My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy – Kanye West Review
Today, I will be writing a review on the album that quite literally saved Kanye Wests
Career from irrelevancy and depravity. Having previously being shunned from the
MTV VMA’s in 2009 after the infamous clip of Kanye West interrupting Taylor Swift
whilst she was receiving an award for best music video and saying “I’m really happy
for you, I’m going to let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all
time” which he was referring to the famous Beyonce music video “Single Ladies”.
This was so catastrophic to Kanye’s career that his tour with Lady Gaga got cancelled
and Barrack Obama called him a “Jackass” on live television and leaving his career on
the ropes the only choice he had left was to leave the country and work on himself
and only hope he can reclaim his former glory and hopefully return better than how
he left. Over a year later he ended up returning with the album “My Beautiful Dark
Twisted Fantasy.
The Introductory song to this album (Dark Fantasy) begins with a great friend of
Kanye (Nicki Minaj) putting on a British accent and reading a thuggification of Roald
Dahl’s take on Cinderella in his book Revolting Rhymes. Soon after, Justin Vernon and
Teyana Taylor start singing repeatedly “Can we get much higher?” this is meant to
represent Kanye at the peak of his career just before the VMA’s wondering if his life
can get any better. Soon after Kanye starts rapping on how he “fantasized ‘bout this
back in Chicago Mercy, mercy me, that Mercielago”. Here, it is seen that Kanye spent
his early career dreaming on getting a Lamborghini Murcielago, this is quite ironic
since Marvin Gaye’s “Mercy Mercy me” humans were being criticized for mistreating
the environment making Kanye’s lyrics about a gas-guzzling car more enjoyable.
After that, Kanye talks about how he “drown sorrow in that diablo” and how he
found “bravery in my bravado”, this is quite ironic since only a couple lines ago he
mentions that he does not speak Spanish, diablo is also referring to a type of hard
alcohol, so he is referring to drowning his sadness in alcohol in hopes that it goes
away. In the next verse, Kanye mentions how he is “sorry for the night demons that
still” visit him and how “the plan was to drink until the pain over, but what’s worse,
the pain or the hangover”. Here, it is seen that Kanye tries to block out his problems
by drinking but he realizes by delaying them it will only make it worse. This also could
also be interpreted a double entendre in the line “The plan was to drink until the
pain over” since pain being short for champagne meaning he would drink until the
champagne is gone.
The Second Song in this album, Gorgeous starts with Kid Cudi (Kanye’s long time
friend and collaborator singing on how there “ain’t no question if I want it, I need it”
and how he can feel it slowly drifting away” from him. I believe that in this case, It is
referring to fame as a whole and this chorus serves as some sort of a album for those
who fervently pursue fame. Kanye Starts in the first verse by talking about the
struggles of the “devil dances” with the lives of people born in ghettos and how they
take risks with the devil. Later in this verse Kanye talks about how “Inner-century
anthems” which are rap songs are inherently sourced from the frustrations caused by
gang violence and racism (“inner city tantrums”) and how “Jerome get more time
than Brandon”. Here he was referring to how “Jerome”, a generic black guy would be
faces with a lot harsher sentence than “Brandon” an average white male. After that
he continues to talk about the inherent racial inequality of how “at the airport, they
check all through my bag and tell me it’s random”. In the second verse, Kanye raps
about how “this is more than just my road to redemption, Malcolm West had the
whole nation standing at attention,” referring to the fact that this is sort of his
redemption album and is comparing himself to Malcolm X since Kanye frequently
talks about issues pertaining to the black community and how his music and
personality can be highly controversial. He continues this in his next verse talking on
how he