Kanye West
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Just to say that saying "Kanye West is a genius" or that he's your "favorite rapper" doesn't make you any younger or more progressive in the eyes of the world; we can try to seriously talk about this album, but I don't think you've fully understood it, so let's proceed step by step without being difficult.

I'll try to be clear. Ok, you've already said that this album is "a rap masterpiece", the monumental and egocentric magnum opus of the greatest unruly genius of our times, the only rap album you manage to listen to. And ok, you've also already explained to everyone that "it's not exactly a rap album," but it's more like "a schizoid pop work" that "represents our difficult times," and you've done everything to pretend to be twenty years old and blah blah blah Trump no Trump black music the most genius producer of our times, etc., but in the end, the thing is much more straightforward so take that mischievous hand off your brain.

Simply, I don't know... is it like an album?? There you go, I'd say. Does it kick all the stuff you're used to listening to out the window in a second? Maybe yes, but it's not the only one doing it, so if you just feel the overwhelming need to be transgressive and challenge yourself by falling for these trick traps thinking they're "high-brow" listens, well, I'm sorry, but you haven't understood a damn thing.

Yes, "Runaway" lasts nine minutes and more, incredible, but it's not like a sort of Queen-style dry spell dressed in hi-fi baroqueness of the Tens is really such a cool thing. Nice the one-two finish, the one with Bon Iver and the guy who reads the poem, really intense. Everything else is absolutely normal, except Nicki Minaj in "Monster", but when you get to that point it will probably have already started losing its value. Since I can’t find anything significant to add about what was said in the last three lines, I'll use the remaining part of this paragraph to review the cover, which depicts the union between angel and devil (well done: "the good that insinuates into the evil") and is as interesting and transgressive as the catechist ringing the doorbell and running away.

Lots of little okay things (except the one that samples Aphex Twin which is a live hornet in the esophagus) and one much more than okay thing (the tragic tenor of "Power") package an album that at least a bit of people listened to. If there's anything easier than making a "Mellon Collie" in a rap version, it's making a crazy, "free" and anarchic album in these years where everyone does whatever the hell they want, and Kanye West did it in that way that many do, sometimes even well, so, um, yeah, come on. In the end, it's the testimony of a drunk who, instead of ending up off the road, hits the guardrails on both sides, swerves a lot, and once home, masks his Guinness-like hangover by telling it to the world as a perpetual mushroom trip. Maybe he tells true things, and maybe not, but maybe he finds someone who believes him, so in the end, what is it that counts?