My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
by Kanye West

For me this is a perfect album, 100/100. It was born from a creative, insane genius caught at the perfect time. Everything he made before this built up to it and everything after degraded from this point. Nearly every song stands on its own while still being an incredibly cohesive album. Incredible production, incredible features, incredible (if you like Kanye at all) lyrics.

From Strangel 12/19/2025 00:46 | #312203

I like hip hop when it’s done well. I’m told this is done well, but seriously, if you hold this album up against Illmatic by Nas and other hip hop classics it suffers badly, largely due to its unrelenting narcissism. Illmatic hits at the core of rap ethic. This album just reeks of ego. Sure, he reflects on his vulnerabilities and the pitfalls of fame but it’s all so Ye-focussed it makes it almost intolerable. It’s saved by some solid musical nous and lyrical inventiveness.

I get the hype, however, this album is definitely not the best album of the 10s.

The bleeding in your ears is normal. Do you guys REALLY think this album is better than Animals, Unknown Pleasures, Are You Experienced, Songs in the Key of Life and Red? Seriously now...

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This was the Hip Hop album of its year, 2010, but is not, in my opinion, one of the very best albums of all time. West himself has done better.

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MBDTF perfecly encapsulates the central frustration I have with Kanye West's 2010s output. The orchestral grandiosity of the production and the WINNING hooks are unfortunately cheapened by West's apparent inability to discuss any topic without throwing in several eyeroll-inducing joke bars. Some of these instrumentals are absolutely beautiful, but are instantaneously cheapened by verses that don't take themselves seriously and refuse to be truly vulnerable. The end result of this tonal inconsistency is an album that SOUNDS meaningful, but never settles on a central message. Kanye is at his best when he fully (1) is still in touch with reality and (2) unapologetically embraces vulnerability. Here, he's shaky on both points.

It's the definition of perfection in rap. It's kind of long, but it's perfect.

This is a tale of two halves for me with the first 6 songs being far superior to the last 7 tracks, minus the obvious exception of Runaway. Right at the beginning Kanye is giving us hit after hit making it easy to mistake the start of this album for a greatest hits album. We open on Dark Fantasy which is one of my all time favourite Kanye songs with it introducing us to the style brilliantly. This opener just has this irresistible feel to it for me with it making me want to come back to this album just to experience it again. We also get POWER and All Of The Lights whose quality can't be denied when you listen to them. These are two of his greatest ever songs and they never fail to hype me up. Once we get past Monster it is pretty much all downhill from there. This downward spiral does not include the phenomenal track that is Runaway which deserves to be with the songs that are of its quality at the beginning of the record. The music just seems to slow down in terms of infectiousness and quality on the second half with some of the songs being hard to even finish for me. One of the worst for me is Blame Game. I might be missing something on this track but it just sounds irritating to me and I am not a fan of the final 2 minutes. I get this same feeling for tracks 7,8,10,12 and 13 as well which makes nearly half of this album mediocre filler content which could be cut. It is only the production which I think makes the second half enjoyable for some listeners with it sounding extremely clean and fresh to this day. Overall, if the high quality that is at the start was maintained throughout this would be amongst the greatest albums of all time but unfortunately we get a lot of filler that drags the release out and make it too elongated for my liking.