MICHAEL CUTHBERTSON
Arts Writer

As the name suggests, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a very different kind of album.

On it, Kanye West creates a new sound that transcends top 40 hip hop. The album is just like the man: ambitious, energetic and not really about the rapping. As a producer and music thief, Kanye’s role in the studio was huge. Surprisingly, he fills the songs with orchestral arrangements. As a result, the album sounds like a hip hop version of ’60s baroque pop.

Stranger still, the album features a number of progressive rock samples. In “Power,” Kanye uses King Crimson’s magnum opus, “21st Century Schizoid Man.” More notably, the album’s opening melody “Could We Get Much Higher” is sung by Jon Anderson of Yes (as in, “Yes, that’s really a man singing that high”). Here, Kanye gives a whole new life to the sample by adding blissful vocal harmonies. You know, the ones that go “so high”¦ oh, oh, oh.”

Speaking of great singers, did I mention Kanye isn’t one? Really he’s a lot better at sprinting than singing. Just watch him in Runaway and you’ll see what I mean. Truly, Kanye’s great at his whole “motherfuckin’ wordsmith” thing, but he cannot sing worth shit. So he gets people like Elton John, Rihanna and Alicia Keys to cover his ass. Others on the album are like Kanye and do more performing than singing.

One example of this is Nicki Minaj’s vocal on “Monster.” She sings in her signature “I’m, like, totally drunk and easy” bar-star voice. In “Bottoms Up,” another song with Minaj, her vocals sound like something out of a porno. Really, pop is running out of ways to sound sexually explicit. Other than looping orgasm noises, the music industry has done it all.

What Kanye lacks in talent, he makes up for in ego. This album’s main theme is how great Kanye West thinks he is. I’m dead serious. He tells us, in third-person, “he knows he’s so fucking gifted.” Then there’s the line: “If God had an iPod, I’d be on his playlist.” Of course, Kanye isn’t just an ego about his music.

In “Blame Game,” he tells a girl “you should be grateful a nigga like me ever noticed you.” Too much? What about the end of the song where Chris Rock gives a hilariously filthy speech? In it, he tells his girlfriend, “Yo, you took your pussy game up a whole ”˜nother level, this is some Cirque du Soleil pussy shit now!” He asks her, “How did your pussy game come up?” and she replies “Yeezy taught me.” If you didn’t already know, Yeezy is Kanye West.

In the past, bands made number one records by talking about painful, devoted, eternal love. Kanye’s business is a little different. His songs about women are less like love songs and more like boning songs. But I have no problem with this. Kanye’s only problem lies in believing these songs are profound.

He declares, “No more drugs for me, pussy and religion is all I need.” What kind of a philosophy is this? Really, he’s a rapper: drugs and pussy is what he represents. Maybe his religion is really badass. Maybe it’s cool that Kanye’s going to “make her knees shake, make a priest faint, make a nun cum, make her cremate.” My question is, does Kanye want to stand for something, or is he just a bunch of clever rhymes?

Whatever the album means, My Dark Beautiful Twisted Fantasy is a big success (and not just commercially). The strangest thing is how this album has found favour both in popular and underground culture. This makes me think that maybe pop culture and underground culture are becoming the same thing. I mean, this album has Kanye giving a shout out to an “American Apparel girl in just tights.” Likewise, the “underground” music world has praised this album. Pitchfork gave it a perfect 10 out of 10. Sure enough, the album probably has something most music fans could enjoy.