A Second Take: The Bold & the Beautiful

Kanye West must’ve done a good amount of drinking throughout his college days, because “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” feels like a hangover that’s as painful as it is sad. In terms of his career, his college days would be those three Grammy winners of his: “The College Dropout,” “Late Registration” and “Graduation,” which scored just as well on the charts as they did with critics. You can hear him getting so carried away with fame and success on those albums that by the time fear and loathing crept back into his mind on his fourth, “808s and Heartbreak,” he was starting to lose control. He might’ve discovered a more mature part of himself, but he wound up stranded in Auto-Tune anarchy.

Yet, just as Eminem made up for the uncertain success of “Relapse” with “Recovery,” so does West strike back against the disappointment of “Heartbreak” with the euphoria of “Fantasy,” even if it is a euphoria that’s kind of sad. Sure, he’s got women falling over each other to get a piece of him, but when he contemplates how a relationship would turn out on “All of the Lights,” he intends to find out how real things can get: “Restraining order, can’t see my daughter – her mother, brother, grandmother hate me, in that order.”

He reaches pretty much the same conclusion on “Gorgeous,” “Hell of a Life” and “Runaway,” though he knows agonizing over a life he can’t escape won’t do any good. There’s a sense he’s using fame as a metaphor for hell, which would not only explain all the sinning (“We love Jesus, but you done learned a lot from Satan!”) but the frightening sensation of permanence, of knowing this is the destiny he made for himself. (That might explain the eerie artwork, too.)

Even if he is in hell, West discovers something different in every uncomfortable corner of it, and manages to keep his lyrical game steady while finding new musical angles to play off of. He also makes better use of the artists he works with, and instead of throwing Jay-Z, Nicki Minaj and Rihanna into material they can’t keep up with, he leaves it simple enough to make it sound like they belong.

In fact, they sound more comfortable than West – you can tell by hearing him breathe on “Hell of a Life,” a sound that seems orgasmic and terrified at once. Those are probably the two emotions he knows best.