Kanye West - Dark Twisted Fantasy

i'm not saying the mountain thing is hard to understand, you just sold it as SUCH a perfect way to look at things and nobody seemed to really get on board with it

the impression im getting is that al wants to will this album to be not-a-big-deal & the historical comparisons make so little sense. was imperial bedroom really a hugely successful pop phenomenon? did it even sell as many copies then as this record did in a worse climate for record sales? this is what i mean by a 'mountain' -- this record is a big deal to a lot of people & is thereby 'important' -- you cant just will it not to be by setting your disappointment with his execution up against that

xposts re: "get laid in the afterlife" —

there's a weird suicide/death theme running through the album — the "standing on the edge" part from "Gorgeous" that I mentioned upthread, the MJ references (right before those last lines from "Lost in the World", he does the mamasay-mamasa-whateverwhatever part from that one song, then says "Lost in this plastic life" which obviously resonates with the figure of Jackson in interesting ways) — maybe Kanye really is a teenager at heart and his beautiful dark twisted fantasy is "I'm gonna die and you'll all be rly sad"

the coda to power too, of course

i'm not saying the mountain thing is hard to understand, you just sold it as SUCH a perfect way to look at things and nobody seemed to really get on board with it

― some dude, Wednesday, December 15, 2010 2:11 PM (40 seconds ago) Bookmark

its certainly a better line of thought than the linear progress narrative most music writing still latches on to. if you have a problem with it then call me out on it instead of being passive aggressive & zingy 200 posts later

xpost ah yeah, knew I was missing something

what was the mountain thing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UO76M2MRCFw

no seward

the impression im getting is that al wants to will this album to be not-a-big-deal & the historical comparisons make so little sense. was imperial bedroom really a hugely successful pop phenomenon? did it even sell as many copies then as this record did in a worse climate for record sales? this is what i mean by a 'mountain' -- this record is a big deal to a lot of people & is thereby 'important' -- you cant just will it not to be by setting your disappointment with his execution up against that

― *plop*ism rules (deej), Wednesday, December 15, 2010 3:11 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i'm sorry you thinking i'm DENYING THE MOUNTAIN. i know it's a big deal! i'm just truly honestly not sure it's that much bigger a deal than Late Registration. if you think that makes me seem stubborn it's ok dude.

acting like the Imperial Bedroom comparison has to make sense on every single level to hold weight is like saying "does this album have a 5 mile high elevation? is it covered in rocks? then it's NOT A MOUNTAIN"

stop denying the mountain

srsly just cut it out, it's right there, being a mountain

i mean it's possible the next decade will suck eggs so bad that this album will skate into the canon as the best album of 2010-2019 -- i just hope it doesn't, i'm rooting for Kanye and humanity in general to aim higher

maybe Kanye really is a teenager at heart and his beautiful dark twisted fantasy is "I'm gonna die and you'll all be rly sad"

Ha ha, yes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8utgCo86lpo

(Apologies if posted this last time deej brought up his mountain analogy.)

Kanye said in a bunch of interviews that he was suicidal in the run-up to releasing this album so that all makes sense.

Also, to go back to the frankly stupid "but 'Runaway' is a celebration!' nonsense, this is the only interview I can find where he really talks about the lyrics to "Runaway":

http://www.accesshollywood.com/kanye-west-talks-runaway-inspiration-and-his-connection-to-the-people_article_38664

Kanye said the cut, which features lyrics like, “Let’s have a toast for the douchebags…” and “I don’t know how I’d manage if you’d up and leave,” is inspired by a lot of things.

“In a way, it’s funny… it’s like… the song sounds like it’s talking about a girl — could also be talking about my relationship with society or my relationship with the fans or anyone who I let down or people who had to defend me that really love me,” he said. “I like leaving songs ambiguous a little bit, where it’s like, it could be about other people, It could be about yourself. It’s funny — it’s like a man’s anthem, but it’s a woman’s anthem. Like, ‘Let’s have a toast with a douchebag!’”

It still feels to me like a fundamental misunderstanding of what Kanye is saying in the song to say that line is celebratory and not sarcastic, especially when combined with some of the things he said in connection with the film:

http://rapradar.com/2010/09/14/kanye-west-explains-runaway-concept/

“I’m color-correcting this film I shot in Prague a couple weeks ago. I want to edit the film on a boat. Where are the good editing boats?” — is called Runaway, and is a 40-minute noir piece based on his new album. “It’s the story of a phoenix fallen to Earth, and I make her my girlfriend, and people discriminate against her and eventually she has to burn herself alive and go back to her world,” he told us. “I’ve been feeling the idea of the phoenix. It’s been in my heart for a while. It’s maybe parallel to my career. I threw a Molotov cocktail on my career last year, in a way, and I had to come back as a better person.”

acting like the Imperial Bedroom comparison has to make sense on every single level to hold weight is like saying "does this album have a 5 mile high elevation? is it covered in rocks? then it's NOT A MOUNTAIN"

― some dude, Wednesday, December 15, 2010 2:16 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no because sales & popularity are directly related to influence?

what the hell is the mountain

HAPPY 4,000th POST!

"this hill is not the same size as this mountain -- ergo they are not comparable"

now we're arguing about whether the album is/will be influential? when did that happen?

stop denying the mountain

― kanellos (gbx), Wednesday, December 15, 2010 2:17 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

when did u start bagging on me all the time

now we're arguing about whether the album is/will be influential? when did that happen?

― some dude, Wednesday, December 15, 2010 2:26 PM (33 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

sorry, 'important' -- same effin deal

the impression im getting is that al wants to will this album to be not-a-big-deal & the historical comparisons make so little sense. was imperial bedroom really a hugely successful pop phenomenon?

kanye isn't competing against elvis costello's sales, but his own. His first three albums all sold about 2-3 million copies, so unless this album takes him to a whole new tier of success - which there's no evidence that it will - MBDTF could easily seem "not-a-big-deal" compared to Dropout and Registration, just as Imperial seems not-a-big-deal critically compared to My Aim is True and This Years Model now.

haha, what? i've disagreed with you in like....three threads in the last month. and the mountain thing is funny, relax

i think that critical canonization is the kind of thing that trickles down at this level, tho -- joe 15 CD-owner will look back on this record as a 'classic'

haha, what? i've disagreed with you in like....three threads in the last month. and the mountain thing is funny, relax

― kanellos (gbx), Wednesday, December 15, 2010 2:28 PM (18 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the mountain thing is funny, yeah, but al is using it as a way of prying at my arguments w/ him in this thread & it gives the impression of a pile-on against my argument instead of simple lols

i mean i straight up asked him if he was just being all lol sparring & he said no

joe 15 CD-owner will look back on this record as a 'classic'

well he only has 15 cds

not saying this is A CONSPIRACY bfore yall start in on the paranoia ish again

all i'm saying is this album's "importance" feels like a foregone conclusion. if someone told you in January that Kanye would have the most acclaimed album of the year it wouldn't be any kind of surprise. why even discuss that as a virtue unto itself?

the arcade fire album had a song called "mountains beyond mountains". or maybe that was just the hook, and the song was called something else. but anyway, it was clearly the best song on the album, which sold decently well, and is thus at least doubly (possibly trebly?) mountainous

i mean joe 15 probably has College Dropout, sure, i'm just not 100% sure this one's on his Xmas list.

i pop into this thread like every hundred posts, at this point i'm not keeping tabs on who is actually arguing with who, or about what

well he only has 15 cds

― da croupier, Wednesday, December 15, 2010 2:29 PM (42 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

kanye is point blank a bigger pop star now than he was when his 2nd lp was released. individual songs arent as popular (although monster aint doing bad) but hes a more known figure now

all i'm saying is this album's "importance" feels like a foregone conclusion. if someone told you in January that Kanye would have the most acclaimed album of the year it wouldn't be any kind of surprise. why even discuss that as a virtue unto itself?

― some dude, Wednesday, December 15, 2010 2:30 PM (58 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dont think its a virtue per se!

lollin @ this thread still goin

ndividual songs arent as popular (although monster aint doing bad) but hes a more known figure now

elvis costello was better known by 1982 than in 1977, sticking around tends to make more people aware of you, but it's not like Lou Reed's New York is more revered than the Velvet Underground's albums.

all i'm saying is this album's "importance" feels like a foregone conclusion. if someone told you in January that Kanye would have the most acclaimed album of the year it wouldn't be any kind of surprise. why even discuss that as a virtue unto itself?

Isn't the recent round of talk about the importance of this album all a direct reaction to you saying "20 years from now, no one will be talking about this album"? How exactly is someone supposed to disagree with that statement without putting some weight on the near-unanimous acclaim this thing is getting?

and just to reaffirm, the only reason I brought up EC was that it was suggested too much of a "critical narrative" was based on this album being Kanye's apex. My point was that plenty of late-in-the-game albums received more immediate praise then the earlier ones that actually wound up in the canon.

man, i go to lunch and we got imperial bedroom and leslie west up in this motherfucker. hell yeah.

Mississippi Queen is funkier than anything on this album btw

i didn't say "20 years from now, no one will be talking about this album", just that i don't think it will be AS talked about as College Dropout or maybe even 808s.

Mississippi Queen is funkier than anything on this album btw

lol, no it isn't

i mean i'm not trying to sweep it under the rug and erase it from history, i just feel like it's worthwhile to put it in the context of his whole career and not just the context of a bunch of magazines hurdling towards the end of 2010 and latching onto the most obvious Black Friday blockbuster as their EOY savior.

(xp) this is, though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGn2V7mgnN4

the most obvious Black Friday blockbuster as their EOY savior

SPIN's #1 should have been "Your favorite Glee cover"

DJP u crazy, there's nothing really funky about this kanye album IMO

get up on sum nasty cowbell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFhM1XZsh6o

mountain song opening bassline is all time tho

actually this bass might be funkier than janes or mountain

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umeZtszNShk

[please forgive the talk of "a critic's job" and "obligation" in the following. it's not mine to say, but i don't know how else to say it...]

the "importance" talk is a red herring. way upthread, there were posters who at least seemed to argue that this album's importance was sufficient in itself to justify its extremely high ratings and unanimously positive critical response. as though you almost had to give kanye those points, whether or not you actually liked or respected the album yourself, simply because the indisputable significance of this dark twisted fantasy could not be denied. (and no, i'm not paraphrasing any specific poster's argument, and i'll be fucked if i'll go digging for source quotes in this monster thread. maybe i'm completely wrong here, but i seem to recall this being the gist of at least a few posts.)

thing is, it's not really critic's job to notice and laud mere importance, especially when the importance in question is of the sort conferred by anticipation, popularity and sales. those things announce and laud themselves. it's certainly a critic's job to point out that which seems important by virtue of its ambition, artistic courage, and consonance with or commentary on the culture at large, but none of these things are necessarily positive traits in isolation. when critics of popular commodities make buyer's-guide-style quality judgments, such as numerical ratings, a key component of their evaluations, they must speak plainly about how good they think the thing in question is: what it does, how it does it, and most crucially, what it does and doesn't get right along the way. the rating should reflect not only the supposed importance of the thing, but also the critic's own personal assessment of its quality, value and aesthetic appeal. that's how i see it, anyway.

i'd say that this critical obligation extends equally to all albums & songs, no matter how objectively important they might seem. if anything, supposedly moment-defining "event albums" deserve more honest and less generous criticism than marginal releases that few will ever hear in the first place. important albums don't automatically deserve glowing reviews and 10.0 ratings, especially if one doesn't actually like them or believe that they're entirely successful relative to their ambitions. it seems to me that those once-in-a-blue-moon superlatives should be reserved, yes, for seemingly important albums, but more specifically for those few important albums that also seem timeless, all but flawless and satisfactorily successful relative to everything they attempt. and even then, only when you really, honestly love the music to death, in every moment, and want to play it over and over and over again until the day you die, or until your spouse "accidentally" breaks/loses/deletes it, or at least for the next six months. otherwise, 9.3, 'A' for effort...