Kanye West - Dark Twisted Fantasy

um lex new and mindblowing is not the only alternative to 'rehashes of tracks hes done better previously' also djp otm

Christgau's review, by the way, fails to justify his grade.

How is "Dark Fantasy" low key? Because it starts with a piano?

xp: I think the people going "OMG SO IMPORTANT" are grossly overstating their love of the album, but I also don't think that using a familiar sound palette in slightly different ways on angrier material is a straight-up rehash of everything Kanye's done before.

who cares?

Chuck Berry to thread!

i want to make it clear that this isnt about calling out lex -- like i said ive done this shit before, im certain -- but i thought it seemed like ppl were overstating the case against the record, even if they arent as bad (or rather, as numerous) as those overstating the case in favor

xpost: Yeah, I feel a little let down that both Xgau and SFJ, both writers I respect hugely, have hedged their bets and basically gone "well, you gotta admit, he's making an effort". I'm still waiting for that really great piece of writing that sums up the dissenting opinion (no disrespect, Lex).

imo, those factors are enough to definitively say that 'rehash' would be an inaccurate descriptor, though.

you have to realize that this is an irresolvable debate that no one can really win, right? you're not wrong to say what you've said, but nor is anyone else wrong to say otherwise. it's entirely a matter of perceptions and tastes, as kanye is neither inventing an entirely new kind of music nor literally stealing quotes from his own past. the case can be made badly or well, but everyone here's done a decent job of fleshing out their arguments (to say the least). that has to be enough.

the parts of "Dark Fantasy" where he's rapping seem kinda low key or at least not super high energy to me.

Christgau's review, by the way, fails to justify his grade.

Dude's been needing to drop the letter grade thing for a while - and now that he's doing nothing but A+ to B+ it's even more absurd. It's established they're all recommended, so let us figure out just how worth our while they sound.

relistening to this song for a sec -- goddamn i never noticed how annoying those windchimes are, that's almost literally the kind of useless bells & whistles on this album's production that i think don't really add anything of value to the songs

yeah when i tried to read Xgau's new thing i was like "i know you have higher standards than this, stop pretending all this stuff is an A"

you have to realize that this is an irresolvable debate that no one can really win, right? you're not wrong to say what you've said, but nor is anyone else wrong to say otherwise. it's entirely a matter of perceptions and tastes, as kanye is neither inventing an entirely new kind of music nor literally stealing quotes from his own past. the case can be made badly or well, but everyone here's done a decent job of fleshing out their arguments (to say the least). that has to be enough.

― phish in your sleazebag (contenderizer), Tuesday, November 30, 2010 9:48 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

only to the extent that any argument is? some arguments can be more compelling than others & i think its established that rehash is, at the very least, a reductive description of what detractors like somedude actually think about the record

i think its established that rehash is, at the very least, a reductive description of what detractors like somedude actually think about the record

it's established in your head, which it was before the argument kicked off anyway

maybe he should lie?

xxp

i think all we're saying is "rehash" is more accurate and appropriate as a reductive summary of the record than "prog" or "ambitious" or "weird"

I'm more shocked at the A for the Roots album.

i think all we're saying is "rehash" is more accurate and appropriate as a reductive summary of the record than "prog" or "ambitious" or "weird"

― Prince SBanBan (some dude), Tuesday, November 30, 2010 9:56 AM (27 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ok, well in that case i 100% disagree.

and don't we know it

and i think you yourself have made the case that lyrically / conceptually, this record is very different from any hes done before, but whatever

and its not like he even made all these beats so im not sure what else there is to rehash

ignore that last post -- it makes it seem like i didnt read al's & its not precisely what i meant -- really not trying to be difficult here

actually, i think i agree with deej re: to rehash or not to rehash. and i don't even like the thing. much. (kinda feel like i need a shower now. yeesh.)

as far as i can tell, the difference in our positions: i think that these songs are shifting into a new approach for kanye by being more autobiographical, darker, more self-involved, solipsistic, requiring you care more about kanye-as-a-person, more ambitious in terms of audience expectations. I think that these factors make for an album that doesnt really sound like anything else in his catalog. but i also think that these make for a pretty empty/uninteresting record, where plenty of interesting ideas (i.e. a kanye x RZA beat) are buried in the conceptual crush. i guess that somedude & lex's position would be that ... these things ive just described are non-factors? that they arent relevent to an evaluation of the album? im not sure, this is whats unclear to me about the 'rehash' position

i agree with most of that i think

and i think you yourself have made the case that lyrically / conceptually, this record is very different from any hes done before, but whatever

― lotta diamonds ... but prolly more display names (deej), Tuesday, November 30, 2010 10:58 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i almost got into this in my post but shied away from it, but i do think lyrically there's not a lot new here either. obviously the relationship/breakup kinda stuff was done to death on 808s but i think he also rapped about that stuff better on early mixtape stuff like "Apologize" and the "Knock Knock" remix, the character-driven storytelling stuff on "All Of The Lights" isn't as well drawn as on College Dropout, Kanye's done the kind of lazy political stuff on "Gorgeous" before right down to the government/AIDS thing, and the grandiose boastful vibe on a lot of the other songs i think worked better on Late Registration and even Graduation.

imo, al should write an actual review taking down the record

a new approach for kanye by being more autobiographical, darker, more self-involved, solipsistic, requiring you care more about kanye-as-a-person

this was the 808s approach, ie not a new approach this time round

and indeed graduation - everything since late registration has been pretty self-absorbed and solipsistic

imo, al should write an actual review taking down the record

― lotta diamonds ... but prolly more display names (deej), Tuesday, November 30, 2010 11:16 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah i don't really have a good outlet for album reviews right now but i'll probably blog something about it soon. i guess anything that isn't "this is magnificent" will be looked at as a takedown but really i just think it's middling. might still be in my year-end list somewhere in the 30s or 40s.

xxp nah 808s was a straight breakup record imo

this was the 808s approach, ie not a new approach this time round

― lex lex lex lex lex on the track BOW (lex pretend), Tuesday, November 30, 2010 10:17 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this album sounds nothing like 808s, either

for whatever it's worth, i don't hear anything terribly groundbreaking in this record, but nor does it sound like a simple rehash of kanye's past glories (or anyone else's for that matter). it's a more in line with his core sound and traditional hip hop than 808s, obviously, and almost everything here could be said to have a vague precedent somewhere, but having a precedent hardly equals "rehash". have yet to hear a good justification for that kind of outright dismissal. even al's track-by-track takedown only connects superficial dots in a way that has nothing to do with what makes pop recombination seem striking or novel to us, even when the component parts are familiar. they almost always are, after all.

it's much easier to justify the argument that MBDTF is an ugly, ill formed, overburdened mess. say it's douchey and oppressive, that it lacks real hits and staggers under the weight of its own 24-karat self-importance. i'd agree with that, and i like the record a lot. but putting the ridiculous "prog" debate aside, it seems absurd to argue that this isn't an ambitious record. not just its strengths but its faults are the product of its overwhelming and relentlessly driven ambition. kanye's trying his damndest to make an album for the ages, an album that can crush the goddam world, once and for all. he's drawing influence from everywhere and everyone, piling on the jewels and the worms, the strings and harmonies, making everything as endlessly glittery, dark and plush as possible. that's ambitious whether or not you think he succeeds.

otm

i just drew a pony

this doesnt sound more ambitious than flockaveli but kanye wished it was crazy ambitious

aside from the whole prog debate...i wanted to say something about kanye as producer, like how the record SOUNDS is pretty flawed to me...

obv i don't think this is *prog* but it's certainly going for grandeur.

this direction to me is pretty much cut off at the knees by the sonic quality of the mixes...it sounds very muddy and thin to me...this should sound LARGE and it doesn't (obviously not everything sounds as butchered sonically as "Gorgeous" but a lot of songs that seem to be going for lush like "Dark Fantasy" or "Lost in the World" don't sound big or impressive to me)...

the mixes are very flat sounding, and i don't think this is a mastering problem...i checked out the dude that mastered it and he's done tons of stuff forever, like even classical or like a carole king record from the early 00s, so i doubt he's a big over compression villain.

i think kanye could learn from Dr. Dre here...Dre's classic era records like both Chronics sound HUGE and GRAND...

part of me wonders if this is due to Dre's background, he came up recording for a long time from the early 80s onward, learning on tape and small studios then gradually building up from there...Kanye is a lot younger and is probably more of just a beat-maker, I'm not sure he understands signal chains and engineering like Dre does...

basically this record should expensive and it still sounds cheap to me.

i wouldn't say the album isn't ambitious at all, just that that shouldn't be considered the album's defining characteristic since Kanye's albums have been ambitious since day 1

it seems absurd to argue that this isn't an ambitious record

but when you break it down that ambition seems hollow or inflated. is this an ambitious (or more ambitious for kanye) record musically? i'd like to see people demonstrating how if so.

m@tt otm. i think Kanye just likes certain drum/synth sounds that come off as slight or tinny or thin to the average listener, and maybe to some degree he still doesn't realize there are things that sound AMAZING and HUGE on expensive studio monitors that don't translate to the average person's home or car stereo

why does this have so many posts

ask deej

one for every guest on "all of the lights"

but who is the elly jackson of the thread and who is the fergie

i'm the fergie of every thread

sh@kedown good point but i think you're overstating Dre's production skills/interests a bit. a better example of 'expensive-sounding but still accessible' hip-hop might be 'Stankonia' rather than 'Chronic 2001'. 'Stankonia' probably also more ambitious generally, for that matter.

srs this record would be dope as fuck if it could have just been made without kanye and friends

yeah stankonia sounds great...aquemini even better.

yeah i don't know a ton about dre, though i recall reading that he was one of the first in hip hop to start demanding really good mastering (like basically he wanted the mastering budget they would've given like bruce springsteen -- in the days when mastering wasn't often the enemy of sound)

he could've just asked for his own orchestra idk

Stankonia - now there's a hip hop record which sounds immense and ambitious but not oppressive.

just listened to it again. i don't get the complaints about the sound of the record. coming through my speakers, anyway, it sounds great. rich and deep in some places, tinny and sharp in others, all with seeming intentionality. "gorgeous" is a good example of this, with the vocals scraped down and pushed forward on the verses, like the guitar, seeming to come at you from cheap speakers, a way of evoking the past (motown soul and psychedelic rock), desperation and cheapness/poverty. on the other hand, the beats, chorus vocals and keys/strings are super thick and lush, floating darkly behind kanye's voice and that weedy guitar. and it's not like my system is high end or anything.

i wouldn't say the album isn't ambitious at all, just that that shouldn't be considered the album's defining characteristic since Kanye's albums have been ambitious since day 1

― Prince SBanBan (some dude), Tuesday, November 30, 2010 8:43 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

i'd agree, but the ambition here becomes overwhelming, corrupted, a dizzying hall of mirrors. it's like kanye has turned into a tiny little device whose only function is the transportation of an ego. the album both embodies and represents this, ambition metastasizing out of control like tetsuo at the end of akira. in that, i'm okay with considering it the album's defining characteristic.

obviously they're all tied up together but i'd sum this album up in a word like "hubris" or "ego" more than "ambition"