My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (studio album) by Kanye West

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.

So over the top production, but it actually succeeds. Definitely will recommend this to hip-hop regulars as well as to the average Joe.

Key takeaways are: Dark Fantasy, POWER, All Of The Lights, Runaway and Hell Of A Life
I know this is quite a few, but the album is quite good

From arturguerra 03/27/2023 15:02

Well produced but the songs are really bad in general.

The production is interesting, but the rapping is mediocre. Also the best produced track here is produced by RZA.

Is Kayne a genius or did he merely spend 3 million in production to ensure success? This ranks as the 5th/6th most expensive album ever produced. Chew on that for a moment. I’d bet that all of us could make an impressive album with 3 million to blow. He doesn’t seem like a genius these days. If he was a genius in 2010….shouldn’t he STILL be thought of as such? It’s no secret that he needed a win after that Taylor Swift PR nightmare. I think that he rolled the dice here…wined and dined the magazines & bought a temporary ticket to the top. Of course those reviews were going to be golden lol. It sounds good…but….wouldn’t it be fair to say that he stacked the odds in his favor here? He pulled the LA Dodgers card $$$

Genius. Best rap album I've ever listened to. Filled with awesome tunes - my top 3 are Monster, All of the lights and Hell of a life. Only criticism is it's a bit too long - Blame Game and Runaway are great but no need for them to be so long.

To someone: Why you gotta be so mean? Karma is real, Kanye West deserves it!!!

From AlvaroIesus 10/05/2022 16:48

@SmellyJelly125 ok swifter

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Perfection