As soon as her voice dies down it gives way to a maelstrom of strings, horns, synths and percussion that does not give way until the final moments of Gil Scott-Heron’s outraged rant on “Who Will Survive in America”. Album opener “Dark Fantasy” kicks off with a spoken word intro from Nicki Minaj, whose talking voice is almost as interesting as her rapping voice. It probably wasn’t by design, but the very title of the album spits in the face of the goofy “real” concept. Everything here sparkles and nothing is out of place.
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is hands-down the most ambitious mainstream rap album ever made. Yet he somehow pulls it off, and he does it by backing up all the swagger and hype with an album that may actually be that good. This is the most certain way to start ringing the “realness” alarm bells. But perhaps the rule Kanye violates the most flagrantly is also the biggest recipe for disaster: Don’t sound like you are setting out to make the greatest album of all time. False endings give way to noodling instrumental outros. The album is composed of nine-minute rap epics that don’t adhere to traditional verse-chorus-verse guidelines. Kanye breaks plenty of rules on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. In a genre and a culture that expects its great artists to submit to a vague set of ideological rules, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where Kanye West fits into the pantheon of hip-hop royalty. Rappers are applauded for being “real”, but what this reality encompasses is never explicitly stated. In short, to be considered great an artist needs to sound like they were around in ’88, but not sound like anyone who was around in ’88. New artists are maligned for not sounding like the old ones, but there is no crime greater than “biting” those who’ve come before.
Hip-hop fans are a tough bunch to please.
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