ARTIST: Kanye West
ALBUM: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
LABEL: Roc-A-Fella Records
RELEASE DATE: November 22, 2010
A Fantastic Fantasy
Photo by Roc-A-Fella Records
Written by Katie J. Norris
The fifth album from this acclaimed artist, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, will certainly come as a surprise to his fans. Since his first solo album, The College Dropout, released in 2004, and his subsequent album, Late Registration in 2005, Kanye West has improved his wordplay and enhanced his ideas for more film score style tracks. In this album, West conjures up an emotional and dramatic feel comparable to medieval art using baroque pop, electronic, and poetic rap. The intro track is based on Roald Dahl’s “Cinderella,” reconstructed as a creative mix of modern poetry-slam reading and age-old troubadour storytelling performed in an English accent by Nicki Minaj. The album then takes off and kidnaps you for the duration, drawing you into a vortex of surrealist musical art.
Kanye West has a few hit singles in this album despite the encompassing bohemian, artistic feel. “POWER” is co-produced with Dwele and includes bold verses with a tribal group chant in military style. Another hit features Rihanna and Nicki Minaj, again, in “All Of The Lights,” but not before a beautiful string and piano interlude. The actual song opens with excellent engineering and production, a powerful horn section, and Rihanna singing the hook.
The single, “Monster,” has a rap style that gets increasingly darker and more dramatic with each verse. Nicki Minaj is featured again, along with Rick Ross and Bon Iver. Nicki, being last in the rap line-up, makes sure to take the song to a new level creating a frighteningly good performance.
There’s an ego-centric nature to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy that can’t be ignored. It’s honest, but possibly an unintentional exposure of Kanye’s uncertainty about where he is in life. He comments on life’s obstacles in the present tense, but we get no indication as to where he’d like to be in the future.
I couldn’t possibly make any remarks about the single, “Runaway,” featuring Pusha T without first mentioning that Kanye West has created a 35 minute film with the same title. It is a cinematic journey through the dark, mythic plot of Kanye’s love with a fallen phoenix depicted by model, Selita Ebanks. West claims the video is an overall representation of his dreams, and he parallels the themes to his music career. The entire video is scored by the My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy album, all centering around the song, “Runaway.” A noteworthy scene is one that incorporates Kanye, a piano, and a swarm of ballerinas. The ballerinas are significant to the film and even make it on the cover art of the album along with a few other visual selections including a slightly risqué cartoon drawing of Kanye in a compromising position with a naked, armless phoenix. The video in its entirety and all the cover artwork are available for free viewing on his website: www.kanyewest.com.
There’s no dance around single like “Gold Digger” on this album. But it has all the music complexities and emotional layers you could ever ask for as West challenges the genre with his ingenuity. The album evokes an appeal from daring music conventions, but repulses with its focus on the ego and its dark intensity. From the cover art, to the instrumentation, to the poetic rap, this album is a museum, an intriguing accomplishment.