Oliver Sizeland - 12/16/2010

While Kanye West has always been an object of scorn, with his big personality and even bigger mouth, his music as been almost universally lauded. And after the experiment of his last album, 808s And Heartbreak, he has returned to what he does best with this, his fifth studio album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

Here Mr. West is found firing on all cylinders, tearing up the rulebook once more with a daring, fascinating, complex and undoubtedly brilliant album that encompasses his talent and persona wonderfully. Every track is a tour-de-force, a window into epic music in the making. The track that has received the most critical attention is Runaway, partly since it is accompanied by a 35-minute film that acts as a music video of sorts, but also since the song itself is nearly 10 minutes in length and acts as the heart of the album. Elsewhere there are the usual creatively chosen samples, lyrical wordplay and epic beats that harken back to West's best work on his debut album, The College Dropout. It would be churlish to pick tracks however, since every one ties together to form a very satisfying whole.

This new record is a stunning listen from start to finish, solidly put together and indeed beautiful, dark and twisted in equal measure. It is truly unique in amongst the current crop of hip-hop releases, in music as a whole in fact. It simply sees Kanye West raising the bar once more, higher even than he himself has previously. It'll take something pretty spectacular to top it.