Kanye and the boys, both on the tracks and in the all-star production team assembled in Hawaii for this masterpiece, are firing on all cylinders for 75 minutes. Peeved I missed the reveal on this one! (Was stalled pouring over the classic Halo 3 soundtrack.) Re-listening for the generator: MBDTF is an absolute joy to listen to. Es triste la persona en la que se ha convertido con el tiempo pero nadie puede negar que dentro de el siempre ha habido un artista con todas sus letras. hueva tu canción dirigida a tu ex con referencias que solo tu entiendes pero incluso en ese caso musicalmente no tengo queja alguna, es especialmente oscura y meticulosa en su sonido. El único traspié, a mi gusto, es la letra de Blame Game, porque la verdad. Canciones como Power o Monster son básicamente perfectas y espesas en todas sus capas tan cuidadas.
Es la mejor muestra de lo que era capaz de lograr cuando lograba canalizar sus obsesiones a algo productivo. Un disco que mezcla invitados desde Jay Z hasta Elton John pasando por un skit de Chris Rock, con mezclas que incluyen pop de sonido africano, King Crimson, Black Sabbath y Aphex Twins. Las letras siento nunca han sido su fuerte pero incluso aquí hay atisbos muy interesantes tanto de su personalidad, lo que siente de la fama y, con retrospectiva de 20/20, una mirada a lo que en un futuro terminaría en cosas tan tristes como episodios psicóticos de paranoia a medio concierto. Todo el disco es musicalmente irrepetible, tiene una producción estúpidamente pulida y creativa.
Kanye West es un genio musical, un genio musical con demasiados problemas mentales y que con el pasar de los años ha bajado tanto en calidad e interés artístico como en cordura pero la cantidad de genio y talento que tiene no se puede negar y en este disco en particular está en su mayor momento. Ahora, en 24 horas lo he escuchado 5 veces completo. Hace un par de meses me dieron ganas de escuchar este disco de nueva cuenta después de varios años y lo escuche durante una semana completa. They're the beating of his heart of darkness. Bloody, visceral, and irrepressible, he can't outrun them. Way before the final track, where the African rhythms come to the foreground, they sound like they’re coming from the depths of the jungle. But however many times he changes direction as he makes a break for paradise, then double-back and heads for damnation, he can’t escape those pounding drums. The Roald Dahl intro, Gil-Scott Heron outro, false finish to ‘Dark Fantasy’, Chris Rock diatribe on ‘Blame Game’-all excessive, yet all essential. ‘Runaway’, for instance, is unutterably gorgeous despite overrunning by about five minutes, with Kanye plonking away at the same two piano keys and mumbling incomprehensibly through autotune. He can’t resist decadence, but is repulsed by it. In essence, that means calling out his own bullshit, and boy does he have a lot of it.
Kanye’s main theme has always been self-consciousness. That internal tension is precisely the point. And so, as ever, his saving grace is the music, which is a jaw-dropping and gag-worthy display of opulence-astonishing and appalling in equal measure. His lyrics are frequently brilliant: "And what's a Black Beatle anyway, a fuckin' roach? / I guess that's why they got me sitting in fuckin' coach”, “They say I was the abomination of Obama's nation / Well, that's a pretty bad way to start the conversation”, “Runaway slaves all on a chain gang / Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.” But however hard he works, he’ll never have a top-tier flow. To make up for the absence of brilliant storytelling-much harder to do when you’re mostly just bragging-he ups his rap game, throwing his name into the hat with legends (Raekwon) and legends-in-the making (Minaj). What you get instead is monstrously inward looking, an artist on the brink of being overrun by a megalomania previously under his control. Despite the attempts of ‘Power’ or ‘Monster’, there’s nothing here to rival the social commentary of ‘We Don’t Care’, ‘All Falls Down’, ‘Heard ‘Em Say’ or ‘Gold Digger’.
That makes this-his third masterpiece-the odd one out. If you accept that an inflated sense of self-importance is a prerequisite for any rap/rock/pop/whatever star, then Kanye ultimately proved himself to be a decent bloke on his first two masterpieces through the generosity of his musical genius and his literary-comedic ability to conceptualise.
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