kanye west - my beautiful dark twisted fantasy

I’m still trying to wash the Taylor Swift off of me from my column a few weeks back, and I could think of no better way to do so than to review the new Kanye album.

Kanye West is one of the few artists in hip-hop who truly needs no hype-man. Whether he’s on rapping stage or doing something stupid in the media, Kanye gets the spotlight, no matter what it takes.
 

But even by his standards, the buzz surrounding his latest album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, was absurd.

Before a single track had been leaked, it was already being called a masterpiece by inside sources. 

An increasingly astounding list of guest stars was slowly built up over time, including names like Jay-Z, M.I.A, Eminem, Lil Wayne, Elton John, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), and most of the Wu-Tang Clan, with some of the best producers in the world cooking up beats for the album.

It quickly became clear that this was going to be huge. And as usual, Kanye didn’t disappoint.

This is the return to form fans have been looking for since 808’s & Heartbreak. Kanye once again pushes the boundaries of what hip-hop can be and do, refusing to make the same album everybody else is making today, yet he never goes over-the-top the way 808’s tragically did.

There are moments on this album where Kanye seems capable of just about anything. Nobody else in hip-hop could get away with sampling King Crimson, let alone pull it off as well as he does.

On paper, rapping over “21^st Century Schizoid Man” is just a laughably terrible idea, and I could not wait to get my hands on that song and destroy it in this column. Yet I was nearly all the way through “Power” before I realized this was the King Crimson track, and it was nothing short of brilliant.

I seriously doubt there’s any song in the world Kanye couldn’t sample and turn into a hit song. I really do.

Kanye West is the rare example of a hip-hop artist who is as equally skilled behind a mixing board as he is holding a mic. He’s listed as a producer on all but one of the tracks, and clearly did not just hand off his album to his cast of veteran beatmakers as most rappers will settle with doing.

As daunting as the guest list is throughout, this is firmly Kanye’s album at all times. Modern hip-hop artists have a terrible tendency to lean on other rappers and singers to boost their singles, but Kanye West could not be further from this reality.

Even when identifiable voices pop up along his in the middle of a track, they’re clearly there to back up Kanye’s dominating presence. Jay-Z, Rick Ross, Nicki Minaj, and Bon Iver all cram themselves into a single track for “Monster,” yet the guest appearances are seamlessly integrated into the song, coming together to create what amounts more to a group performance than a set of individual ones.

At no point on this album are you saying to yourself “Oh cool, here’s Jay-Z’s part.” It all comes together to tremendous effect, a far cry from the guest verses that get aimlessly slapped into flavor-of-the-month singles to gain notoriety elsewhere in hip-hop. (Looking at you, Lil Wayne.)

Five albums into his career, Kanye is showing no signs of slowing down, ever. He has yet to put out anything less than greatness, and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is no different. (The jury’s still out on 808’s, but it’ll emerge as a classic one day, mark my words.)

It doesn’t matter who you are, what music you listen to, or what side of the epic 2009 Swift/West rivalry you fell on—you will love this album. It’s just that good.

- 12/7/10

kanye west - college dropout

I wonder if my kids will know Kanye West even made music.

Even today, it's a commonly overlooked fact that he used to make brilliant rap albums. It's hard to feel bad for him, since it is his own fault he's a total jackass, but at the same, it's very easy to feel bad for the music.

There isn't a single bad track on College Dropout. Not even a mediocre one. Hell, even the skits fit into the overall theme remarkably well. At times it's stunningly personal, at others it's the same "Hey look at me I rap real good" MC nonsense, and at others it's a borderline gospel album. Singles like "Jesus Walks," "All Falls Down," and "The New Workout Plan" play beautifully against deeper cuts like "Spaceship" and "Two Words," flowing brilliantly from beginning to end. It's a hip-hop album that has a soul, one that manages to make even the most blatant singles undeniably original, a skill Kanye arguably brought back into the mainstream single-handedly.

This is a well rounded artistic statement from an artist now so deeply hated and ridiculed, South Park singled him out for an entire searing episode, christening him a "Gay Fish" in the eyes of a generation who, ironically, he proclaimed himself to be the voice of.

This is the same artist who can't lose a VMA without throwing a temper tantrum, the same artist who "wrote" an inspirational book made up mainly of clichéd sentiments and blank pages. If I played this album for my kids and told them it was by the same guy who interrupted Taylor Swift, they’d just laugh. And how could I blame them?

In this 2009 outlook, the album plays like a tragedy, almost completely opposite of Kanye's original vision.

The album at face value tells the story of a kid growing up in the ghetto, raised by his single mom, selling drugs to get along, fighting his way into college, only to be shunned by the people around him until he finally drops out, begins rapping, and is all of a sudden picked up by Jay-Z, who's now helping him record one of the greatest rap albums of the last decade.

In 2009, however, the album plays like an egotistical, immature rapper obsessed with fame revisiting his past, still making claims that he was shy, poor, and oppressed by the people around him, even though they're the farthest things from the truth. It's an album that simultaneously shows how far he's come, and how far he's fallen.

"A shorty [lookin'] up to the dopeman," rising from poverty to the point of superstardom, only to have it eat him alive, replacing it with a self-proclaimed "Voice of a Generation" who just can't get over how amazing he is.

College Dropout is a triumph and an embarrassment, a brilliant piece of hip-hop history that will follow Kanye to the grave, for better or worse, hopefully one day reminding future generations (and Kanye himself) that there was once a legitimate artist behind the ego.


Edited 6/7/2010