Kanye West - Dark Twisted Fantasy

It made it his be here now

to a 9.7?

looking forward to this thread hitting 500 new answers soon

It's thankfully nowhere near being his Be Here Now but some of the reviews are very similar in that they spend more time on the size of the phenomenon than on the music. It sounds so big! He's so famous!

dammit, I was going to avoid this album but all of this complaining makes me want to hear it to see if it's really that bad

it's not

it's really not

I didn't think so but the garment-rending at Pitchfork giving it a 10.0 is making me lol

I ruined my best flannel button up today because of this

It is in no way as embarrassing as 808 but it is possibly worse.. If that makes sense? That said if Kanye was more choosy with his collabs, learnt from dre when he doesn't need to rap and had an editor with some balls to tell him when to end things, it could have been a lot better.

Still more likelyto listen to it at any point in my life ever than any post retirement jay.

i officially have no idea if i'm gonna like this or not

It's not just P4k - nobody on Metacritic has dipped below 88 yet. This is the kind of big, ambitious, flawed record that I'd like to see reviewed in three months' time. That's when the interesting criticism might happen - at the moment it's just variations on wow. (I don't exempt myself from that - if I'd had to turn around a review quickly I suspect I'd have erred on the side of positivity, though not to the extent of 10/10)

I'm prepared to read (and have, in a few places) spirited defenses and reevaluations of 808's, but this album sticks too closely to his tried-and-true.

still think 808s is a great album

It reminds me in places of plastic surgery gone too far - always aiming for bigger and better, he ends up making some potentially great songs ugly and repellent.

still think 808s is a great album

listened to it last night for first time in a while and yeah apart from broing Amazing and Heartless and the final track i enjoy v much the sound of his misery

for one thing it's almost half an hour shorter than this mess

Because 808s is a great album!

from tom ewing's tumblr:

10. Do I enjoy the record? No, not especially, or at least not as a 70 minute experience. Parts of it. Songs on shuffle. But it’s exhausting! In the way Important Records usually are. I’ve played it three times through - hardly enough to have an opinion - but I’m not really reaching for it again.

otm

yes it's exhausting

ugh so tired after sitting on my ass and listening to this album

ha

I almost feel like music publications need this record to be a big thing. in the wake of the almost-complete balkanization of taste on the internet, people want to believe that there is still a record that can be released that will unite all music fans under the one banner. wish they could have found a better record to congregate under though.

So we don't like this, but it must be Important (with a capital I) because it is exhausting?

I think the reaction here is more "wtf music critics" than anything else

dayo kinda agree. would really expect a record like this from an artist like this to be as divisive as 808s if not more so but get the impression the vast majority of reviews will be positive.

not music critics' fault they're expected to have opinions about this shit ~

I will say this, though; the first paragraph of the Pitchfork review has actually made me want to sit through the "Runaway" video.

...don't

To be clear, Kanye West is not Michael Jackson. As he told MTV last month, "I do have a goal in this lifetime to be the greatest artist of all time, [but] that's very difficult being that I can't dance or sing.

ha

On Twisted Fantasy, Kanye is crazy enough to truly believe he's the greatest out there. And, about a decade into his career, the hardworking perfectionist has gained the talent on the mic and in the control room to make a startlingly strong case for just that.

okay NOW I understand why ppl are taking issue with this review

This hardworking perfectionist has gained the talent on the mic and control room to record a singularly dull album.

xposts

or at least hold off for a heavily edited version that includes only:

the MJ parade
kanye punching out the live Power remix on the MPC (altho you don't have to watch this just listen)

like, that's akin to saying something like "Katy Perry showcases vocal chops that put her contemporaries to shame"

Trying to imagine the alternate world in 2001 where Kanye has somehow never heard of a recording studio and resolves to 'learn something about this.'

He spent ours in the New York Public Library educating himself on engineering and mixing.

*hours

Oh ffs, the "baroque instrumentation" of Late Registration? Is there a viol-and-harpsichord version of that album that I've never heard?

Society for Creative Anakanyeism

Actually Ren Fest could have made a great album title after the college ones. (Or maybe a remix album title, along with Reggae Fest.)

Oh ffs, the "baroque instrumentation" of Late Registration? Is there a viol-and-harpsichord version of that album that I've never heard?

code word for "jon brion collab" of course

That big important record all critics need = the eventual justin timberlake record imo xxxxxxxpost

Also late registration DID have an orchestra led live record!

Unlike Michael, he's not interested ['interested'? are you sure he's not?] in scrubbing away bits of himself-- his blackness, his candidness [!!]-- to appease the masses. And while Jackson's own twisted fantasies of paranoia and betrayal eventually consumed him whole, West is still aware of his illusions, though that mindfulness becomes increasingly unmoored [wtf] with each newspaper-splashing controversy.

Like Michael, Kanye's behavior-- from the poorly planned outbursts to the musical brilliance-- is wide-eyed in a way that most 33 year olds have long left behind. That naivety is routinely battered on Twisted Fantasy, yet it survives, better for the wear. With his music and persona both marked by a flawed honesty, Kanye's man-myth dichotomy is at once modern and truly classic. "I can't be everybody's hero and villain, savior and sinner, Christian and anti Christ!" he wrote earlier this month. That may be true, but he's more willing than anyone else to try.

— Ryan Dombal, November 22, 2010

"I wish Michael Jackson had twitter!!!!!! Maybe Mike could have explained how the media tried to set him up!!! It's all a fucking set up!!!!"

the eventual justin timberlake record imo

He's too busy playing a bear.

Basically, I think the problem with that Pitchfork review is the voice. Had it been more conversational and personal, it would have come across more as a dude you know who was wildly, totally amped about this album and couldn't wait to turn you onto it; you may agree or disagree but the pronouncements of greatness would have been easier to digest. As it stands, it reads as a dude you know attempting to convince you using empirical evidence that this is the best album of the year and failing miserably because he is exuding uncritical fanboyishness out of every pore, causing muddled comparisons and rampant overselling of things that, if they are as good as he says they are, would speak for themselves.

Still probably going to pick this up though, because the description of the Aphex sampling track sounds great.

xp: orchestra != "baroque"

ba·roque (b-rk)
adj.
1. also Baroque Of, relating to, or characteristic of a style in art and architecture developed in Europe from the early 17th to mid-18th century, emphasizing dramatic, often strained effect and typified by bold, curving forms, elaborate ornamentation, and overall balance of disparate parts.
2. also Baroque Music Of, relating to, or characteristic of a style of composition that flourished in Europe from about 1600 to 1750, marked by expressive dissonance and elaborate ornamentation.
3. Extravagant, complex, or bizarre, especially in ornamentation: "the baroque, encoded language of post-structural legal and literary theory" (Wendy Kaminer).

Ok bumders I'm not a copy editor, just a futile hiphop nerdballs.

xp: point taken, but I maintain that is still an extraordinarily poor word choice, given that in the context of music there is a stronger, more accepted meaning of the word "baroque" than that definition

Yes, true. Sorry, I had a sudden spasm of dictionary-citing pedantry. "What is baroque? Webster's defines it as…"