You've read the hyperbole: "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" is a maximalist art-rap masterpiece. Kanye West is the new King of Pop — Michael Jackson minus the vitiligo with just as much controversy surrounding his genitalia. "MBDTF" is like being abducted by the most gloriously fashion-forward citizens of Venus.
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However, amid the onslaught of canonizing praise, an old Kanye West memory persists. It's West at the 2008 Grammys, paying tribute to his mother's death with a somber and slightly off-tune version of "Hey Mama." He repeats the line: "Last night I saw you in my dreams/now I can't wait to go to sleep." In the past year, West has spent a lot of time in that subconscious netherworld, and "MBDTF" is a bugfuck meditation on his sexual foibles and tendency toward self-flagellation, full of fame-mongering and flaccid rhymes.
His self-obsession pervades the album and circumvents any other creeping themes; "MBDTF" is a roiling inner monologue, with West picking off individual flower petals as he cycles through "They love me, they love me not." West didn't come out of all those dreams and nightmares unscathed, but the threads of confusion, fear and uncertainty somehow get submerged beneath exhausting bravado. This is no seismic sonic reinvention: West is working well within the context of his personal canon. Though it improves remarkably when heard uninterrupted, there is no otherworldly mystique shrouding "MBDTF," and we're just lucky West injects enough interesting ideas to make even the clunkers palatable.
For much of "MBDTF" West just sounds lazy, lyrics barely progressing beyond conscious exposure and puns that elicit cringes over chuckles (see "Sex is on fire/I'm the King of Leon/a Lewis" in album opener "Dark Fantasy"). His beats are densely layered and militant in their diversity, with multiple strata of backup vocals and various triggered accents and flourishes. Still, West slaps you over the head with his intent and doesn't seem to trust his audience to fill in any blanks.
For the first time in his recorded music career, his first line on the album is rapped acappella, forcing you to reckon with his return one-on-one. Music also disappears to highlight praise of Prada in "So Appalled," and a gap in the music for a shout-out to Michael Jackson in "All of the Lights" sounds strikingly familiar to Jay-Z pointing skyward at Biggie in his own "Hard Knock Life." Trying to cite individual lyrics to get a sense of the album would be inefficient because they all revolve around West's self-obsession. He's the living embodiment of Veruca Salt, the paragon of instant gratification, the petulant child who refuses to believe that the world does not, in fact, revolve around him.
Such a singular thematic focus is the most frustrating aspect of "MBDTF," particularly because many have heralded the lyrics as opening up a half-vindictive, half-vulnerable side of Kanye West heretofore unseen. In fact, West's lyrics aren't any more personal or honest than before. It's just that his public antics have lent a decidedly literal atmosphere to the whole affair, draining "MBDTF" of more interesting subtext. West's public embarrassments being used as creative fodder for his songs doesn't make them any more poignant, just easier to take at face value. West actually did the album a disservice by exacerbating the availability of his public persona to public interpretation, bringing out hordes of amateur psychoanalysts and sample-humping hacks. Notoriety hasn't changed the man, it just made him publicly uglier.
West's lackadaisical, product-pushing flow seems especially apathetic in light of the hunger of his supporting players. "All of the Lights" manages to not be a Rolodex-flaunting clusterfuck despite the extensive guest list, featuring bombastic brass, a jaunty Elton John piano break and a deathless hook sung by Rihanna. The battling voices are like a babble barely audible underneath a king's trumpet fanfare, the kind of thing heard just before the guards pour boiling oil on an approaching enemy. Fergie sputters through a genuinely moving non-verse, referencing drug problems and voices in her head spinning out of control. The singalong chorus sounds breathing and alive, as opposed to the billowing, faux-gospel chipmunks sighing through "Dark Fantasy."
West also enlists Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, slathering auto-tune over "Lost In The World" as the song transforms from disembodied voices moaning in the crowd to overbearing dominance. It's a funhouse of mirrors and sky-splitting congo drums, with a blink-and-you'll-miss-it verse from West tying together lyrical threads from the album's best songs with the line, "run from the lights/run for your life/down for the night." There is a scary finality to the robo-funk lyric "Whole! Life!" growling at the climax, a robotic fear of resolution. The closer continues West and Gil Scott-Heron's mutual back-scratching, but you'll have to decide for yourself how much a creatively functioning crack addict can be trusted to provide lucid social commentary.
Not everyone sounds this good warped: Kid Cudi is typically woozy on "Gorgeous," surrounded by muffled drips and focused guitar stabs. Nicki Minaj does engine-backfiring transitions into her guttural lower register on "Monster" that are exhilarating on first listen but become progressively more annoying. "Monster" as a whole shoots for intimidation but sounds gimmicky. It also takes the crown for most fellatio references in an album already obsessed with head.
"So Appalled" features a mind-numbing squeak that sounds like a dog toy being stepped on over and over again, and "Blame Game" contains what sounds like a half-assed attempt at slam poetry. Both are indicative of "MBDTF's" major shortcomings: The orchestrations sound like superfluous embellishments, and West plain doesn't sound present. His verses are short and just generically revealing enough to be meaningless.
Most songs have unnecessarily long outros where West might have previously included self-indulgent skits, but even in the slowest parts there is an unavoidable freneticism, blowing out instrumental codas to sublime effect. In "We Major" off of "Late Registration," West slips back into the track six minutes in, asking rhetorically, "Can I talk my shit again?" Here, in "Runaway," he can't even talk; it's Major 'Ye to Ground Control, moaning wordlessly while an incessant "Look atchya" scratches and shifts across the stereo fields. His voice is subhuman, muzzled, unintelligible — possibly humbled but far too distant to tell. He's a crying future-baby lost in space, breathing heavily and longing for some kind of humanity.
Much has been made of West's warbly technologic subversion of King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man," but that fixation loses sight of the burning rainforest campfire chants that course through "Power." Like his 2007 number one single, "Stronger," the song comes bearing revolutionary portent. Both are the third track on their respective albums, the listener given a brief period of lull time before machines rebel and blow up the speakers with fire and brimstone. "Power" is a vicious air siren to Armageddon, with spindly guitars flitting in and out of coherency. Even the endless electro scats aren't total trash.
It's difficult to tell whether the song is conciliatory or aspirational; the bravado of West's delivery surely doesn't match the severe lack of power he had when the song was first released. Chintzy synths lead into sparse piano and a chilling lyric about jumping out the window. It's the near-suicide of a man who stands on the ledge, unable to decide whether he really is Superman or not.
The release of the original cover for the "Power" single, depicting a sword driven deep into West's crowned head, was infinitely more interesting and conversation-stimulating than the laughable faux-controversy West made out of the cover showcasing his crudely drawn nude body straddled by an, ahem, "phoenix." The slow and largely West-controlled trickle of information before release arguably hurt West even as it perpetuated the media fervor for "MBDTF." The album leaking two weeks ahead of schedule had negligible commercial consequences, but it was an irrevocable blow to the album as an event — which was likely West's higher aspiration as he aims for the pop throne.
Likewise, the free Good Friday tracks series stifled the first-listen shock that this sporadically transcendent and inevitably divisive album deserved. Trills and verses have been variously tweaked, yes. But the experience of a song like "Power" will never match that first listen six months ago, when one of the greatest rappers alive suddenly returned snorting fire. That element of surprise and unpredictability has come to define West, but "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" doesn't offer enough unknown thrills or revelatory moments to elevate it from extremely good to indisputably classic.
Correction: The author attributed a Michael Jackson reference to the song "Monster," but it is actually found in "All of the Lights." WSN regrets the error.
