My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy Image
Metascore

Universal acclaim - based on 45 Critics What's this?

User Score

Universal acclaim- based on 772 Ratings

  • Summary: Breaking traditional mainstream hip-hop guidelines, Kanye West's latest release features epic raps and long instrumental variations for his most innovative album to date.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 43 out of 45
  2. Negative: 0 out of 45
  1. 100
    There is no question that this album is a game changer. It's Kanye West's greatest work.
  2. Apr 20, 2011
    100
    My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is genuinely a great record. [Feb. 2011, p. 108]
  3. Sep 19, 2012
    80
    West is far from rap's deftest lyricist but his neurotic grandstanding is compelling and often pretty funny to boot. [Feb 2011, p.84]
  4. Dec 7, 2010
    60
    Kanye's ...Dark Twisted Fantasy is also the densely-produced work of a clearly erratic soul.

See all 45 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Negative: 23 out of 288
  1. This is beyond Hip Hop, this is something more. Kanye West just raised the bar for an entire genre and proved he has a magnificent capacity and knowledge of crafting music that has been unseen by anyone who calls themselves a rapper. I feel sorry for anyone who had a rap album this year, because everything, absolutely everything pales in comparison to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Expand
  2. One of the best mainstream hip hop albums of the year.. I personally like the fact that he acknowledge his faults but at the same time gives the middle finger to his haters and critics... Expand
  3. Can't say I believe the hype. I can't help but note that reviews don't focus on the quality of the music so much as the fascinating aspects of West's character. It's not that fascinating - he has a massive ego and he likes to whinge about any criticism thereof. His rhymes are passable, his ear for sampling pretty good, but aside from that? The attempts at 'experimentation' on Twisted Fantasy amount to little more than derivative stupidity - see Runaway's incomprehensible cello-vocoder final few minutes and those multiple climaxes on Power that just don't make any structural sense. It doesn't matter how many guests he pulls in to help him out, these cuts rarely rise above self-indulgent mediocre. And sampling Aphex Twin? On a song with such a horribly annoying hook? Pure sacrilege. I will say that the album is listenable and at moments entertaining, but really, it isn't what everyone claims. Expand
  4. This album is a blatant ripoff of Moby's sound and production techniques, most notably from Play and 18.
    Kanye does a competent job of copying
    that style, and then proceeds to ruin it by putting aggressive, angry, insanely self-obsessed rapping over it. We're not talking Eminem-style intensity or originality in rapping style either. West can conjure interesting lyrics, but his rhythmic delivery is quite average. I must admit I'm a fan of the video, and supposedly he directed it, but it's clear much of the credit needs to go to the director of photography. Kanye employs a bunch of strange imagery regarding some model that falls to earth, and is physically perfect, but she's a bird, and his friends won't accept her. Seriously? Get real and get a plot and a clue. Dark Fantasy's package is very appealing, but ultimately it's too much of a ripoff of someone else's musical style for my taste, and more importantly, the sentiment expressed is the same old poor-liittle-me-I'm-so-put-upon public persona that we've all gotten really tired of. Expand

See all 288 User Reviews

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