Kanye West - Dark Twisted Fantasy

i like it. and i don't suppose it will be everywhere here. this can't be the first single, right? this just screams album track like barry bonds etc. were

he tends to drop a SERIOUS RAP SONG before the big pop hit but still push it pretty hard w/ a video and everything ("Diamonds," "Can't Tell Me Nothing" etc.), i imagine that's the case here too.

what's up with his voice on this, it's kinda drake-y

this is pretty cool -- his rapping is mixed a bit too low i think, but the beat is kinda epic if a little messy

does feel a bit long tho yeah

is anyone gonna talk about the KING CRIMSON sample???? that took me by surprise

Saw it mentioned here and there. Nice touch!

He kind of gets lost in this beat, no?

Yeah, you got to it before I did, J0rdan. His vocals are mixed quite low... weird, 'Ye's never had that problem before.

Is he actually dissing SNL?

Fuck SNL and the whole cast
Tell 'em Yeezy said they could kiss my whole ass
More specifically they could kiss my asshole
I’m an asshole?
You niggas got joooooookes!

Is the last line actually saying he's NOT dissing them? I'm confused.

i guess they did a few jokes about him after the Taylor Swift thing but they were like 1% of the people that made fun of him after that, pretty weird even for him to be all YEAH EVEN YOU ABBY ELLIOTT

kanye in being unnecessarily butthurt shocker

Yeah, I don't get it for the sole reason he went on SNL and poked fun at HIMSELF... I thought he was more self-aware than that... and like, he is pretty introspective on this track (I particularly like ""They say I was the abomination of Obama's nation/ Well, that's a pretty bad way to start the conversation" couplet). It just seems backwards for him. Like a poorer version of "Can't Tell Me Nothing," topically.

i think that line is awful -- the #1 example on this song of kanye's extreme slide towards trying to be tooooooo clever

I like it mostly for the fact he's poking fun at himself with the second line, not for the too-clever wordplay of the first, which I still kind of like.

how is he poking fun at himself? it just seems like a whatever way to resolve the couplet.

Well, I interpret that line as Kanye saying he acknowledges his dumb-ass behavior has become the focus of people's discussion about him, it clouds anything else he's trying to do, and that's definitely a pretty bad way to start ANY conversation, in the sense that people's perception of him is already clouded into thinking he's an asshole, etc etc. He knows this, is what the line's saying to me.

Also -- I'm not saying Kanye ISN'T an asshole.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/05/why_is_kanye_mad_at_snlem.html

when you think about it kanye got off light for only 3 bits about him (one inevitable Update piece, and 2 when they had hosts that all but HAD to say something about it)

http://images.nymag.com/images/2/daily/2009/10/20091013_pastelle_250x375.jpg

btw this thread may become my rolling 'pictures of kanye looking sad in brightly colored clothing' blog

haha he namedrops austin powers in "power"

is austin powers ready for a critical reevaluation?

at what point in the last ten years have rappers not been referencing austin powers?

austin powers thing was totally rolling my damn eyes

lol

king crimson, austin powers what a crazy post-modern musical landscape we have here

this is totally boring

First Austin Powers movie is a classic.

yeah this isn't good

btw this thread may become my rolling 'pictures of kanye looking sad in brightly colored clothing' blog

Here's my contribution:

http://www.hecklerspray.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/kanye-297x300.jpg

nah the color really needs to pop

http://assets.nydailynews.com/img/2009/10/17/alg_singer_kanye-west.jpg

??

lol

HOLY HELL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFU9nOD7NQc

HOLY zzzzzzzz

http://www.layoutlocator.com/graphics/dldimg/53daf210b9eb64b7e5f2ceafe05f8499_haters_keep_on_hatin-6777.jpg

Great reply! xp

This feels like a step backwards after 808s and Heartbreak. If the drums had been a straight-up D&B beat rather than a watered-down homage, it would have been a stronger song IMO.

oof so if, say, like me, you were a person that thought 808s sucked and was a huge step back already, you should steer clear of this i guess

I don't feel like its a step back, just sort of a lateral move really. It isn't better than 85% of 808s but tbh, so much better than I was anticipating this single to be. I'm really thankful that its NOT straight up D&B, that would be horrible. I do have to admit that I really love the sample, which may be coloring my opinion of the rest of the song.

<3 kanye <3

It's a bunch of bombast with no real anchor, basically. I might grow to like it but there's nothing about the song that makes it stand out or tries to earworm you, completely unlike the stronger 808s songs ("Love Lockdown", "Paranoid", "Welcome To Heartbreak")

I don't think "Power" is amazing but I like the chanting and the King Crimson sample and I thought 808s was kind of a snooze so I'm glad it doesn't sound like that

808s was super navel-gazing; if you're not predisposed towards that, it's a much harder sell.

Fortunately I'm a big dopey goth so it was kind of like Kanye was pandering to me with that album.

If he continues with the prog samples, he'll certainly be pandering to me!

If I had a problem with navel-gazing, I would not post "<3 kanye <3"

My problem with 808s was more the boring autotune singing and the lack of rapping and fun. I did like "Love Lockdown" and maybe one or two other tunes, and I appreciated that he was trying something a little different/unexpected.

IMO there's a difference between being all into yourself (aka Kanye throughout the entirety of his career) and being a big navel-gazer (aka 808s; super insular, not very expressive or expansive, way more interested in entertaining yourself than other people). I thought that Kanye's self-obsession and the really unflattering picture it painted of him was a really involving listen, one that was much deeper than probably even he realized; like, I think he knew he was walking an unpleasant road but I don't think he intended the process of exorcising his relationship demons to be that harsh on the listener's image of him.

I don't know, I just really, really loved that album. Except for "Pinocchio Story", that was some bullshit.

wait, what does this song have to do with drum'n'bass (and/or Dave & Buster's)?

i'm really just tired of dude doing clunky 'aggressive' songs that sound like "2 Words"

It doesn't; it just has a busy, active drumbeat and I would have liked it more if it was full-on sped-up Amen breaks.

oh ok. they will bang this shit out at Dave & Buster's though i bet

i thought that was a pretty great performance, at least for a few minutes -- i don't have massive hopes for this album or anything, considering how kanye has rapped in the past year or year and a half and considering some of the clunkers on "power" itself == but i am glad that he's back

idk he was like, hopping around a mic stand on top of a paper mache volcano in front of an Imax movie about the Himalayas, what's so great about it?

you pretty much just answered your own question there

it's his All That You Can't Leave Behind, the least adventurous album in the catalog but crowd-pleasing in its synthesis of the previous albums

listening to this for the first time in a long time - the pusha t and jay-z verses are so out of place.

I haven't listened to this for a long time. Several drinks into my Saturday night and it's sounding pretty good!

It's "album of the decade" reputation has become a little tiring but it is indeed a great record!

Although there were a couple tracks I just didn't remember like "Devil In A New Dress", that don't seem to do much more than take up space.

“Devil In A New Dress”, really. I’d always thought that one had a pretty unimpeachable reputation among Kanye fans.

IDK, it might. I had completely forgotten about it.

This one gets all the accolades as his best album but graduation and late registration have the best songs.

oh yeah this album

the ranking kanye albums meme has made me instinctively tired just thinking about comparing them

also alfred otm

10 years ago Kanye interrupted Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMA awards. Since then we’ve known that as much of a foolish and rude way to express it, he was right, that Beyonce video is an all time best. The American tabloid vultures are the real monsters regarding this event, it’s bullshit how overblown they fueled the outrage against Kanye. However, it led to Kanye creating what is considered his magnum opus and one of the best albums this decade.

lol

Cool anecdotes of Rick Ross working with Kanye on this record :

https://www.thefader.com/2019/09/11/rick-ross-on-recording-devil-in-a-new-dress-the-best-verse-of-his-career/amp

There’s also this “making of” video of this album on youtube which is pretty cool and and I recommend giving it a watch:

https://youtu.be/6t0nipO6Rcw

I mean considered because I don’t think it’s one of the best albums this decade, I don’t even think it’s his best album, but it’s not a wild guess that it will come on top as a consensus top 3 album of the decade when the EOD lists starts pouring in.

i'm just glad that it seems like Kendrick will probably beat it out for #1 when it would have been the favourite for most of the decade

it won't even make the top 30

are we talking ILM EOD top 30? Cuz yeah I don't think it will make the cut either.

it's certainly not going to here and never would have, but i mean everywhere else

oh yeah this album

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, April 22, 2018

I mean it did just come in at third or something in that list from the guardian for the best records of the 21st century. It's very canonized, if not on ILX

gonna go out on a limb here and guess that yeezus will do somewhat well in any decade poll that ILX holds though.

Sometimes I think about listening to this but it feels exhausting

It's not even a top 3 Kanye album

it's a really frustrating listens because there are moments of brilliance but half the tracks drag on way longer than there's any reason for them to because no one was around to tell kanye "no". like off the top of my head, cut a verses from "gorgeous", "so appalled" and "hell of a life", edit down "runaway" significantly, and cut the chris rock sketch on "blame game" and then maybe there's a pretty good album?

there's also it having the worst mastering job of any album ever

Yes! For the ridiculous amount of people that worked on this record the mastering is pretty shoddy. It also most definitely mistakes ambition and progressive art with 5+ minute songs and crammed features. I don't care how many people praise it as a genius song, Runaway is just an ok song in heavy need of an edit, those last two minutes are honestly so fucking stupid, the ideas and hook in there are worth 4 minutes at most. The only track that deserves its length and excessive features is Monster.

The more I think about it the more this record feels like it only felt important in context and that context makes the whole thing feel way more important than what it really is, it's a self-mythifying record where the process of getting there seems more interesting than what we actually got. I like reading about this album more than the album itself. Good thing Kendrick took its crown since he actually has the ambitious albums to earn the GOAT accolades that GKMC and TPAB get.

That self-myth does seem to fool a great deal of people though. Take a walk to the garbage dump that are the music or hiphopheads subreddits and they're particularly defensive with this album, downvotes are had to anyone who dares say a negative thing about it.

It would have been a pretty shit decade if this was truly the best hip hop album in it.

the "runaway" outro is cool at first but then quickly overstays its welcome and it's just not that great of a song

i agree that "monster" is the only track that really justifies its length, and even then jay-z's verse isn't that good but it's at least endearingly goofy so it's a keeper

So appalled
Spaulding
Ball

Head of the class and she just want a swallowship

RIP kl0pper

I like this album tho

when you guys gang up on me i'm always right though

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Thursday, May 23, 2013 2:05 AM bookmarkflaglink

amateur hour. someone hit the fucking gong already on this clown.