Kanye West - Dark Twisted Fantasy

good post, alex

like everything except for "so appalled" and "devil in a new dress". oh god and that hideous, hideous chris rock bit at the end of "the blame game" (which would have been GREAT if he'd kept it to like 15 seconds).

damn that alex in montreal post is great

The cover reminds me Steely Dan attempting Gaucho now.

^^ otm

yeah everytime I think of publications giving this a perfect score I just think of them having to listen to kanye reupholstering chris rock's pussy in 5 years, for the 13932809th time

If I were feeling sinister I'd posit this album as Kanye's Gaucho, with the caveat that SD's character sketches felt lived-in.

thx. i think this also plays into the sonic shifts from soul loops to soul loops + jon brion strings (artsiness! ambition! respectability!) to big stadium synths and DAFT PUNK (populist! dancey! outside-the-box for rap at the time!) to autotune + 808s (sad kanye!) to this kind of big-enough-to-absorb-it-all prog rock and Bon Iver and fucking Aphex Twin and Elton John and Gil Scott-Heron.

but yeah. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is so incredibly PREDICTABLE in some senses. musically, lyrically, emotionally, there was never really any other option for Kanye. He was always climbing higher, always in desperate need of both critical AND popular adulation, and always dissatisfied with the things he wanted once he got them.

Can we get much higher? is kind of the POINT of Kanye. You can get higher and higher, but you just keep on burning things off. You're either going to plummet like Icarus or burn off everything human about you and end up on Olympus, but in the end you're either dead or a god, which may as well be the same thing as far as he's concerned.

youre fooling yourself if you dont think contrarianism didnt play at least some part in p4k giving this a 10.0

― ＿|￣|○|￣|○|￣|○ (dayo), Monday, November 22, 2010 9:55 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

contrarianism against what? the album has a 98 on metacritic -- if anything you'd have to agree w/ ship's characterization of all mags being WE ARE THE KANYE, GENERATION

some dude OTM. it's a surprisingly high rating for such a bizarre album. person pitch and MPP got scores in the high 9s, but not 10.0s, and they're way closer to the kind of thing that pitchfork regularly gushes over.

― phish in your sleazebag (contenderizer), Monday, November 22, 2010 9:53 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

how is this post agreeing with somedude?

complex is double guilty of that for being a walking bukakke for kid cudi

yeah...i still don't get how "this artist is in this publication's sweet spot" in and of itself translates to "yes of course they gave this a 10.0" though

― some dude, Monday, November 22, 2010 9:47 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

'publication's sweet spot' means 'people who write for the publication like it a lot' which is what happened. get it? and we can identify strains in pfork's value system that suggest this record makes perfect sense to be acclaimed, cant we? i dont see whats so hard abt this

contrarianism against what? the album has a 98 on metacritic -- if anything you'd have to agree w/ ship's characterization of all mags being WE ARE THE KANYE, GENERATION

― J0rdan S., Tuesday, November 23, 2010 12:07 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

contrarianism against everybody who is still pigeonholing p4k as an indie mag who would only ever give 10.0s to yankee hotel foxtrot & source tags and codes

alex's post is awesome -- my main point from a few hours ago actually enunciated intelligently w/ specific examples

by 'pfork's value system,' again, i mean 'the collected tendencies of the writers who make editorial & writing decisions on a daily basis,' amongst which i am an outlier. these arent abstract values put down in writing. they are just tendencies that many of the writers overlap on. kanye hits a lot of those, for a lot of writers.

ilm is very inside baseball but to the general public I still feel p4k is still that 'indie music site that only hipsters check out' to the point where I get asked 'where do you get all your music from, pitchfork'? by friends who rarely if ever follow music

and like...this is why i love this album despite myself. kanye IS the biggest pop star of our era. we get the icons we deserve. six years ago he had things to say - important things maybe, but in the age of twitter and facebook and gossip girl doesn't it make sense that our real hero is a navel-gazing narcissist who's self-aware enough to know what's wrong with himself AND the rest of the world but more concerned with posting hot pictures of models to his blog and worrying about whether or not he hurt George Bush's feelings back when he was still saying things that made sense? but for better or for worse, he's ours, and i'm as invested in his ego and persona as he is.

like...fuck Lady GaGa, Kanye was doing life-as-performance art for years. we're all doing life-as-performance art these days.

contrarianism against everybody who is still pigeonholing p4k as an indie mag who would only ever give 10.0s to yankee hotel foxtrot & source tags and codes

― ＿|￣|○|￣|○|￣|○ (dayo), Monday, November 22, 2010 10:10 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

how does this even qualify as 'contrarianism' -- the site hasnt been like this in years

yeah that's either a small subset of ppl or a massive strawman

you still get people itt who think it makes more sense for p4k to give a 10.0 to anco or joanne newsom

real contrarianism was running deej's waka review in the lead spot

why is that contrarian?

p4k covers rap fairly regularly.

dayo's right though

"the site hasnt been like this in years," fine, but that doesn't mean public perception of the site has changed along with the site

hi deej! yeah, it makes sense that it would be celebrated at the house of fork, but no more so than a bunch of other albums that didn't score quite as high. plus given its bizarre inconsistencies and tendency to walk around on its own face, it's hardly the kind of record that you'd expect to see praised to the rafters in all corners.

i mean. i think deej is right, in that this hits a lot of rock-critic sweet spots. it's also a pretty watershed record, and if you were going to give a 10.0 to something in terms of narrative and cultural moment, this would be it.

that it also coincides with p4k's continual growth from 2002-era indie bedroom review site to major criticism game player is just a bonus. and yeah, the general view of p4k outside of our inside baseball circles is still indielolz obscurantism, but that doesn't mean their love of Kanye etc. is being contrarian - scott et al. have made a point of pushing outwards for four or five years now. it's not totally generalist, but they were giving 8.1's to Justin back in 2006...you know?

also this is the list of headlines on p4k's site right now

Be Part of Thom Yorke's Art Project 9:40 a.m.
Watch: Gorillaz Cover the xx 10:15 a.m.
New Cut Copy: "Take Me Over" 3:00 p.m.
M83 Talks "Very, Very, Very Epic" New LP 2:05 p.m.
Robyn Announces North American Tour 12:00 p.m.
Wilco Coffee Is a Real Thing 11:05 a.m.
Listen: Atlas Sound Covers Bob Dylan, Kurt Vile 11:30 a.m.
Pictureplane and Teengirl Fantasy Plot Tour 4:00 p.m.
James Blake Announces Debut Album 4:30 p.m.

lol

lol!

Wilco Coffee Is a Real Thing

try the espresso roast.

but that doesn't mean their love of Kanye etc. is being contrarian - scott et al. have made a point of pushing outwards for four or five years now. it's not totally generalist, but they were giving 8.1's to Justin back in 2006...you know?

I don't doubt their love of Kanye but I do doubt whether their love was the only reason behind the 10.0

surprised that M83 is going for the third "very" this time around tbh

it makes sense that it would be celebrated at the house of fork, but no more so than a bunch of other albums that didn't score quite as high

except for the fact that kanye is kanye etc. etc. Big Boi's album is as good if not better than this, but it wasn't a cultural moment...no big singles, no feeling of 'watershed'-ness.

like...would i have thrown The xx a 10? maybe. But the "idea" of a 10 is something IMPORTANT - and as rockist as that is, it's still something that rings true with people. a 10 should be a statement; a 10 should have ambition; a 10 should say something about the moment we live in; etc. is that bullshit? sure, but it's still something that probably comes into play.

and like...Joanna Newsom and Animal Collective might be a big deal in P4K land, but Animal Collective are the opposite of ambitious or showy. LCD might fit into that category, but This Is Happening was coming off of Sound of Silver, and would have needed to be demonstrably BETTER. Ditto Joanna and HOOM - I really love HOOM, more than most, but Ys is her big *statement* thus far. Jay-Z is asleep post-retirement. P4K has never been huge on R&B and if Erykah's Part 1 didn't break 8, Part 2 wasn't going to come anywhere near a 10. What else?

I mean. There are many many good reasons to give it a 10 without it being conspiracy-driven or contrarian. It just sort of makes sense given where Ye is these days and where p4k is these days. Anyway, all of this talking about p4k is silly. The story isn't about the grade - there's enough to actually discuss here without inside baseball.

big boi's record really isnt as 'good' as this, if u stick to the 'set expectations -> meets expectations' game. this record is way way more unique/interesting at some level. idk i dont really find either one particularly engaging, and ill probably still rock that song w/ too short & george clinton 5 years from now, more often than i play this. but this record obv feels like a bigger deal

can i just make a subtle point about the whole late registration/omg it's jon brion! how artsy! narrative?

anyway, FUCK JON BRION. FUCK HIM. FUCK HIM. FUCK HIM.

miri ben-ari >>>> jon brion

mike fuckin dean yall >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> jon brion

some great posts AiM

but there's no way this thread would have 500+ new answers if it wasn't for the p4k 10

yeah -- lots of great posts. But I don't know what we're discussing anymore -- something about Thom Yorke and coffee.

can i just make a subtle point about the whole late registration/omg it's jon brion! how artsy! narrative?

are you responding to 2005 or?

something about Thom Yorke and coffee.

― look at it, pwn3d, made u look at my peen/vadge (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, November 22, 2010 10:28 PM (8 seconds ago) Bookmark

just skip over the markers & daniel esq posts

kanye west graduation

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what a disaster for markers and Daniel, Esq!!!

See, Big Boi's album is ambitious in the way I like: trim yet every song looking at its given subject from an unexpected, skewed musical and lyrical pov. It's exhausting in a good way -- I want to play it again as soon as it's over.

xps: someone mentioned that narrative and it bears heavy on my mind.

there is nothing ambitious about big boi's album

otm. big boi album is less than the sum of its parts and some of the parts aren't even all that

^^ 2+2 = 5

i mean, maybe it would feel more like that if those songs came out back when they were actually recorded. but it sounds like ... i dunno. a collection of tracks recorded over the past four years. some v good, some ehh

It just sort of makes sense given where Ye is these days and where p4k is these days.

this is otm

also carles is otm

let me flip the script on u all-- the 10.0 is pitchforks "statement score"

I don't even get what's that ambitious about MDTF itself - I get that the marketing, the good fridays, the multiple cover arts, the huge guest lists are ambitious etc., but what is 'musically ambitious' about this album?