Kanye West - Dark Twisted Fantasy

"all of the lights" should be a cool song, but it's just not

great criticism

but talking about why the album is "important" = booooooring

whereas talking about why the album is interesting (and the length of this thread validates that claim better than anything else imo) = fascinating

who is "denying its importance"?

― some dude, Wednesday, December 15, 2010 10:19 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it seems like a lot of your criticisms are trying to shrink perceptions of the scope of the record -- i mean wouldnt that describe the entire exchange about 'retreads' fit in here? also your contention that if the record was called 'good ass job' w/ the mascot cover it would be treated totally differently (which in this context is like, if the record was a different record, it would be treated diff -- duh!)

is lil' b doing satire or is he just stoned out of his gourd and saying whatever silly shit plops out of his brain?

i meant the exact same audio CD in a diff't sleeve

that sets (a very narrowly-conceived notion of) artistic 'originality' over and against conventionality/craft, with the latter not seen as basically empty, neutral, and valueless

I don't think anyone has ever looked at Kanye for 'originality' and not 'craft'. All his best are stolen* and he has confessed them as such. And I don't see the 'angry' aspect of this record. Or if it is there, is poorly put across. Mainly I hear petulance. Anger is the 'George Bush doesn't care about black people' speech, on point, direct but personal. This is faceless, nameless, throwing any old toys out the pram. He has a lot to potentially talk about but instead never goes into more detail than 'choke a south park writer with a fish stick' (which itself shows he didn't get the joke).

*Says he stole the drums from XXplosive for his first big production and lol daft punk samples after Touch It came out, didn't come up with the chipmunk soul thing, lol been way late on c&s and then auto-tune etc.

hella xposts

i don't get the "important" thing not because of how i personally feel about the record but because i've genuinely not heard 1 person talk about it or 1 song on the radio or tv.

(Compared to his last 4 which were huge and everywhere and talked about by everyone)

great criticism

― patti ayonnaise (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, December 15, 2010 11:26 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol

xp well that can't be because of the record's alleged badness, looking at the amount of shite in the charts. it's easier for the uk industry/media to ignore him tho.

maybe that's cause it's not really a pop album?

xps

yeah... all i've really been saying is that every previous Kanye album has been pretty 'important' by most yardsticks, and the only one that this exceeds the others in is like Rolling Stone finally being comfortable giving him 5 stars, so why even talk about 'importance'? Carter III is an example of an album i don't perticularly like but is undeniably 'important' (in terms of huge sales, trend setting, taking the artist to a higher level of stardom). MBDTF by comparison feels more like an established superstar's business as usual album dressed up as something more unique and unprecedented than it really is -- like only marginally more important than The Blueprint 3 or the last couple Eminem albums.

plus sales wise here the album hasn't done significantly worse than 808s by the look of things (it's dropping down week by week like 808s did but it might not hang around the lower end of the album charts like 808s did given the situation with the singles).

in 20 years when someone like VH1 is doing an overview of Kanye's career, i feel like there'll be a whole segment about 808s and why it was a big deal and his mom dying and the Taylor thing, and then there'll be like a 30 second montage of "and then he released My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" and they'll quickly move onto the next actual interesting and major event in his life/career.

oh come on, that's not going to happen

i meant the exact same audio CD in a diff't sleeve

― some dude, Wednesday, December 15, 2010 10:28 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah but i mean i think this approach informed both how he made that cd & how the audience received it in kind of an undeniable way so its sorta like ... well yeah if it was different itd be different

yeah... all i've really been saying is that every previous Kanye album has been pretty 'important' by most yardsticks, and the only one that this exceeds the others in is like Rolling Stone finally being comfortable giving him 5 stars, so why even talk about 'importance'? Carter III is an example of an album i don't perticularly like but is undeniably 'important' (in terms of huge sales, trend setting, taking the artist to a higher level of stardom). MBDTF by comparison feels more like an established superstar's business as usual album dressed up as something more unique and unprecedented than it really is -- like only marginally more important than The Blueprint 3 or the last couple Eminem albums.

― some dude, Wednesday, December 15, 2010 10:36 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ha i dont think carter iii is very important at all -- it was just a culmination of a bunch of stuff hed already done w/ some blueprint knockoff beats! a milli was an important single, certainly

not 'very important at all' i an overstatement but i mean relative to this record even -- it was less of a fresh direction in wayne's catalog & sounded much like a generic major label rap record that happened to be by lil wayne & feature a couple killer singles

this def doesnt sound like other things that way

what song on this album is more important than "A Milli"? even "Lollipop" is arguably more trend-setting/ahead of the curve as far as autotuned rappers than 808s.

some dude, The Wall was not that stylistically different from other Pink Floyd albums, but its concepts and intentions were different, which is why it's "important." Even if you think this album is like Dropout-thru-808s redux, it's the idea that Kanye is thinking in bigger, bolder, grander strokes. What makes it a critical sensation is that he pulls most (but not all) of them off

those two singles are trendsetting / important, i agree

oh come on, that's not going to happen

― "Kiss Players♥" (DJP), Wednesday, December 15, 2010 11:42 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

that's really how i see it going down, though! maybe you see it differently, i'm open to that. but i would see a career overview as having a whole long piece about how College Dropout was a classic and a cultural touchstone, and MBDTF kind of being in the "and his streak of acclaimed hit albums continued" mid-section.

i dunno sd, i think most ppl see this as 'kanye finally released his classic'

theyre wrong of course but thats sadly not how these things work

obv the 'test of time' is bullshit im just sayin

looking forward to being quoted in this thread in 2030

just wishful thinking on yr part, dude.

xps

some dude, The Wall was not that stylistically different from other Pink Floyd albums, but its concepts and intentions were different, which is why it's "important." Even if you think this album is like Dropout-thru-808s redux, it's the idea that Kanye is thinking in bigger, bolder, grander strokes. What makes it a critical sensation is that he pulls most (but not all) of them off

This feels very OTM.

that's really how i see it going down, though! maybe you see it differently, i'm open to that. but i would see a career overview as having a whole long piece about how College Dropout was a classic and a cultural touchstone, and MBDTF kind of being in the "and his streak of acclaimed hit albums continued" mid-section.

Not that I'm psychic, but basically I see future discourse around this album as a build-up of the Taylor Swift debacle and Kanye's wild and wacky Twitter experiences. The critical acclaim alone accorded to this album means that future critics are going to invent things to say about it because, by a cursory glance of all of these year-end lists, it has been deemed IMPORTANT.

Basically, either people are going to be saying "this is the album where Kanye lost his mind and critics went apeshit" or there will be an "OMG what were they thinking, this is sooooooooo '00s/'10s (delete as applicable depending on distance from now)" backlash; no one is going to be all "oh well this existed" and not comment further.

lso your contention that if the record was called 'good ass job' w/ the mascot cover it would be treated totally differently

i contended this too! i demand half credit

i dunno sd, i think most ppl see this as 'kanye finally released his classic'

theyre wrong of course but thats sadly not how these things work

obv the 'test of time' is bullshit im just sayin

― *plop*ism rules (deej), Wednesday, December 15, 2010 11:54 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

MOST, really? like if you polled any group of people at all, your choice of demographic or whatever, you think more than half would put this album over Dropout?

are you just ignoring all of the critical discourse around this album because you don't like it

it's like claiming Coldplay wasn't huge in the past decade because they are boring and they suck

that's really how i see it going down, though! maybe you see it differently, i'm open to that. but i would see a career overview as having a whole long piece about how College Dropout was a classic and a cultural touchstone, and MBDTF kind of being in the "and his streak of acclaimed hit albums continued" mid-section.

Not that I'm psychic, but basically I see future discourse around this album as a build-up of the Taylor Swift debacle and Kanye's wild and wacky Twitter experiences. The critical acclaim alone accorded to this album means that future critics are going to invent things to say about it because, by a cursory glance of all of these year-end lists, it has been deemed IMPORTANT.

Basically, either people are going to be saying "this is the album where Kanye lost his mind and critics went apeshit" or there will be an "OMG what were they thinking, this is sooooooooo '00s/'10s (delete as applicable depending on distance from now)" backlash; no one is going to be all "oh well this existed" and not comment further.

― "Kiss Players♥" (DJP), Wednesday, December 15, 2010 11:55 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah but i mean...i'm sure Fulfillingness' First Finale seemed important at the time, but if someone does a big overview of Stevie's career now, it kind of gets glossed over as the album between Innervisions and Songs In The Key of Life...not that i know what Kanye will do next or if it will be a bigger deal, but it feels like a "this is the best thing we've got right now" kind of hype rather than this is definitely this artist's biggest permanent contribution to the canon.

I'd also like to add that Pink Floyd's career has Dark Side of The Moon AND The Wall, and it's really reductive to have this argument over which Kanye album is ultimately THE classic, when I think that College Dropout and MBDTF are both going to be regarded as classics in different circles for different reasons

i'm not ignoring all the critical discourse around the album. but lots of records get perfect ratings from Rolling Stone or The Source or Pitchfork and don't seem like such a big deal later (although obviously usually not all 3 at once).

yeah obviously Kanye has multiple big deal records. i'm just saying this album definitely won't have a place in history as big as Dropout, and it still might face some serious competition for 2nd or 3rd most significant album in his career.

i'm not ignoring all the critical discourse around the album. but lots of records get perfect ratings from Rolling Stone or The Source or Pitchfork and don't seem like such a big deal later (although obviously usually not all 3 at once).

that's kind of a critical detail you are glossing over, though

The Source have given two perfect ratings in five years, Pitchfork even less.

maybe critical praise suffers from inflation like box office receipts, and MBDTF is just the Avatar that SEEMS momentarily bigger than E.T. or whatever.

Like the only want MBDTF is going to get "lost to the sands of time" is if he totally tops himself next time out with something bolder, grander, bigger, proggier—and its ALSO a huge critical success. Whether that will happen is anyone's guess. If he drops the ball or makes 909s and Heartbreak then, yeah, we're gonna be hearing about this album for a long time.

It kind of has that early-part-of-the-decade masterwork vibe like London Calling or Kid A where it's gonna sit around for 9 years and fester until crits just sort of agree its the best of the decade.

Unless he tops himself

i could def see this ending up getting talked about as the equiv of oasis's be here now

some dude, why can't you accept that Kanye might have two classic records?

I can see this dropping out of the discourse as just his 'lol what was everyone thinking' record like be here now. exactly like be here now actually.

kanye has two classic records: dropout and lr

^^

lol Whiney, do you mean "does something better" or "kills himself"

xp: but the thing is, becoming a "what was everyone thinking" album KEEPS IT IN THE DISCOURSE

like when LR dropped i was like "i feel boring putting this at #1 again but he deserves it so OK". i'm not changing my tune now just because i want my year-end list to be more unpredictable.

meddle > dark side > the wall

(i think this is the second time i've mentioned meddle in this thread which is probably significant in some way i can't fully understand)

i also kind of feel it's silly to be proclaiming anything about an album's ~importance~ or how it's going to be seen 20 years hence, when we're not even a month removed from its release yet

yeah i don't think this is even truly divisive enough to be a "what was everyone thinking" album, considering that this thread seems like one of the only places on the internet where people are really arguing passionately about the pros and cons of this album. like i said, 808s might have a bigger role in the narrative of his career just by being more overtly divisive.

lex i'm sorry i brought up the "in 20 years" thing but i meant it more in a narrative sense than in a "you'll all agree with me IN THE FUTURE" kind of argument