Kanye West - Dark Twisted Fantasy

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…"

my problem:
pitchfork be on some weird (and not necessarily sinister or ill-intentioned, mostly just self-serving and symptomatic) slippery equivalence of mental illness —> artistic genius —> childishness —> unmediated expression of some sort of biological essence ('candidness', like 'blackness', is apparently built right into Kanye's bad self — altho both could be 'scrubbed away' if he rly cared to...)
... ——> negation of a fallen modern (superficial, fake, technologized, etc) society. or something. basic fascist mythology, innit?

dan i think "elaborate" is the more common definition for "baroque" for all us non-classical music geeks

http://www.allmusic.com/explore/style/baroque-pop-d4555

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_pop

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22charles+stepney%22+baroque

i dont care about this record really but i have been looking forward to the 180 everyone does once the context goes from 'much better than 808s' to 'omg 10.0 so0 overrated'

"Chamber rap" would probably be more confusing.

xpost

...and you will know us by the Trail of Backlash

― I will always think of you, while (quite) fondly, myself (Evan), Monday, November 22, 2010 11:00 AM (8 minutes ago)

Was supposed to be posted in here

my problem:
pitchfork be on some weird (and not necessarily sinister or ill-intentioned, mostly just self-serving and symptomatic) slippery equivalence of mental illness —> artistic genius —> childishness —> unmediated expression of some sort of biological essence ('candidness', like 'blackness', is apparently built right into Kanye's bad self — altho both could be 'scrubbed away' if he rly cared to...)
... ——> negation of a fallen modern (superficial, fake, technologized, etc) society. or something. basic fascist mythology, innit?

hello I would like to introduce you to Wesley Willis/Chan Marshall fandom

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

u crazy, those are three of the best tracks!

as it is, i still haven't heard k's new album, but would be hard pressed to think anything can sum up his Important Status (as seems to be emphasized by pfork, rolling stone, et al.) more than his deadpanned line on "amazing"/808s: "my reign is as far as your eyes can seee"

my problem:
pitchfork be on some weird (and not necessarily sinister or ill-intentioned, mostly just self-serving and symptomatic) slippery equivalence of mental illness —> artistic genius —> childishness —> unmediated expression of some sort of biological essence ('candidness', like 'blackness', is apparently built right into Kanye's bad self — altho both could be 'scrubbed away' if he rly cared to...)
... ——> negation of a fallen modern (superficial, fake, technologized, etc) society. or something. basic fascist mythology, innit?

hello I would like to introduce you to Wesley Willis/Chan Marshall fandom

― ali-baba-boob-job-bomb.jpg (DJP), Monday, November 22, 2010 10:12 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

actually pretty sure this is all art criticism forever

dudes did you guys hear van gogh cut off his own fucking ear, hardcore

ha I was going to get there eventually

Well wait, it depends on whether by "final track" we are talking about "Coldest Winter" or "Pinocchio Story", because, if the latter, yeah that is truly awful.

I don't think anyone actually defends "Pinocchio Story"

yeah i was referring to that one

I don't think anyone actually defends "Pinocchio Story"

I was certainly hoping not.