By: Vaishaal Shankar and Michael Wu
In a stunning comeback, Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy silences his critics. After a year of personal struggles for the artist his musical genius is finally able to surpass even his tremendous ego.
Kanye frequently uses similar auto-tuning and instruments from his past albums. However, he is able to recycle these old styles and use his new songs’ lyrics to bring a new flavor to his music.
His hit song “Power” explosively drives up the energy of the album. While Kanye’s pride is evident in the very lyrics of the song whose over-the-top music video glorifies the artist, it is one of the best songs in the album.
However, every music lover can truly appreciate Kanye’s sublime mastery in “All of the Lights,” which is filled with its depth of both singers and topics. Featuring Rihanna, Alicia Keys, John Lennon, and Elton John, the track is filled with musical sensation. Although a bit drawn out, the song provides a classy transition into the latter half of the album.
What really makes this album work is the variety, no songs serve as filler. All thirteen tracks flow into each other to make one cohesive work of art that drives home Kanye’s mastery in the field.
The gem from the second half, “Runaway”, starts off quite humbly with a classical interlude and suddenly shifts gears and blasts into unexpected territories. The classical backing sticks with the song from beginning to end, providing an anchor for the nine minute journey, during which the song morphs quite a bit.
The album does not fit the mold of a typical hip hop album. Each song is tuned to near perfection and provides much more than the generic rapper voice drudging through each song. It’s hip hop done right, with numerous features, creative beats and one hell of an artist in control.
In the past year Kanye, as he would say so himself, “rose from the ash like a phoenix”, to make the crowd forget about scandals of past, and resurrected his career using what matters, his music.
Rating: A 
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Good review. I agree completely, MBDTF is a beautiful work of art. "Monster," "Runaway," and "Lost in the World," are constantly on my iPod's repeat. And as if we need further proof...
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14880-my-beautiful-dark-twisted-fantasy/