Kanye West - Dark Twisted Fantasy

but surely there is a difference between the monumental dead letter that is Chinese Democracy and Kanye West as "going concern"/trending twitter topic/celebrity guest host/etc

― underplayed junior boys remixes I have forgotten were on my comp (bernard snowy), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 11:51 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

you're right, Use Your Illusion is a better reference point here (and is also an example of something bloated and often awful that I still enjoy more than this album).

the packaging is the content!!!

i mean i KNOW what that sounds like but... thats kanyes whole THING since at least graduation

mmm but the "packaging" on eg 808s actually did affect the content - ie the decision to sing through a vocoder and strip down the arrangements had a definite artistic effect - it wasn't just there for the sake of it. here, where the "packaging" = getting 50 famous names on one song, or extending the songs to tedious length, it pretty much adds nothing to the "content" because it sounds like an outtake from graduation with rihanna, fergie and a choir.

for some reason the discourse around the hugeness of this album is sounding like the general-public version of the indie disourse around the MPP "moment"

― aerosmith: the acid house years (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 10:52 AM (49 seconds ago) Bookmark

yeah this kinda sounds right (to someone who merely spectated the indies going ham for MPP).

idk whether it's my imagination but the hype cycle of people-not-shutting-up-about-certain-albums has seemed particularly annoying in 2010

srsly h8 to break this to you friend but that's just you getting older

yeah max is basically agreeing with us but putting exclamation points on it to indicate that he's excited, not annoyed or depressed, by it. (xpost)

how is max agreeing w/ you?

he's saying that kanye's whole THING is making the presentation of his art as important as the art, which i also think but don't think is especially exciting or cool

it's cool and exciting when it works, kind of like ANYTHING is cool and exciting when it works, and that's the big divisive point re: this album I think

haven't read the thread, but is anyone denying this?

― BIG MUFFIN (gbx), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 10:47 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

it seems to me that Al is denying that the music is at all related to the framing, or thinks that you can divorce the two; theyre inseparable & u cant remove the context

which i also think but don't think is especially exciting or cool

i dont think that either, personally, but i can totally see why ppl do, which is what i thought we were arguing about. while u and lex go around being like SHEEPLE!! about it

been thinking about making a poll of Kanye videos because while almost all of them are creative and surprising on some level, only a couple of them really work for me as music videos, which is kinda also the way i feel about the crazy album covers, goofy outfits, etc.

im not really saying that hes making the presentation of his art "as important" as the art, im saying that the presentation is the art, inseparable from the content. (this may not seem like a distinction to you but it is an important one to me!) i dont know how i "feel" about it, i just think walking down the style/substance duality road takes us too far away from what kanyes doing here, if that makes sense

i was gonna do a poll of kanye track codas

I don't actually know why I actively dislike like 4 songs on here but find the other 7 good enough to more than make up for them, but that's the reaction I'm having

I like a lot of the mish-mash melange of ideas and it kind of cracks me up that Kanye decided that thematic continuity would be best served by emo guitar solos

see i don't necessarily think the framing is that inseparable from the album because for all we know, 90% of this album was done before he decided to give it the weird long title and the crazy gross cover art -- i know i already said this but i could easily see this exact same album being called Good Ass Job and having a bear on the cover.

Is this guy ever going to release a video (and not a lol 35 min thing)? That's half of what I love about Kanye. The videos were all I really liked about 808.

yeah i really disagree w/ that! i think the way these songs ended up is pretty difft from the way they leaked as 'good friday' entries too xp

it seems to me that Al is denying that the music is at all related to the framing, or thinks that you can divorce the two; theyre inseparable & u cant remove the context

ehhhhhhhhhhh dunno about this. i mean, i get how the two are inseparable, to an extent, but let's be real the fact that this is a BFD to the listening public is because it's Kanye, not because he's reached dizzying new heights of maximalism. which, now that i think about it, is maybe what max is saying??

imo all ambitious albums court/curry a similar vibe from people who want albums to matter more than they actually do in the broader scheme of things - the ambition of any given album qua content is mainly of interest to butterfly-collecting types who think about the actual album as a discreet self-contained object whereas in the broader universe these ambitions serve mainly the function of cementing/expanding celebrity & status & most people won't ever really examine the things that constitute "an ambitious album" - to make "an ambitious album" & succeed in communicating having-been-ambitious is to succeed, full stop, because it accomplishes the celeb/status goals

nb I believe in kanye west as an artist & number him among the butterfly-collector types in the above schema, I just think that this particular level of the game - what the acutal ambitions of an album are - barely figure into the q at all except for artists & the nerds who care about artists' work

so deej argues that these two aspects -- an ambitious album as an artistic work & an ambitious album as, essentially, a gesture of pop-cultural pertinence -- are "inseparable"; I'm internally conditioned to have deep suspicions of any assertion that content is inseparable from anything, ever, that smacks of discredited late-90s crit-theory claims to me

also while I'm here I want to say the last blut aus nord didn't really hold up on listening to it this morning, maybe you have to be high to love it, peace everybody

wait are we all saying the same thing?¿?¿?¿

Is this guy ever going to release a video (and not a lol 35 min thing)? That's half of what I love about Kanye. The videos were all I really liked about 808.

Do you specifically mean a video for "Runaway" or a video for a song on this album? Because there is one for "Power" and it's bad-ass

ehhhhhhhhhhh dunno about this. i mean, i get how the two are inseparable, to an extent, but let's be real the fact that this is a BFD to the listening public is because it's Kanye, not because he's reached dizzying new heights of maximalism. which, now that i think about it, is maybe what max is saying??

― BIG MUFFIN (gbx), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 11:08 AM (7 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

its what im saying too...?

yeah i really disagree w/ that! i think the way these songs ended up is pretty difft from the way they leaked as 'good friday' entries too xp

― challop and a muff (deej), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 12:07 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

besides the "Runaway" single mix/album version thing and the Ross verse added to that one song, what are the big differences? i'm asking seriously, i didn't follow all the leaks really closely.

i know i already said this but i could easily see this exact same album being called Good Ass Job and having a bear on the cover.

AND it would be just as big a deal w/the public and critics if that was the case

see i don't necessarily think the framing is that inseparable from the album because for all we know, 90% of this album was done before he decided to give it the weird long title and the crazy gross cover art -- i know i already said this but i could easily see this exact same album being called Good Ass Job and having a bear on the cover.

― some dude, Tuesday, November 23, 2010 12:06 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i guess my point is kind of that the album wasnt actually "90% done" if he hadnt given it the title and the cover art and put on the big ass egyptian chain & everything. and for that matter that calling it "good ass job" and having a bear on the cover would have made it a v. different album. but i can feel myself getting into pedantic college frosh mode here so ill stop myself. generally speaking i dont see this album being called good ass job and having a bear on the cover. kanye takes himself too seriously for that shit now.

so deej argues that these two aspects -- an ambitious album as an artistic work & an ambitious album as, essentially, a gesture of pop-cultural pertinence -- are "inseparable"; I'm internally conditioned to have deep suspicions of any assertion that content is inseparable from anything, ever, that smacks of discredited late-90s crit-theory claims to me

i dont think they're ALWAYS inseparable, but when kanye is a transmedia figure like he is, how can they not be? its a celeb album

RIP Good Ass Job

yeah i'm kinda chasing my own tail here i think

deep suspicions of any assertion that content is inseparable from anything, ever, that smacks of discredited late-90s crit-theory claims to me

!!!

context is totally affecting how we even argue about this!

there is a power vid? i must have missed that, my bad.

they're not inseparable, they're just both present, is my argument - there's a narrative that comes with the album. maybe they're difficult to separate out during the release week, but it's not really asking much of a critic or commenter to separate all that out, I don't think

finally a rapper has captured the spirit of tumblr

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L53gjP-TtGE

called good ass job and has a bear on the cover in /my/ itunes anyway

i know i already said this but i could easily see this exact same album being called Good Ass Job and having a bear on the cover.

AND it would be just as big a deal w/the public and critics if that was the case

― lex lex lex lex lex on the track BOW (lex pretend), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 12:10 PM (43 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it would get great reviews just like his other albums, but it wouldn't be a 5 star 10/10 album, was my argument. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Naked Phoenix On The Couch Fantasy is the "weird" album everyone's decided belongs on Mt. Olympus.

yeah, see, the thing is is that the context is the ONLY thing we're talking about right now!

it would get great reviews just like his other albums, but it wouldn't be a 5 star 10/10 album, was my argument. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Naked Phoenix On The Couch Fantasy is the "weird" album everyone's decided belongs on Mt. Olympus.

― some dude, Tuesday, November 23, 2010 12:13 PM (31 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

dude this is some mind-reading fanfic horseshit

mainly I was just gunnin for the triple-stonk from max here, got what I wanted & thankful for it, gotta get back to work now

but "context is everything" and "the framing is inseparable from the art" isn't a particularly interesting things in themselves, they apply to any pop star of a certain stature - they apply to taylor swift, lady gaga, nicki minaj - it's about HOW the framing and the content work together.

i mean, i think nicki minaj is a super-interesting artist and character and pop culture figure, and that framing totally affects pink friday, but it doesn't stop pink friday itself from being a kinda average and not especially interesting cop-out for half its length. it's exactly the same deal with kanye, except w/different signifiers, and the dullness extended across the whole of the album.

not really? i mean i don't think this album is better than Graduation, and Graduation's "great but not OMG AMAZING MASTERPIECE" reviews were more appropriate to its quality partly because it was just kind of presented as oh another Kanye album with a little bit of new ideas but mostly the Kanye you already know. (xpost to max)

so you guys dont like the framing. how is that affecting your pure, unhindered views of the music?

i don't feel strongly about the framing either way! and i'm not saying my view of the music is more "pure" than anyone else's! i just don't especially like the music!

not really? i mean i don't think this album is better than Graduation, and Graduation's "great but not OMG AMAZING MASTERPIECE" reviews were more appropriate to its quality partly because it was just kind of presented as oh another Kanye album with a little bit of new ideas but mostly the Kanye you already know. (xpost to max)

― some dude, Tuesday, November 23, 2010 11:16 AM (13 seconds ago) Bookmark

this sounds a lot more ambitious, a lot further afield, a lot more about kanye than about songs, a lot more personal, a lot more biographically driven, more star-studded, there are a whole bunch of other reasons why this would get more critical attention

i don't feel strongly about the framing either way! and i'm not saying my view of the music is more "pure" than anyone else's! i just don't especially like the music!

― some dude, Tuesday, November 23, 2010 11:17 AM (22 seconds ago) Bookmark

neither do i, but we're disagreeing about something, right?

this sounds a lot more ambitious, a lot further afield, a lot more about kanye than about songs, a lot more personal, a lot more biographically driven, more star-studded, there are a whole bunch of other reasons why this would get more critical attention

EVERY one of these apart from "star-studded" applies to 808s!

what i'm saying is i care more about the drums sounding kind of weak here and there or the rhymes at times being poorly written or obnoxiously delivered. but those details don't seem to bother the reviewers who write 800 words about Kanye's career and his twitter and one or two paragraphs about individual songs.

this sounds a lot more ambitious, a lot further afield, a lot more about kanye than about songs, a lot more personal, a lot more biographically driven, more star-studded, there are a whole bunch of other reasons why this would get more critical attention

― challop and a muff (deej), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 11:17 AM (20 seconds ago) Bookmark

critical attn, sure, but critical accolades?

EVERY one of these apart from "star-studded" applies to 808s!

― lex lex lex lex lex on the track BOW (lex pretend), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 11:18 AM (7 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

except that was 'weirder', less of an event record & more of a left turn

not really? i mean i don't think this album is better than Graduation, and Graduation's "great but not OMG AMAZING MASTERPIECE" reviews were more appropriate to its quality partly because it was just kind of presented as oh another Kanye album with a little bit of new ideas but mostly the Kanye you already know. (xpost to max)

― some dude, Tuesday, November 23, 2010 12:16 PM (52 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ok? i mean im sure you think that! but its a weak argument--we wont ever actually know how much the title of this album mesmerized ryan dombal vs "good ass job"

EVERY one of these apart from "star-studded" applies to 808s!

Sure, but 808s IS a better album than this. IMO.