The Top 20 Albums of 2010 #4 Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

The Top 20 Albums of 2010

#4 Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Words by Dirk Calloway

Preface: This is a daily series celebrating the best records released in 2010. I listened to 81+ albums a few times over each, so I think I'm in an ok position to judge them against one another. We're now at the fourth best, and there's only three more days until we reach the series' end. You can read the others here.

Trying to buy My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy on Compact Disc was such a pain in the ass that I was seriously tempted to buy the whole thing on iTunes instead. By the time it was finally available in New Zealand's stores - about a week late - I'd read dozens of reviews that declared it "Hip Hop's Sgt Pepper." A 35-minute long movie was directed and released by West, containing most of the record's songs in some form or another. Kanye had also released remixed versions of the songs every Friday for months, either as a bizarre marketing stunt or because he wanted to make sure we were ready for the craziness he was about to unleash.

My point? I have never been so well prepared for an album, but My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy still left me shocked and awed. An appropriate collision of expectations then, considering the hypocrisies it delivered. This is an album brimming with excess, despite its producer feeling at his loneliest. It's a bold and coherent Long Player released as if to defy an era that's obsessed with 3 minute downloads. Its lead-single became a trend-setting anthem despite it proclaiming that "[though] every superhero needs his theme music, no one man should have all that power." The next single hated on "the jerk-offs who never take work off," but a journalist who covered the creation of the record found that engineers were in the studio 24 hours a day and, for weeks on end, West rarely slept.

All that hard work paid off. 5 albums in, it's about time West made good on the promise of his debut album. I'm not sure if you remember Jesus Walks, his massive hit from 2004, but it energised hip hop fans worldwide: here was a song that sounded like the future of rap, transcending generational boundaries from a lyrical, musical and spiritual perspective. I was sure Kanye would quickly churn out better and better songs, but instead they stayed at the same level of quality for many years. Consistently good, always dependable, but rarely breaking through the stratosphere that I desperately wanted him to. Finally though, with songs like Lost In The World, Power, Monster, the 9-minute long (!) Runaway and All Of The Lights, West has created epic pieces of music unlike anything the world has ever heard. I mean, hell, would you catch 50 Cent, Eminem, Lil' Wayne or T.I. making a music video that featured a ballet dancing troupe?

This isn't all on Kanye's shoulders though. The list of collaborators is stunning in itself: Jay-Z, Rick Ross, The RZA, La Roux, Elton John, Fergie, Drake, Alicia Keys, Kid Cudi, John Legend, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, Chris Rock, Bon Iver, Fergie, Drake, The-Dream, Dwele, et. al. There's a lot more than that buried in there! Few of them attempt to be show-stoppers, because they're all there to help him, to assist with the heavy-lifting Kanye's tried to achieve. It's commendable that he asked for assistance, and I think it went some way to disproving the idea he's egotistic. He just can't be, given he used the help of that many fantastic people.

The only thing stopping this from being 'album of the year' is a 2-minute interlude at the end of a song called Blame Game that sounds like Chris Rock and some trashy woman talking about how "Yeezy taught" her how to have better sex. Without it, this record would've been absolutely perfect. 2 bad minutes in 80 otherwise excellent ones is pretty good though. Most artists would be glad to have just one of his singles on their records. He had four, with the potential for many more. I eagerly await Kanye's next album, because it could be Hip Hop's Abbey Road for all we know. Check out My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy ASAP if you haven't already.

Tune in tomorrow for an album by a biomedical engineer that also happens to be the third best record of 2010.