Kirk Walker Graves - Kanye Wests My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

For Whit

MY BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED FANTASY

Praise for the series:

It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience for whom Exile on Main Street or Electric Ladyland are as significant and worthy of study as The Catcher in the Rye or Middlemarch The series is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebration

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Ideal for the rock geek who thinks liner notes just arent enough

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These are for the insane collectors out there who appreciate fantastic design, well-executed thinking, and things that make your house look cool. Each volume in this series takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. We love these.

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[A] consistently excellent series Uncut (UK)

We arent naive enough to think that were your only source for reading about music (but if we had our way watch out). For those of you who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, youd do well to check out Continuums 33 1/3 series of books Pitchfork

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For a complete list of books in this series, see the back of this book.

Forthcoming in the series:

Ode to Billie Joe by Tara Murtha

The Grey Album by Charles Fairchild

Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables by Mike Foley

Freedom of Choice by Evie Nagy

Live Through This by Anwyn Crawford

Dangerous by Susan Fast

Sigur Ross ( ) by Ethan Hayden

and many more

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

Michel de Montaigne

This project would not have been possible without the generous good faith of David Barker, Ally Jane Grossan, Kaitlin Fontana, and the rest of the 331/3 team at Bloomsbury Academic. For her love and steadfast tolerance throughout the writing process, I owe my wife Jessica Graves a student-loan-sized debt of gratitude. Our son Whit was born squarely in the middle of the project, and I could not have asked for a more wonderful way to procrastinate. Many thanks are also due the Haley family whether serving up a delectable paleo meal or hosting a lost weekend of Netflix binging, the good people of 1021 Emily Drive were always there to put wind in my sails, and Im proud to be part of their tribe. Thanks also to my sister Lori for the many years of encouragement, patience, love, and support. Last but certainly not least, my late mother Dean Graves was my earliest critic and reader. I miss her sweet blandishments, her kind smile, and her soft-spoken enthusiasm to read whatever I was working on. And though I cannot fathom an afterlife scenario wherein she embraces the music of Kanye West especially the songs on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy I know she remains, eternally, my biggest fan.

Dark Fantasy (4:40)

Gorgeous (5:57)

POWER (4:52)

All of the Lights (Interlude) (1:02)

All of the Lights (4:59)

Monster (6:18)

So Appalled (6:38)

Devil in a New Dress (5:52)

Runaway (9:08)

Hell of a Life (5:27)

Blame Game (7:49)

Lost in the World (4:16)

Who Will Survive in America? (1:38)

And the faithful congregated on street corners outside lofts, in parking lots near the city stadium, shuffling their feet over wet asphalt in the late spring darkness so as to arrive at the chosen place by the appointed hour. When Yeezus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and he began to teach them.

Im forever the 35-year-old 5-year-old. Im forever the 5-year-old of something.

One of the problems with being a bubbling source of creativity its like Im bubbling in a laboratory, and if you dont like put a cap on it, at one point it will, like, break the glass. If I can hone thatthen I have, like, nuclear power, like a superhero, like Cyclops when he puts his glasses on.

Visiting my mind is like visiting the Herms factory. Shit is real. Youre not going to find a chink. Its 100,000 percent Jimi Hendrix.

When I think of competition its like I try to create against the past. I think about Michelangelo and Picasso, you know, the pyramids.

If you read books which I dont, none at all about how to become a billionaire, they always say, You learn from your mistakes. So if you learn from your mistakes, then Im a fucking genius.

I spend more time watching porn and praying about it afterwards. Then Ill put on some Louis Vuitton and leave.

[My Beautiful] Dark [Twisted] Fantasy was my long, backhanded apology. You know how people give a backhanded compliment? It was a backhanded apology. It was like, all these raps, all these sonic acrobatics. I was like: Let me show you guys what I can do, and please accept me back. You want to have me on your shelves.

During a November 2010 Today Show interview with Kanye West, there is a telling moment when host Matt Lauer redoubtable Matt Lauer, sine qua non of the affable, non-threatening American male talks about regret and transgression. And youre sorry, he says, nudging Kanye towards a full-throated apology for his nationally televised 2005 remark that George Bush doesnt care about black people, spoken during a telethon in the wake of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. Lauer had recently spent over three hours interviewing the former president upon the publication of Decision Points, Bushs presidential memoir. He tells Kanye the former president reserved his most emotionally piqued response not for questions about the Iraqi invasion, the federal bailouts, or the 9/11 attacks, but amazingly for a question about the boisterous thirtysomething rapper. Dont even listen this time, Lauer says, running the clip again. I want you to just look at his face. The clip shows a saturnine Bush mouthing the words I resent it, its not true, and it was one of the most disgusting moments of my presidency. Kanyes body assumes the crumpled defensive posture of a publicly scolded child. Lauer gazes at him with tender opprobrium, looking like nothing so much as a man selling absolution for pennies on the dollar. Kanye considers the nudge for what it is, mentally tries it on for a moment like an ill-fitting Prada loafer, then balks and makes Lauer and everyone watching feel ill-fit for their own skin. Yeah, Im sorry formmm, he mumbles, unable to finish. Lauer looks on with the deadpan mortification of the decent and anonymous masses. I think I get the point, he says.

Lurking somewhere amid the tabloid covers and reality show cameos, in the icy silence between tweets, the periods of relative calm preceding fresh bouts of histrionics, lost within the noxious cultural static that clings to his very name, there has always been in spite of his best efforts to distract us the music. And in the first decade of the twenty-first century, Kanye West created the best the most consistently ambitious and thrilling pop music of any American artist, hip-hop or otherwise, during the period. From Through the Wire the first single off his 2004 debut LP