Platinum Sound Recording, New York City.Being both a hero and something of a jackass all at the same time? That's another thing entirely. Taking things to the next level is one of hip-hop's great cliches, an achievement that West can comfortably claim. How much of this is sincere? How much is polemic? It's hard to tell, but there's a clue in Runaway when a repeated shout of "Reaction!" runs from left to right. It's a stance that doesn't change even on Runaway, a mid-album grandstand softened by some puppy-dog eyes. His protagonists tend to see women as ruthless money-grabbers who exchange sexual favours for shopping trips. There are couplets of mischievous brilliance here ("Praise due to the most high/ Allah/ Praise due to the most fly/ Prada") but Jay-Z, former Clipse member Pusha T and Nicki Minaj all outflank him, the latter spitting the performance of her life on Monster.Īnd West's giddy fantasia is twisted. His subsequent rhymes about access visits are some of the most gripping here.īeginning on a vertiginous high with 2004's The College Dropout, West's flow has become less appealing with each successive album, as his underdog cheek has given way to the high dudgeon of a successful star tediously battling "haters".
Then West, in his role as God, commands there to be light, to lay bare the scene of betrayal and vengeance. In the verse, West's troubled protagonist comes home to find his girl with another man. Take All of the Lights, which backs up operatic levels of sound with great drama. But My Dark Twisted Fantasy – a flawed near-masterpiece – doesn't impress just by dint of numbers. Post-Facebook, the significance of one's friend-count can be overstated. Hip-hop albums are often ensemble pieces but – in the words of another densely populated track, So Appalled – "this shit is fucking ridiculous". All of the Lights – the album's most magnificent high – really does call on the leading lights of pop in wholesale fashion.īeginning with an Elton John piano interlude, it swells with synths set to grievous bodily harm, beats that simulate bodies rolling over one another, and a Greek chorus of pop stars – Rihanna, Alicia Keys, Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas, and even La Roux. Probably no one but Kanye and his exhausted production accountant knows the final tally of guest vocalists, many of whom spent weeks in Hawaii at the start of this year in what West allegedly (and fairly accurately) described as "the craziest studio in the western world right now". Around 10 producers show off on these 13 maximal tracks, in stark contrast to the relative minimalism of West's previous album, 808s & Heartbreak. Comedian Chris Rock is hilariously foul-mouthed at the end of Blame Game his riff on pudenda is taken up again by a sampled Gil Scott-Heron on West's political closer, Who Will Survive in America. This opulent, saturated LP deploys a symposium of talents from the indie backwoods (Bon Iver), the pop pantheon (Elton John) and many points between. He probably would have done if he was still alive. Having begun his career feted for sped-up soul samples on Jay-Z productions – Devil in a New Dress supplies a flashback here – West is now notorious for his behaviour, rather than his music: his petulant egomania, compulsive tweeting, hissy fits at award ceremonies and, more compellingly, for causing what Bush described as the lowest point of his presidency.Ĭountry singer Conway Twitty is probably the only guest artist who doesn't crop up on West's herculean fifth effort. But no less than two US presidents have referred to Kanye West recently: Barack Obama called him a "jackass" and – worse – George Bush mispronounced his name as "Conway". T he highest office in the land rarely weighs in on American hip-hop.
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