my beautiful dark twisted fantasy tracklist

And when West raps “Me found bravery in my bravado”, it isn't just mindless boasting it's a defense mechanism against what he perceives as a media conspiracy. The thirteen songs on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy usually center around either race, class, or love, but all of them have an aura of melancholy about them. But now, having hit rock bottom after one too many public displays of self-affection, he’s looking at himself in a new light, and it isn’t always pretty - on one of the five covers created for this album, West’s visage is cracked in a grotesque and vaguely cubist manner on another, a sword is sticking straight out of his decapitated head. Graduation and 808s & Heartbreak, released at the height of West’s stardom, were ultimately empty records, what with the former’s shallow musings on fame and the latter’s ethically questionable fixation on an ex-girlfriend. It would be a stretch to call the man who said on live television that 'George Bush doesn't like black people' self-aware, but West understands his position as something of a social pariah, and, strangely enough, he seems to thrive in it. Besides, he's nothing if not knowing 'Fuck SNL and the whole cast/tell 'em Yeezy said they can kiss my whole ass/more specifically they can kiss my asshole/I'm an asshole,' he raps on 'Power'. Sure, he's a megalomaniac, but at least he’s an earnest one. It's what makes West's rampant egotism different. He approaches his craft the way an art student would: with self-importance, overzealousness, and earnestness.Įarnestness. In the case of the former, West wanted to make something “like a Stanley Kubrick film,” with “Felliniesque imagery” in the case of the latter, West insisted that the work be considered a “moving painting,” enlisting artist Marco Brambilla to create aesthetically stunning and historically nonsensical imagery that portrayed the star as some sort of mystical and vaguely heroic figure. Witness the thirty-odd-minute short film he created for “Runaway”, or the brief video released in promotion of “Power”. “Commercial art!!! It just came to me! That’s what I make!” Never mind that art meant for public consumption is hardly a new concept Yeezy wants so badly to be an artiste.

No, he wants to be taken more seriously than that just take one look at his Twitter feed. The lyric is delivered in a soaringly theatrical, almost operatic manner, setting the tone for this unapologetically ambitious record: from that moment on, it's clear that West is no longer content with simply being one of the biggest pop superstars of our generation.

So begins My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West's fifth studio album. Review Summary: “The same people that tried to blackball me forgot about two things: my black balls.”

My beautiful dark twisted fantasy tracklist