Sure i love Kanye’s newbie, but after some extensive listening, it hits me as too gnomic to be considered the out and out masterpiece it is being hailed at. Great, yes. Kanye’s greatest moment? I dunno. Listen to chris Rock’s repulsive monolgue at the end of “Blame Game”. Sure the sample is lovely, sure the song is OK, but Rock is so horrid I can’t hit next fast enough.
West is a great songwriter but a small man and it comes across. It is like somebody writing the most beautiful music in the world to Mein Kampf. At its most inclusive it is closeted in its own fame.It’s not that this isn’t Ready to Die or It takes A Nation Of Millions or even Hard Knock Life, it is that this isn’t even 808s And heartbreaks.
Everybody wows it as a gamechanger. So was the movie “Transformer”. the technology is miraculous, the kitchen sink sound a dream, but it is like dating a beautiful but really mean model: how long can you ignore her personality?
“Runaway” will last. “Monster” will last. Some others, a couple off the TGIF, will be dancefloors faves. Let’s regroup in 2011 and see what we think.
Metacrtic say it got a 93% favorable rate. Here are some rock mag takes:
“He celebrates his contradictions with such musical flair, it’s a thrilling listen from beginning to end” – Now Magazine
“Six years later, Kanye is undoubtedly the most openly self-aware MC. And the music world should be grateful to have him. I know I am. ” – Pop Matters
“The densely-produced work of a clearly erratic soul.” – Dot
” I see Kanye as nothing short of a hero, and I see virtually no danger of critics praising My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy too much” – Slant
“So far from shunning the spotlight that the firepower of the wattage pointed at him is a full-on supernova.” – The Phoenix
” has lurched to the vanguard of modern mainstream music.” – Prefix Magazine
“Fantasy will stand as an album that dare to push the entire medium of recorded music forward, for better or worse.” – AMerican Songwriter
Wow, really? That reads like somebody who got an advanced copy of the album and has spent a week bragging to his friends and family.
The problem here, the problem with music journalism, is its on your knees, cock in mouth full scale fellating of West when the truth (Grade? An A, 87%) while I touch more nuanced deserves to be told
And my grade may well go down with time. After the first rush is gone, of the extended 21 (I added the TGIF stuff: it’s all of a piece any way), maybe 3, “Runaway”, “Monster” and “The Joy” are masterpieces.