On the record: 10 years of Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

In 2009, Kanye West approached the VMAs stage at New York’s Radio City Music Hall’s, likely unaware that the next thirty seconds would go down in pop-culture history. Taking the microphone from Taylor Swift, who had just won Best Video by a Female Artist, the Chicago producer and rapper said, “I’mma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time!”

It wasn’t that West wasn’t controversial before this point, his humiliation of Swift came after claiming in 2005 that George W. Bush didn’t care about black people, and several other awards show-based incidents, it just cemented his position as antagonist-in-chief. With the jeers of the world’s media and Donald Trump (there is, always, a quote), West went into exile. The moment was to prove the catalyst for one of the most lauded American albums of the past thirty years.

Earlier in his career, Kanye West’s signature style as a producer earned him plaudits. He innovatively played with the pitch and speed of classic soul tracks, creatively employing classic Luther Vandross, Chaka Khan and the Jackson 5.

His production for Foxy Brown, Beanie Seagal and Cam’Ron offered a glimpse of his talent as a producer. But it was Kanye’s work on Jay-Z’s The Blueprint which brought him to attention. In particular Izzo (H.O.V.A.), with its slowed down use of I Want You Back by the Jackson 5 exemplifies his early production style. His relationship with Jay-Z and Damon Dash’s label, Roc-A-Fella records gave him a chance as a rapper.

His brush with death ahead of the recording of his first album The College Dropout, gave Kanye a story to accompany his debut album. The soul-tinged, Through The Fire, sampling his debut single, Through the Wire tracks his rehabilitation and was a hit on release in 2005. Throughout his career, a backstory and narrative have always been as important as the music he makes. For My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, the story of the rapper in exile, creating a record to prove his haters wrong, is as much a part as the music or the videos that accompany it.

Post-VMA exile, West visited Japan, France and then, finally, Hawaii. He booked the entirety of the Avex Recording Studio and created what he called “Rap Camp”. A revolving door of producers, rappers and singers to work on his fifth album.

From August of 2010, ahead of the release of Fantasy, West released fourteen tracks in a series that came to be known as GOOD Fridays. Some of the tracks found their way on to the final album; some did not. It offered more proof that West is a master at gaining publicity. Rather than releasing two or three singles, the series was a massive expansion on the regular run-up to an album’s release. The series guaranteed West weekly coverage, for three months. Each release increased anticipation for the upcoming album and which rappers might appear on the next tracks. From Common to Lupe Fiasco, Raekwon to Pusha T, the album features over 20 guest artists, including sixteen-year-old Justin Bieber.

The album finally appeared, clocking in at nearly 70 minutes long, spread over thirteen tracks – most tracks extending over more than five minutes. Rap tracks tend to be longer, but the statement piece of the album – Runaway is longer than Bohemian Rhapsody (a little over nine minutes in length). The duration of it isn’t the only grandiose statement; the number of guest artists on the album is hard to pin down, but it appears to be over 25 additional singers or rappers. All of the Lights, the extravagant fifth track on the album, has no less than 11 guest vocalists (including Elton John, Alicia Keys, John Legend and Rhianna).

Lyrically, the album finds Kanye at his funniest. His creative use of language is evident throughout the album. On Devil in a New Dress, he seamlessly rhymes “sin” with “sensation”. Or, on Power closing the song with the words “so exciting” gradually morphing into the word “suicide”.

As with all Kanye’s albums, he also makes several points about black identity. On Gorgeous he considers musical success (somewhat immodestly comparing himself to the Beatles).

On his previous album, West had moved away from the tried and tested sampling and interpolation that defined his first three records. On Fantasy, they return. On, Gorgeous, West interpolates and samples the same song (The Turtles You Showed Me, and the cover of the track by Enoch Light). Using samples lends a song an air of credibility, especially when taking a classic track. But the way that West chops relatively obscure songs is in itself a skill.

The track Runaway features Expo 83 by the Backyard Heavies, chopped up to make the track. Even the opening of the album is an interpolation of a kind. It opens with Nicki Minaj delivering an adapted version of Roald Dahl’s Cinderella poem in a mockney accent that would make Dick Van Dyke proud.

Alongside the album, West released a thirty-five-minute-long short film featuring most tracks from the album. Centred around and titled “Runaway”, the film tracks West’s relationship with a half-woman, half-phoenix who has crashed to earth. It’s visually arresting, it’s crescendo featuring a ballet performance to the auto-tuned section of Runaway. Inspired, in part, by Karl Lagerfeld, the short film is a further example of the egotistic nature of the whole album.

On release, the maximalist masterpiece earned near-universal praise. The spectacularly difficult to please Pitchfork music website gave the album a score of ten out of ten. Fantasy was the first to receive the honour since Wilco’s 2002 album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It’s taken the site ten years to hand another perfect score out – Fiona Apple’s 2020 album, Fetch The Bolt Cutters. Billboard, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Stereogum, Time and The Village Voice named it as their album of the year in 2010.

End-of-the-decade lists in 2019 found the album sitting atop the pile. The Rap website Complex places it first, as did Billboard. Rolling Stone named it the best album of the decade. The magazine also ranked it at number 17 in their 2020 overhaul of their famed 500 Greatest Albums of All Time List. Fantasy is nestled between The Clash’s London’s Calling and Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited.

Since that 2010 release, Kanye has, among many other things, run unsuccessfully for President, married a Kardashian, donated millions of dollars to charity, started an architecture firm, designed dozens of sneakers for Adidas and released five records. The subsequent albums don’t scale the extraordinary musical heights of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy; they do share the thing that truly special though, West’s desire to push the boundaries of rap and pop.

We’re now almost six months overdue for West’s tenth album, DONDA, named after his late mother. It’s probably too much to hope that it delivers in the way that Fantasy did ten years ago, but few albums ever will.