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- BasedMinkus - 07-09-2012
Quote:Originally posted by DylanJK@Jul 8 2012, 10:37 PM
I wanna see this essay tbh
no you don't :o
- Member #1 - 07-09-2012
Quote:Originally posted by JayTee@Jul 9 2012, 01:38 AM
no you don't :o
Why :o
- NateyD - 07-09-2012
Quote:Originally posted by DylanJK@Jul 9 2012, 01:31 AM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnpKMvXz2I8&feature=related
watched it tbh. :lol:
- BasedMinkus - 07-09-2012
Cuz it is long. Here is the bulk of the essay/review
Look, we could talk about ear candy all day when an album's production has been billed for almost 4 million and included studio sessions in Hawaii and Paris where Kanye required all participants wear formal dress attire. We could also talk about the amazing layering of eleven different vocalists atop skittering jungle-like percussion on "All of the Lights" or his perfectly timed mining of Nas' vaults for "Devil in a New Dress". We could talk about the stark loneliness of the piano lead on "Runaway", or its depressed cousin on "Blame Game" looped from Aphex Twin's most fantastic piece, "Avril 14th". We could talk about the glass-shattering bass on "Monster" and "Lost in the World", or the glorious transition from the latter track into a modernized vision of Gil-Scott Heron's "Small Talk at 125th and Lenox" that closes the album. We could talk about the excruciatingly precise delivery that fuels Jay-Z, Cy-Hi, Pusha T and Kanye himself through the entirety of the record. We could talk all of that. But let's talk concepts instead, because this album doesn't achieve perfection through sonics alone. By classic hip-hop standards, great production and delivery is usually enough, but these days artists seem to think it takes something extra. And Kanye has delivered that something.
Those that viewed the the accompanied short film Runaway might be able to acutely appreciate what Kanye wants his listeners to experience on this album, but multiple close listens should reveal a lot of those details regardless. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is by and large a movie inside an album, featuring a specific cast of characters with some bit players who deal with a specific set of themes and consequences which build towards an open-ended conclusion about the world Kanye lives in. Jay-Z represents his future, Rick Ross represents his past and his aspirations, Minaj represents his desires and impulses, Pusha-T represents his cold, cold heart. Satan, raised hands, bright lights, the Magic Hour, loss (both of place and of relationship), and power are recurring themes throughout the record. These are highlighted by symbols both literal (Kanye's dick) and metaphorical (herons in the sky) that further drive home the distinctly Greek tragedy that is My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. It's the dichotomy of making his most spare, personal statements on the opening of "Runaway" without any vocal masking before repeating the song's lyrics draped in indistinguishably disgusting autotune mumbles, unleashing the embarrassment he should have felt all along. It's the heart-wrenching way he sings without any mechanical aid on "Blame Game", utterly failing to match John Legend's clenched-throat performance and in the process bringing this reviewer deep into utter despair and sorrow.
See, there are few more human albums in hip-hop than My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. In a genre fueled largely by ghetto fantasies and corner bravado, it has often been hard for artists to balance their true feelings with the expectations placed on them by the genre's listeners. As such, it's no surprise that Jay-Z is the genre's biggest MC, or that the pseudo-lyricism of modern day Lil' Wayne is marked as the one truly dependable commodity in the pop marketplace. As a culture, especially as hip-hop has trended more and more as the preeminent pop force, we the 'true heads' find it difficult to let go of the old hip-hop ethos. Tight rhymes weaved through intricate poetic devices atop raw, stripped down funk and jazz loops. Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, LL Big L, MF Doom. The MC. And there's no room in that narrative for an album like My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, an album as depraved emotionally as Biggie Smalls on Ready to Die or Eminem on The Marshall Mathers LP with all the pop catchy tracks of Jay-Z's Blueprint 3 or Kanye's own Graduation and the trainwreck that was 808s & Heartbreaks. In a genre whose diehard fans often feel lost within a pop marketplace, told to know their place and accept things can never be as they once were in the golden era of rap, it should be very easy to make plenty of excuses why Late Registration or The College Dropout were better efforts from Kanye. Those albums are just so much safer and typical, with various songs for various types of hip-hop fans.
But this one? This Fantasy? This is Kanye's A Piece of Strange, a front-to-back narrative of disappointment and cultural excess that captures the raw essence of its creator like only the greatest of albums can. We open with Kanye cruising lonelily in his Murcielago, explaining how he's often fantasized about the day he could create the work of his dreams. We follow Kanye on his rise to the top of Mount Olympus, his recently-revealed mandingo prepared to put any and all pussy in a sarcophagus, bruise any and all esophagi. He quickly becomes sick with the nature of his fantasy, however, reminiscing on his simpler days before hunching solemnly over a simple 4-note piano progression, the lonely musician and his instrument. And despite all this pain, resembling ballet's appreciation for the most excruciating of human dance, Kanye responds to Swizz' remark that "this shit is fuckin' ridiculous" with an "I love it, though" to open "Devil in a New Dress". He lets us in on his relationship woes on "Runaway", flips out over them on "Hell of a Life" until his club hoochies start leeching him for more than he's willing to indulge. At this point he completely breaks down, stressing whether the sex was ever worth it before sending a torrent of swirling, distorted vocal all around the room (seriously, invest in a sound system) in pure fury, referencing "All of the Lights" and a woman who buys coke with Kanye's money, quoting a Chloe Mitchell poem and then dropping all conceits, singing hopelessly into the microphone in Kanye's crowning achievement as a vocalist. He laments, "I can't love you this much" and, just as the listener begins to feel as awful for Kanye as possible...he gets a butt dial from the woman he's been in shambles over, and listens closely as Chris Rock delivers a darkly hilarious rendition of the conversation Kanye overhears.
And as "Lost in the World" storms out of all this dreariness with a thunderous, plodding house bass and Kanye taking Bon Iver in every which direction as the song exudes nothing but triumph, I come to a realization. While these songs are certainly able to be heard as a hip-hop album typically is, single after single... it does no justice to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Because this is Kanye's fictional biography of his relationship with hip-hop and American consumerism, it is his excising of personal demons and an extended response to his thoughts post-Taylor Swift. "You're my devil, you're my angel" he spits in music's general direction, stumbling into the African breakdown of Michael Jackson's "Wanna Be Startin' Something" while again begging anyone who will listen to run away from him as he stands triumphantly in the middle of multiple layers of Bon Iver, the beat to "Power" slowly circumferencing the original beat until the end of Gil-Scott Heron's "Small Talk on 125 and Lenox" begins to come on over the loud speaker, asking over and over "Who will survive in America?" Is it true artists like Kanye, those living "as we do, upside down ... hosed down daily, with a gag of perfume"? Or is it the "bubbling, bubbling, bubbling" in the mother country's crotch? The oppression of colonization and mainstream groupthink? Kanye, despite his indomitable ego, does not take the opportunity to provide us with answers. When left on repeat, "Dark Fantasy" will open with Nicki Minaj's fairytale introduction, and astute listeners will notice the melody of "Lost in the World" mumbling hopelessly underneath. Thus, an ouroboros is born, and like the serpent Kanye arrives before us again, in a perpetual state of rebirth and self-destruction.
- Member #1 - 07-09-2012
Quote:Originally posted by NathanAD@Jul 9 2012, 01:44 AM
watched it tbh. :lol:
Dude has talent to do all the shit his fans ask him to do tbh
- Member #1 - 07-09-2012
Quote:Originally posted by JayTee@Jul 9 2012, 01:48 AM
Cuz it is long. Here is the bulk of the essay/review
Actually read the whole thing, tbh. Solid job for being able to write a 6 page essay on an album; I could never do that.
I wanna read the whole thing imo tbh
- BasedMinkus - 07-09-2012
Quote:Originally posted by DylanJK@Jul 8 2012, 10:55 PM
Actually read the whole thing, tbh. Solid job for being able to write a 6 page essay on an album; I could never do that.
I wanna read the whole thing imo tbh
meh its on a separate page in my comp. Do not feel like finding it. But thanks for the kind words, it is the best thing I have ever written. A lot of that has to do with the amount of dick riding I was doing when this album came out.
It still stands up today as a masterpiece.
- NateyD - 07-09-2012
Quote:Originally posted by DylanJK@Jul 9 2012, 01:48 AM
Dude has talent to do all the shit his fans ask him to do tbh
Look at the link again
- Member #1 - 07-09-2012
Quote:Originally posted by NathanAD@Jul 9 2012, 02:00 AM
Look at the link again
Wtf? Lol. Oops tbh. Found that on the side of this dude DeStorm's video and thought it was appropriate to show Brandon when I was on MSN tbh. Copied the wrong link tho to put here, lol.
- idot - 07-09-2012
^softer than becel
- Brandon - 07-09-2012
<object width="460" height="315"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/j4VsTrD1R4U"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/j4VsTrD1R4U" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="460" height="315"></embed></object>
- Dion - 07-09-2012
<object width="460" height="315"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zCIo0EMt8G0"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zCIo0EMt8G0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="460" height="315"></embed></object>
- Spangle - 07-09-2012
California Love - 2pac, ft. Dr. Dre & Roger Troutman
- Dion - 07-09-2012
REAL HIP HOP FANS ONLY LISTEN. PLEASE
<object width="460" height="315"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hpdBgd2ikQo"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hpdBgd2ikQo" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="460" height="315"></embed></object>
- Marlo - 07-09-2012
Quote:Originally posted by Dion.SoDmG@Jul 9 2012, 08:15 PM
REAL HIP HOP FANS ONLY LISTEN. PLEASE
<object width="460" height="315"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hpdBgd2ikQo"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hpdBgd2ikQo" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="460" height="315"></embed></object>
I got to 0:33 before I stopped it.