It’s almost impossible to gauge how fast the last decade has gone by, and we’re reminiscing about one of the greatest music albums of all time. Period. As we commemorate this album’s perfection and genius, we must start at the very beginning of the tale, exactly when this album was born.
Kanye’s career had a solid trajectory. For someone who started as an underdog and quickly started getting acknowledged by the greats, Kanye’s career had hit a sweet spot until he threw it all away. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a story of how he gained it all back.
Strong beginnings
Since his first album, Kanye never failed to disappoint the music business and made a name for himself through his unique bars and great beats. As a matter of fact, according to an interview, Kanye used to get complimented much more on his beats and music than his lyrics during his early career.
As he sold 2.4 million copies from his debut album, “The College Dropout” (2003), it gave Kanye the confidence to push forward and release two more albums in the next four years. The second one was Graduation, released in 2007, which took the world by storm. Even his haters couldn’t argue about the shattering genius of Kanye’s music production we saw in that album.
The beginning of Kanye’s prodigal arc
The musician used his albums to explore themes of family, religion, sexuality, materialism, self-consciousness, and excessive self-belief. What seemed like narcissism back then gradually turned into humility.
Then came the fateful day of the VMAs. As the MTV Video Music Awards awarded Taylor Swift, Kanye took to the stage, and upstaged her moment very disrespectfully. Starting the next day, Kanye became public enemy number one, and criticism started pouring in from listeners and industry professionals alike.
The drama’s scale was unprecedented, even involving some comments about Kanye’s misconduct, calling him a “jackass” in an interview as the incident briefly came up. Kanye’s fame, and hard-earned recognition, washed away as he started to apologize for the incident, and set himself into isolation.
The birth of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Kanye worked on the album in complete isolation, and he admits that he worked on the album as if his life depended on it. He went back to the studio and started working day and night. Nobody knew that his work would be considered seminal and reveal the final form of Kanye’s brilliance.
This was the album where Kanye finally got vulnerable and talked about his issues, and spoke about sensitive themes such as his need for self-isolation, being famous in a white country, and much more.
As a result, the album was an instant hit. Even the critics who were waiting to butcher his career couldn’t find anything wrong with the album. Every track was a hit, and everyone in the music community had to recognize the singer’s unparalleled genius.
As it marks a decade, it stands the test of time and remains as bulletproof as it was before. To say it in his own words from the album’s third track, “it better than anybody you ever seen do it.”
