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Originally Posted by Kirk Walker Graves
333sound Interviewer: What, in particular, drew you to writing about this album?
KWG: Kanye West was the most reliably divisive pop figure of the past decade. Drawing public rebukes from no less than two U.S. Presidents, he managed to self-destruct in such spectacularly visible fashion that he became a kind of protean reflection of the nation’s collective disgust. Whatever one’s particular social grievance – celebrity entitlement, race-baiting, the end of etiquette, etc. – Kanye’s damage was capacious and accommodating enough for all. He was an interesting foil to Barack Obama in that sense, as Obama became – over the course of the 2008 campaign – an infinitely malleable ideal in the public imagination. Candidate Obama managed to embody hope, change, healing, redemption, and transcendence, all before breakfast. The fact that Kanye’s unforgivable sin occurred at the expense of America’s most commodified ingénue was sublimely fitting. Taylor Swift puts a lot of care into maintaining her immaculately curated aura. The market for her music grows – it seems – in geometric proportion to her brand integrity, which is manifest in everything from the saccharine sincerity of her lyrics to her enterprising notions of good-girl-slighted romance. What better villain for her, then, than an openly reckless narcissist with zero self-control? As a pop moment, the whole thing had a kind of banal Shakespearean grandeur in its aptness.
Lost within this vortex of mortified indignation, though, was a simple truth, which is that Kanye West created the most consistently ambitious and thrilling pop music of the last decade. He may never eclipse his longtime idol Michael Jackson, but he has earned his place on pop’s Olympus. In a span of less than seven years, he released five uniquely masterful (if uneven) albums, sonic collages whose singular production, neurotic bombast, and grandiose contradictions form a complexly personal narrative arc. By my lights, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is the culminating epitome of this progression, the narcissistic crown jewel. As a feverishly perverse fairy tale – a fantasy – the album imparts no digestible moral takeaway. It’s a journey into the rococo heart of Ye’s diseased ego, a walk down gilded passageways with two-way mirrors for floors. Mythological monsters, well-heeled demons, and misunderstood porn stars beckon at every turn. His sampling on the album is jaw-droppingly inspired. The omnivorous scope of his sensibility is astounding – researching the samples in his music is an education in how improbable sonic worlds are always all around us, gestating in unlikely places. Whether quoting King Crimson for emphasis (“POWER”), or capturing a fleeting outburst from an obscure Rick James performance to haunt a beat (“Runaway”), Kanye’s best songs are a subgenre unto themselves, weaving other people’s hooks and melodies and drum breaks into something wholly, profoundly original. He’s a genius of novelty-through-synthesis, the Steve Jobs of contemporary hip-hop.
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