My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

"I think I just fell in love with a porn star"

Kanye West's newest release, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, has been receiving stellar reviews so far, averaging a Metacritic score of 92.  The album so far has been most well known by its two singles "POWER," featured with The Social Network, and "Runaway," a song West introduced at the 2010 VMAs.  Now, I'll be the first to admit that I don't really like Kanye West that much.  I liked "College Dropout" and "Late Registration" wasn't all that bad.  However, when West released "Graduation," I lost interest; I didn't even attempt to touch "808s & Heartbreak."  West only made the situation worse for himself after the whole Taylor Swift debacle and at that point he had lost any sense of credibility he may have had with me.  Upon the release of his new album, however, as I was watching the high reviews pile up, I figured that I might as well give it a listen and see what all the hype was about.  In all honesty, "POWER" was enough for me to give the album a shot.

To start off, it would be insulting NOT to say that this is easily one of Kanye West's best albums.  It's not just because of the production value, it's not just because of the stellar guest appearances, but mostly it's because of the versatility of the album.  The first thing that impressed me most was the surprisingly "gansta" sounding track, "Monster."  From the get go it has a hard, heavy pounding bass to it, with a little bit of grunge.  The raps are tough and powerful and the featuring artists (Rick Ross, Jay-Z, and Nicki Minaj) all do a great job with their respective verses, reiterating the raw, ruthless feel of the song.  Other stand outs on the album include one of the albums singles "Runaway" as well as "All of the Lights," "Hell of a Life," and "Blame Game."  "Runaway" is an anthem to douche bags and other assholes.  The overall feeling of the song is great and the chorus is infectious.  The only problem with the song is it's about four minutes too long.  "All of the Lights," featuring Drake and Rihanna, is your typical pop song, but has a catchy hook and a relatively interesting, funky beat.  "Hell of a Life," has more of a rock feel and a steady synthesized beat that gives you sort of a rough feel.  It's also one of the most vulgar songs with lyrics like "I think I just feel in love with a porn star" and "Make your knees shake, make a priest faint/ Make a nun cum, make her creamate," yes, "creamate;"  Not to mention the hook: "No more drugs for me/ Pussy and religion is all I need."  "Blame  Game" is easily the most sentimental song on the album, in large part because of the voice and piano stylings of featured artist John Legend.

Unfortunately, as can be expected, where the album has a wide array of colorful moods and feelings, it also exhibits the undeniable arrogance and pretentiousness of Kanye West as well.  Like in much of his other albums, West exudes an air of greatness which he has to tell you about.  To tack onto that, after a surprise concert during which Kanye performed his entire album, he took ten minutes at the end of the show to both speak his mind about George W. Bush's recent interview, as well as to somewhat retract his apology to Taylor Swift stating that "If I wasn't drunk I would have stayed on stage longer."  As much as I want to like this album, it's hard to do with Kanye West glorifying himself every chance he gets.  During his rant, he even went so far as to say "I never thought I'd say this: I want to thank the magazines for perfect scores across the board," which is far from the truth.  While West did receive perfect scores from Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, as well as others, he received lower marks from other reviewers as well (Note: Metacritic isn't showing the various critic scores at this point, but once I get them, I'll put the lower scores up).  While My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is still getting incredibly high reviews, it is far from, as Mr. West puts it, "perfect."  

Kanye West's new album is arguably his best to date.  Because of the versatility in mood, as well as a stellar cast of guest appearances (Jay-Z, Pusha T, and John Legend being my favorites), and solid production quality, West has succeeded in making a likely early contender for next year's Grammy Awards (the album didn't make the cut off date this year).  Unfortunately, West, as always, has to add that little spice of self-obsessiveness and pretentiousness.  Maybe one of these days he'll come out with an album that doesn't include his outlandish tabloid persona, but that's not in the foreseeable future.  Take a listen here.