’s personality and music over one album. If he’d been like this since the start then one of us would have dropped out by now.
- That said, a sizeable proportion of the cuts – ‘All of the Lights’, ‘Monster’, ‘Devil in a New Dress’ and ‘Runaway’ to name but a few – could stroll onto any hip-hop record of the past 20 years and be standouts.
- The way to bring the best out of middle-aged Jay-Z is not only to pair him with Kanye but to also have him guest on a Kanye track. The single nuggets of brilliance that he comes up with on ‘Monster’ and ‘So Appalled’ beat pretty much anything that was on The Blueprint 3, where on most tracks Jay just ended up sounding bored after a couple of verses. A collaborative full-length, Watch the Throne is in the pipeline for 2011.
- ‘All of the Lights’ is what you’d imagine the inside of Kanye’s head sounds like.
- ‘Power’, a stonkingly ace first single by anyone’s standards, isn’t even close to being the best track here.
- The choice of instrumentation is impeccable. Everything is meticulously planned and re-planned, hashed and re-hashed until only the choicest, juiciest sound makes it through to the fore. The drum work – that rattling snare on ‘Runaway’, the Love-Lockdown-on-speed chorus to ‘All of the Lights’, the laid back rocking that runs right against the almost painful synth of ‘Hell of a Life’ – is particularly mesmeric.
- Kanye likes: Michael Jackson; his dick; Bon Iver; talking about himself (that makes a change); pussy; religion; choirs; being Kanye.
- Kanye dislikes: women; haters; gossip; the media; people in general; being Kanye.
- Kanye’s not the best rapper in the world.
- However, he is the best pop star.
No-one else in pop could attempt something that came anywhere matching to this record for scope of vision and breadth of imagination, let alone pull it off and still make the whole thing seem melancholy as hell. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is the sound of a man going insane. Fame was the worst thing that could have happened to Kanye West; but at the same time, it’s the only thing that could have happened to Kanye West. Where he goes from here, I don’t think even he knows.
It’s a masterpiece. What did you expect?
Artists in this article: Kanye West
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