My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

avaitor

I used to find Kanye as a whole, and this album in particular, highly overrated. Despite his numerous attempts to make me discredit him over the years, though, I have really grown to appreciate his earlier work. I still struggle a little with this one, though, but I’ll admit that it’s mostly overhype. But there are definitely tracks here that I think stand among his best, ie Monster, All of the Lights. I remember being bugged by him sampling King Crimson and Sabbath, but those also work very well. Gonna go with a C. It’s a little all over the place for me.

kristoffer-witt

Production is fantastic. Takes a little to get running, but from "POWER" and onwards, it's amazing. Bangers and wonderful atmospheric jams like the fantastic "Runaway". Nicki Minaj's feature on "Monster" is nuts.

kevin-zecchel

POWER and All of the Lights are absolute bangers Probably the best Kanye album? At least it's the last one where his ambition and ego were still positives fueling his creativity before getting diminishing returns on subsequent albums. Great beats, exceptional hooks, great use of samples. Runaway and Blame Game feel a little overlong, and there is a bit of a forecasting of the born-again religious direction he would take on his more recent albums. 4/5

1001-listening-project

I’m firmly in camp 808s/Graduation, but this is also good. The features range from great (“Monster,” “Runaway”) to weird (“Lost in the World”), but the production is exceptional throughout. Kanye’s eccentricity is on full display here, bursting out in some great rhymes and ambitious creativity, but it’s a maybe a little too much “out there” for my tastes. I don’t see myself coming back to this. 2.5

megalist

I've never really seen the appeal of Kanye. His public persona aside, his music has always just been kind of "meh" for me. Opening track, Dark Fantasy, does nothing to improve this; sounds like it was written and recorded by a 12 year old. There are some decent guest appearances, and a couple of good hooks, but overall I didn't really enjoy this.

rattboi1001

5/5 I will say it's a little front-loaded, and I don't think that Blame Game needs to be 7 minutes just to hear Chris Rock talk about Yeezy teaching women how to sex good. Hell of a Life sampling 21st Century Schizoid Man is real good too. It's all really good. Like really really good.

pablostacos

Great album with longer ranty songs.

erik-ebsen