Kanye West is a genius. He is my idol. He is the reason I make music.
I wrote this a while back about MBDTF, his newest solo album:
Generally, an album that’s deemed as “Amazing”, “Perfect” or even “Great” to an extent, has alot in common with the other albums in that same situation. From my experience, a common factor in albums deemed as “great” all have the same thing: Cohesiveness.
An album like Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” is not perfect by any means. I may say an album is perfect, but I realize no album is ever truly perfect. It is simply a satisfying aural experience. The main thing about MBDTF is the fact that is satisfying from start to finish. Sure, some songs in the middle may be a little slow, but thats the point. My thought is that many of these albums considered “great” simply have a strong song or two to start, and end with a great bang, of one or two great songs. Regardless of the music contained in between the two ends, people will generally come away feeling as though it had a great song at the start to hook you, and a great song to end the album on a high note. Many songs in the middle are overlooked because of this. The ends of the album tend to be the best, but for a reason: to make you listen.
Anyone who knows me, knows that this album is at the top of my list. I realize this isn’t the greatest album of all time, and not even close, but it’s my personal favorite album of all time. Not only are all the songs great by themselves, but the way they’re arranged in the album makes it into one overlaying story. The production from Kanye on this is mindboggling. Where people wouldn’t think to put a horn, or a synth, or a chime, Kanye puts all three in different areas. This makes for a song that needs MULTIPLE listens to totally catch everything he’s packed into it. On top of that, this is an entire ALBUM of 13 songs, meaning the album itself demands multiple playthroughs to hear all the intricacies he has packed into it.
If someone asked me to, I couldn’t list my favorite songs in order, or even give you a single song that I think outshines the others on this album. I honestly think every song on this album is amazing, and when you get an album where you cant figure out your favorite, that means you’re listening to a masterpiece.
Basically, as you guys who actually read that wall of text can tell, I aspire to be as great as I perceive Kanye West to be.
tl;dr kanye west is a genius