Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy || Music Review
Long live the king.
The best album of 2010. Kanye West emerges from behind public disdain and auto-tune vocoders wielding genre-liberating production and a zealous flow.
Track Highlights
A high energy track rife with epileptic percussion and anthemic horns. Teed up for a radioplay homerun with a strong Rihanna vocal and a ‘Ye rap that has room to breathe. And whether you like Fergie or not — I’m in the “not” club — the bridge breakdown is hot.
This is the crux of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The climax of a Kanye ego, landing him onstage commandeering the mic from a teenage girl in the throes of her teenage dream. It’s a self-psychoanalysis, though not an apology, and the authority of the beat is challenged only by West’s refusal to back down from it. “This would be a beautiful death, jumping out the window …letting everything go.” A desperate confession from a tortured man.
A beat that’s tough as nails with a bass line dirty enough even for Ozzy. West’s transcendent production is all the way turned up as he conjures hip-hop’s latent rockstar.
Jay-Z and Nicki Minaj bring it like motherlovin’ monsters and Bon Iver is hardly recognizable. Some of the best cameos on the album not to forget some of Yeezy’s most clever twisters like “I’m living in the future so the presence is my past. My presence is a present, kiss my ass.”
Perhaps the most radio friendly tune on the album, it’s the full length version that makes this one really special. The final three minutes can easily be overlooked but the lethargic vocoder mumblings are the tossing and turning in bed of a man “who could never take the intimacy.” It’s the appropriately sad ending to a track that sounds happier than it ought to. If “Power” is the thematic foundation of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, “Runaway” is the emotional cornerstone.
The Final Say
From Nicki Minaj’s Roald Dahl invitation to Gil Scott-Heron’s “Comment No. 1” My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy succeeds in being artistic, honest, and heavy, yet doesn’t lose touch with Kanye’s humor and sport. Moreover, it’s remarkably cohesive in light of sonically dichotomous tracks such as “Devil In A New Dress” and “Lost In The World.” It’s all held together by a clarity of vision. Kanye has never had as much purpose and passion as he does here. It’s a masterpiece of sociopathic proportions. In this kingdom of Kanye West, it’s precisely because he’s a “jerk-off who never takes work off” that 2010 saw the release of his magnum opus.
Rating
Consistency Factor – [what’s this?]
Links
Buy the album on Amazon.com
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