Kanye West's MBDTF

Kanye West’s ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’ has rightly been praised as one of the better big albumns of the year, and rightly condemned as a voicing of some really loathsome bigotry toward women – but no one told me how sad it was.  It’s possible I’m projecting from my own life, or from my sadness for Kanye, but to me its dominant tone is grief of a specific kind – world collapse and its corollary - invalidation of self. 

The first track, Dark Fantasy, is about living the dream of money, power and girls and the refrain is ‘Can we get much higher?’ – ‘the plan was to drink until the painsover, but what’s worse, the pain or the hangover?’.

Second is Gorgeous: ‘ain’t no question if I want it, I need it.’ The ungroundedness of wealth – if I want it, I need it.

Power: ‘No one man should have all this power – 21^st Century Schizoid Man.’  ‘Now this’ll be a beautiful death – jumpin’ out the window, lettin’ everything go.’ ‘You got power to let power go?’  Kanye as superman who’s power has left him alienated, suicidal.

All of the lights: ‘turn up the lights in here baby, extra bright I want y’all to see this, flash cars, shooting stars, cop lights, flash lights, strobe lights, street lights, ghetto university’ – a sexual chorus, but lyrics of tragedy – death of Michael Jackson, domestic violence, conviction imprisonment, ‘restraining order, can’t see my daughter, we met at Border’s.’  The sexual tone is masking the embarrassing horror, the vulgarity of the daily tragedy of life in the real world.

Monster: ‘gossip gossip, nigger just stop it everybody know I’m a mf-in monster.’  A sequence of guests expand on the theme, but the thesis is there.  Refrain: ‘I, I, crossed the line/lime (-light), and I’ll let god decide. I’ll last these shows, so I’m headed home.’ Again, Kanye & co as monsters – the unintelligible, the inhumanly ferocious.

Ridiculous: Meaningless, meaningless, says Kanye. So appalled.  ‘Niggers out of work and I’d rather speak somethin’ with purp’  ‘Champagne dishes, dirty white bitches.’ The gulf between everyday life for buyers of this albumn (schlubs like me!) and Kanye & co appals him.

Runaway: ‘I always find something wrong, you’ve been putting up with my shit for way too long, and I think its time for us to have a toast, let’s have a toast for the douchebags, let’s have a toast for the scumbags, let’s have a toast for the jerk-offs that never take work off.  Baby I’ve got a plan, runaway fast as you can.’  ‘Find pictures in my email, sent this bitch a picture of my dick, Don’t know what it is with females but I not too good at that shit.’ - A song of mourning about the destructive attitudes and behaviour that makes up many of the other songs.

Hell of a Life: ‘I think I fell in love with a porn star, married in a bathroom, honeymoon on the dance floor and divorced by the end of the night, that’s one hell of a life.’ A song of love for alienated sex.

Blame Game:  ‘Let’s play the blame game.  You ain’t perfect but you made life worth it, stick around some real feelings might surface.’  Includes a de-edifying ‘sketch’ dialogue between an interloping ‘neighbourhood nigger’ and a Yeezy girl with an impoverished personality.

I’m lost in the world.  A heady, ecstatic trance chorus about partying, that offers forecasts on if we die...

Who will survive in America? – a spoken word poem in the beat poet vein about the great lie of America, the independence day that allowed citizen wealth to continue to depend on slave labour, and the freedom from responsibility for the effects of past crimes that makes the environment in America more hostile to black men than, for example, China.

See me now: I love it though, I love it though, you know?  Interestingly this is a second track 1 in iTunes, as if Who will survive in America was the conclusion of the matter, and this is the beginning of Kanye’s settling for this life, declining to suffer for it any more, now that everyone sees him.

I read recently that Kanye’s mother (joyfully thanked and celebrated on Late Registration, a Black college professor of English and latterly Kanye’s manager) died quite tragically in 2008 after inadvisable (and unnecessary) surgery.  This albumn seems tonally connected to me, to an experience of loss that is maybe like that.  The ground has vanished, and the new world can only substitute the most primitive satisfaction. Not only do you have no love in your life, the world in which love was meaningfully possible has shown itself insubstantial, failing, and you’re lost in the world.  You can lose your mother like this without her death – physical death is not really the thing at all.

This albumn is (as he says himself) ‘inner city anthems based on inner city tantrums’ and I think this blog has a small enough readership (no offense, readership) that I can suggest that perhaps what is going on with all the shocking lyrics and videos and self-pity is that Kanye wants his bottom smacked?