Kanye West- My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

I love Kanye's music but aside from the "All of the Light?" snippet, nothing has captured my attention. I probably need to hear the music outside of the computer to get the full effect.

808s was amazing the first time I heard it but I do remember the backlash when it came out.

I haven't heard anything except "Lost in the World" but I just could not get into it. That may be because I wasn't expecting it and could probably warm up to it, but still - yowza.

808 was maybe flawed, but its one of the more artistically legitimate uses of auto-tune I've ever heard.

Looking forward to it, but Kanye is the hip-hop equivalent of Smashing Pumpkins when it comes to bad album titles.

I'm actually looking forward to the next Cee Lo Green album more. But this is definitely on my radar.

I admitted that, like, two years ago. By far my favorite of his.

That's the Chicago coming out. Sometimes we try and pass ourselves off as being more clever than we actually are.


I'm stoked for this. Been buying his shit on the reg ever since Late Registration and they've all consistently been huge "event albums" that live in my car and head for months after their release.

Power is probably one of the best songs that I've heard in years.

And whats this with Chicago artists having bad album names? "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" is a great fucking title!!

I wouldn't really call it great, but it's certainly better then "Teargarden in Kaleidoscope" or whatever the hell.

I was actually relieved when the official album title was revealed. The long-rumored Good Ass Job was just inexcusable.

The first eight minutes are probably one of the greatest music videos ever.

There's a lot going on in this album. It's kind of a mess.

This is Mr. West's masterwork, without a doubt.

And Policar, while the album is definitley SPRAWLING, I don't think it's a mess at all. It's very cohesive and feels like a complete listening experience from beginning to end. It's really quite the achievement.

Yeah, but it's Rolling Stone. And I love Sheffield as a writer, but his taste is pretty wild and hard to pin down.

'Tis true, Parker. 'Tis true. But he's still one of the best music journalists out there. When he speaks, I listen, even if I don't necessarily agree.

Yeah, I'm certainly curious about it, that's for sure.

This album is ridickalous. It's like that sometimes, so ridickalous.

So many good songs.

Excellent album, pretty sure it's his best one. Sort of feels like the natural result of all his sampling/songwriting/genre-splicing experiments up to this point. I'm a big fan of the modern trend of people throwing influences from just about anywhere and everywhere into a big colourful post-genre melting pot, and Kanye's increasingly good at it.

It is a bit long though. I could probably stand to lose those two guest star packed 'normal' hip hop tracks in the middle, which go on for ages and seem a bit out of place with the style of rest of the album. Also maybe it's just the Runaway movie (which I quite loved, either in spite of or because of all it's pretentiousness and OTT bombast) but I sort of felt like Lost In The World should've been the album closer*. Also 'Hell Of A Life' sounds weirdly empty without that woman screaming over the riff.

*Duhh I just realised it *is* the closer, but there's a bonus track.

This shit is real good, y'all.

I've been listening to it all week. It's a pretty great album from start to finish.

While Monster is pretty solid on its own terms, you're right. There are serious pacing issues toward the middle of the album with too many slow, overlong tracks back-to-back.

All of the Lights is kind of a disaster. It doesn't really fit in the album lyrically (it's the only track where Kanye takes on a specific fictional persona, about whom we know next to nothing since there are relatively few verses) and the production is really messy. There's a huge excess of guest artists (Fergie?) and the drums and "whoo" sample don't line up cleanly or mesh well sonically with the synth/brass hook. Too many cooks; overdone. Hell of a Life has issues, too, but it's not terrible. It's this album's Electioneering, except not as good.

I don't know if Kanye has another Late Registration (my favorite album of the oughts) in him. He's too self-indulgent and messy creatively. I think Jon Brion's influence in that album is tremendously underrated and its at once clean and lavish production and superb pacing (both song-wise and in terms of the album as a whole) are rooted in Brion's background as a soundtrack composer.

This is still a lot better and more interesting than Graduation, though, and its highlights are superb.

"Devil in a New Dress" is such a great track, especially with the new Rick Ross brag-a-thon verse.

This is an astonishing piece of pop art.

$4 for a day on @AmazonMP3!

http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Dark...dp/B004BSIJ9Q/

Downloading now!

Internet breaking in 3, 2, 1...

Pitchfork has always been strongly pro-Kanye, but a 10 out of 10 review is fucking huge.

Woah. Pitchfork can be douchey, but they generally don't just throw the 10.0 around, especially not on new albums.

Can't remember the last time Pitchfork gave out a 10 for a new release. Wasn't the last time...Kid A?

I think it was Source Tags.

Just looked it up...Yankee Hotel Foxtrot got a 10 as well.

I might personally love the Jon Brion-ness of Late Registration more, but as far as a complete body of work, this is his best yet and probably the best hip-hop has seen in a decade or so.

My only slight quibble - as has been stated in this thread already - is that the two "posse cut" songs in the middle don't quite fit as well with the rest of the record (unless you think of them as just hammering home the ostentatious side of his personality). But "Monster" and "So Appalling" both have awesome beats and hot verses from everybody involved, so who cares? If The RZA had dropped a full 16 bars at the end, my head would've exploded.

Thank you times twenty!

This is a masterpiece. Late Registration is right up there, but as a concept, this album beats that one by a mile. It is a little saggy in the middle, but still, amazing. I didn't think West had it in him anymore.

Having heard it now, I think the stupid title is actually of a piece with the content. Artwork, too. I've never completely loved Kanye before, but this album dwarfs and intimidates me. I can't imagine ever listening to it casually.

I agree. Part of which makes this so great is that it's a complete package. Everything totally fits, even the mouthful of a title.

I have only listened to about half the album so far, and I like it (I like Kanye) but to me it's more of the same great production values with mostly just ok lyricism and overindulgence... Sir Lucious Leftfoot is still far and away the best hip hop album of the year imo.

I love Big Boi's album, but I disagree. But then again, I still think the ArchAndroid is better then both of these albums, although I guess you could claim it's not hip hop.

That is a great album though.

It's still album of the year, for my money (The ArchAndroid).

YES. Kanye's new album is killer, but Monae's album has changed the way I think about music. I can't say that about many albums!

Also, I enjoy listening to Cee Lo's new one more than Kanye's. Doesn't mean it's better, obviously.

'Lost in the World' might be my fave track. The vocal interplay between Kanye and Bon Iver is just magical. Makes me wanna scream out the chorus at the very top of my lungs.

Having had a chance to listen to it twice all the way through, and on pair of stand mounts with proper stereo.

I think Yeezy just saved the album as art form, and pushed it forward, more then any album the past 5 years.

Pitchfork's 10.0 makes sense in terms of the narrative they've recently imposed on Kanye. I'm warming up to the album, too.

I wonder if this is the closest we'll get to prog rap--and not just because of the prog samples.

Yep. It's interesting to compare Kanye with Jay-Z. Jay's a more lyrically proficient emcee than the sometimes clunky Kanye, but even at his most introspective, he never lays his soul bare like Mr. West. Where Jigga delivers his intricate rhymes with a poised detatchment, 'Ye is always completely confessional and unguarded. It's hard to be mad at an artist's dochebaggery when they so openly cop to it -and their myriad failings and insecurities- on record. Eminem is someone who's made a career out of supposedly taking us inside his mind, but even early on, his cartoony inner angst and turmoil seemed as much a gimmick as his peroxide 'do or his slasher flick stage props. Kanye genuinely seems to treat a trip to the recording studio as a therapy session.


I wouldn't award his latest a perfect 10, but it does, once again, remind us that Kanye's an artist in the truest sense of the word.

'Monster' is a great showcase for the differences between Kanye and Jay-Z. Kanye bears it all out over that, and the other, tracks. Jay-Z's verse on Monster however is all too literal and somewhat predictable.

Just finished my first listen. God damn, if this isn't the happiest that I've walked away from a first listen in a looooong time. "Hell of a Life", "Power", almost every song on here is just amazing.

I think Kanye might be the Thom Yorke of hip-hop.