Kanye West - Dark Twisted Fantasy

i think he means: its more ambitious for a rapper to make a prog album than for a prog band to make a prog album

lil b is ambitious in terms of work ethic & promotion & conceptualizing a persona (obv) but i mean straight music qua music, lil b is not on a 'twisted fantasy' level

Way to wimp out and even pixelate the image inside the CD booklet Kanye.

But I'm not sure Kanye has ever given a flying fuck what his audience thinks?

Way to wimp out and even pixelate the image inside the CD booklet Kanye.

― "I am a fairly respected poster." (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, November 22, 2010 11:11 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

lol record labels -- ask nas about this

for real?? there are really high profile interview quotes w/ him reflecting on the nature of being popular & keeping / losing an audience that i havent even gone out of my way to find but seem to have floated up at me since the hype cycle for this thing started xp

anyway, all I'm asking is what's musically ambitious about this album, i.e. ambitious about the music in and of itself. like if you took a music fan and made him listen to this w/o presenting any of the backstory, the Kanye narrative, the football team that he assembled for all of the lights, would he walk away being like "this is the most ambitious album I've ever heard! 10.0!"

think the closest we've come to that is DJP liveblogging itt

like my problem with this album is that for all the music crit adulation, the album itself just isn't all that interesting to listen to, and the extra-musical ambitions and drama don't really translate into interesting musical compositions

lol record labels -- ask nas about this

Well, that was a little different, but I'm surprised Cudi can get away with topless girls in his booklet but someone like Kanye can't get away with a fucked-up cartoon.

anyway, all I'm asking is what's musically ambitious about this album, i.e. ambitious about the music in and of itself. like if you took a music fan and made him listen to this w/o presenting any of the backstory, the Kanye narrative, the football team that he assembled for all of the lights, would he walk away being like "this is the most ambitious album I've ever heard! 10.0!"

think the closest we've come to that is DJP liveblogging itt

like my problem with this album is that for all the music crit adulation, the album itself just isn't all that interesting to listen to, and the extra-musical ambitions and drama don't really translate into interesting musical compositions

― ＿|￣|○|￣|○|￣|○ (dayo), Monday, November 22, 2010 11:14 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think there are some moments on here for sure, although i dont imagine playing this record very often, but a lot of this stuff def feels new or un-covered by other artists. i think its a fairly novel album, expensively so, so i see 'ambitious'

Way to wimp out and even pixelate the image inside the CD booklet Kanye.

― "I am a fairly respected poster." (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, November 22, 2010 11:11 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

lol record labels -- ask nas about this

― J0rdan S., Monday, November 22, 2010 10:13 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

What are you talking about... my version has it non-pixelated. Sucks to be Amurrican, I guess.

yes its ambitious for rap music but is it ambitious for 'music' as a collective whole?

― ＿|￣|○|￣|○|￣|○ (dayo), Monday, November 22, 2010 8:56 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark

this isn't a dumb question. different genres of music are conservative and/or ambitious in different ways. MBTDF seem ambitious in a way that's consistent with a lot of 70s prog and pop: deeply personal to the point of being obsessed with the self as subject, drawing from wildly disparate sources, unafraid of looking a little (a lot) ridiculous. but these qualities are, or have been, less common in rap. don't think the comparison takes anything away from this record, kanye or rap in general.

Way to wimp out and even pixelate the image inside the CD booklet Kanye.

yes, sincerely, FUCK THIS

so disappointed

i don't think it's necessary to find it interesting in a good way to acknowledge that it's ambitious, dayo

I kinda think it's do if you're gonna give it a perfect score, samosa

like 'ambitious' should not be the only metric involved here

wtf "it's do" "it is necessary" obv

Way to wimp out and even pixelate the image inside the CD booklet Kanye.

yes, sincerely, FUCK THIS

so disappointed

― phish in your sleazebag (contenderizer), Monday, November 22, 2010 10:20 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT... it`s not pixelated.

now yr sounding like al, so im going to point out the obvious that i think most of pfork's writers probably also like the record

WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT... it`s not pixelated.

― altered boners (rennavate), Monday, November 22, 2010 11:23 PM (28 seconds ago) Bookmark

hey chill out i'm pretty sure that they know whether or not their booklets are pixelated

so wait whats your point dayo? that it's not ambitious, or that its not perfect, or that its neither?

oh man thanks rennavate, turns out I just had this blurry spot in my eyes every time I looked at this one particular page in the book

you wouldn't know it from reading the reviews xp to deej

right right i`m just being snarky but i mean that`s weird... maybe a decision for american markets? or maybe certain outlets?

didnt mean to get snide, also, for the record.

that it's not an interrsting album in and of itself samosa

Could be, I suppose, although hard for me to imagine going through the pain of altering one page from the INSIDE of a booklet for different outlets. I could totally see if it was the cover or whatever.

especially bummed cuz i bought it at a local shoppe, not some monster chain store. considering swapping it in for an unfucked version somewhere else, but money's tight...

Well contenderizer blows my theory right there, figured mine was because it came from a big chain. Sorry to derail the serious talk guys.

i'd venture that it's probably a thing about US/canada & not where you bought the album

wait my version was all pixelated too -- you can buy non-pixelated ones??

Anyway, going to bed now so I can listen to this on the train tomorrow so I can really have something worthwhile to say (theres a first time for everything I suppose).

Weird. Maybe it`s just us Canadians who get the uncensored version.

Here`s picture for proof: http://24.media.tumblr.com/preview.xe2JF5bKl0D7NY1x_500.jpg

While I dig the different covers, especially the one with Kanye's misshapen face and the crown, part of me wishes that this was actually one of them.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_7RHnmlEM6P4/TNb9uuEPkkI/AAAAAAAAAvo/Oq5UqTaD41c/s1600/MyBeautiful+DarkTwistedFantasy.JPG

Hearing it for the first time. The thing that thrills me the most is how he seems to be striving for an overtly ambitious visual/musical/lyrical universe of bourgeoisie decadence.... neo-baroque visuals in his videos and shows, megalomaniac drama lyrics, progressive rock and symphonic samples... It's hard for the overall concept not to sound monumental and Kanye has the ego and the tools to pull it off succesfully.

Don't think it's the most perfect execution of the concept - I'd personally would have loved more baroquesque/african references in the music samples- and certainly not deserving of all the perfect 10 scores it's getting but I am honestly glad that such an ambitious vision is being rewarded by the music media.

xp: yeah, the monster bear's great and should have been included in the insert

u know before this even came out i had a pre-assembled stoner riff abt kanye cycling thru western art--college dropout is his high renaissance, late registration is his mannerist period, graduation his baroque, and now this is on some rococo ish, in a good way

I am honestly glad that such an ambitious vision is being rewarded by the music media.

― Moka, Tuesday, November 23, 2010 12:09 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

ha im honestly not surprised by it

lol are those the "thought @ work" drums at the end of "that's my bitch"?

jordan where are u ... get on im

http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/bat-signal.jpg

thnx dayo

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/bat-signal_2.jpg

I will try listening to this again when I get home on Friday, I usually like pfork enough for that. Or Carles.

I listened to this in two sittings (first half last night, second half this morning), so maybe that's why I didn't feel that it was overly long and bloated like many people are saying. That wasn't intentional or anything, it was just because I didn't have the time to listen to it all the way through. But I was digging the proggy stuff a lot more than I expected to.

Belated OTM to this - it just falls victim to the same "here's 80% big picture stuff about kanye and a quick paragraph actually talking about some of the individual non-singles" problem i have w/ most reviews of this album

A lot of reviews feel to much like they're just cosigning the narrative already written by Kanye: I AM A TROUBLED, ENDLESSLY FASCINATING GENIUS - I HAVE LOTS OF MONEY AND MANY FAMOUS FRIENDS AND AMPLE BREAKFAST OPTIONS - LOOK ON MY WORKS YET MIGHTY AND DESPAIR. Maybe a lot of reviewers didn't have long enough to live with it before filing their reviews but I don't see much close reading going on.

Which is not to say there isn't still some great writing about it - just that it's all about the broad strokes rather than the details.

like if you took a music fan and made him listen to this w/o presenting any of the backstory, the Kanye narrative, the football team that he assembled for all of the lights, would he walk away being like "this is the most ambitious album I've ever heard! 10.0!"

think the closest we've come to that is DJP liveblogging itt

I don't know how I would score this. There are some really TERRIBLE things on here, especially at the beginning, but there is also a bunch of stuff that I think will grow on me and a bunch of stuff that I absolutely love. Also, the stuff I love mitigates the stuff I don't (unlike, say, MAYA).

I think Big Boi, Massive Attack, We Love, Owen Pallett, Janelle Monae, Underworld, Vampire Weekend, Sleigh Bells and Abe Vigoda all released albums this year that are better than this. I am still considering giving it a 9.

Bet it still doesn't top Pitchfork's year end list (Deerhunter lock, surely? Or mebbe JoNu).

Or ILMs for that matter. Actually think it might end up - shocker horror - not doing very well on the ILM one. Has any actual human being said this is the album of the year? Will Dombal even put this no1 on his list? Why do I care when I should be working?

http://img.slate.com/media/1/122939/2240270/2272973/2275801/CA_101123_KanyeWest2.jpg

Weiner

Winner.