Kanye West’s fourth studio album had a lot to do. Coming off of a weak previous CD and the infamous VMA incident, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy needed to prove that West is both worthy of his constant stream of self-promotion and skilled enough to compete on the evolving stage of mainstream hip-hop. Fortunately MBDTF is successful. The album is a well produced, dynamic piece of art that at times surpasses his past hits like “Through the Wire” and “Flashing Lights”.
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a change in Kanye’s style. He no longer has to prove that he has ‘the good life’ or is ‘the cool’. MBDTF steps past the excess driven, materialistic hole that artists such as Tech9 and Lil Wayne are stuck in, and gives him the ability to explore other things. Every song on the album is part of the grandiose, orchestral sound that he beautifully imagines and creates/enacts/spawns. Opening with the fairytale-like track “Dark Fantasy”, the most soulful of the dozen, he sets the tone for the rest of a strangely honest album. “The plan was to drink until the pain over/but what’s worse, the pain or the hangover?” On “Runway”, Kanye acknowledges his narcissism, and turns it into a rallying call. “I think it’s time for us to have a toast/Let’s have a toast for the douche bags/Let’s have a toast for the assholes/Let’s have a toast for the scum bags/Everyone of them that I know” Like his greatest songs, it’s funny, a little sad and ultimately relatable.
West’s expansive guest list, which includes Jay-Z, RZA, No ID, Kid Cudi and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, is another asset to the album. “So Appalled” is an under-recognized 6 and a half minute song that features 5 guests who gather to spit dead-pan verses celebrating their success’ contra the established order in a quintessential hip-hop ballad. “Success is how you make it/Take it how it come/Half a mil in 20’s is like a billion where I’m from/An arrogant drug dealer, the legend I’ve become/CNN said I’d be dead by 21.”
The album isn’t perfect. Four songs top the 6-minute mark and seem a little long. Some guest artists could have been comfortably left out (rapper Rick Ross nearly ruins “Monster”). Politics are, for the most part, ignored on the album. The minute-and-a-half song that mentions them is stuck at the end of the album and sounds like an afterthought.
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy shows that Kanye is once again comfortable leading the hip-hop world. He successfully incorporates some much-needed art (both the “Power” music video and his 40-minute album video are indicative of his new vision) into a tired genre. The album is truly beautiful at times, and when taken as a whole, sounds grand, ambitious and orchestral. Additionally, Kanye West is probably the only mainstream artist today that can combine both searching questions and self-idolation in the same minute of a song: “is hip-hop just a euphemism for a new religion?” and “the same people that tried to black ball me forgot about two things/my black balls.” That is art.
