[duotone]

Would like to hear it, its not on Spotify yet though.

 

[Ynoskire]

Lol, some dutch tv show just spent 5 minutes explaining to some old people why this is the best hip hop album made in the last 5 years. They just kept raving on about how fresh and special it is. The real problem with this album though is that it isn't, I do like hiphop but i'd give this one a 6/10 at most. I've listened three or four times to it and it never really got to me, but then again I did have an aversion to Kanye West before I listened to this album which was due to the horrible "love lockdown".

 

[Cianyx]

Quote:

  I thought Pitchfork only does Indi Rock..

They do anything '"hip"
 
Can someone explain to me the almost universal worship of the album? Sure, it's decent but it doesn't break any new ground at all
 
 
Edit: I changed my mind. It's horrible. The Lupe Fiasco track is the only decent one.

 

[Uncle Erik]

  I thought Pitchfork only does Indi Rock..

Pitchfork throws in the occasional token rap album to "demonstrate" that they are not close minded.

 

[Ynoskire]

Pitchfork shouldn't be taken seriously anyway when there is any sign of a hype building around a new album coming out.

 

[evanft]

 
Quote:

Edit: I changed my mind. It's horrible. The Lupe Fiasco track is the only decent one.

But Lupe isn't on the album...at all.

 

[Cianyx]

Hmmm. That's embarrassing.

 

[fuseboxx]

The brilliance is in the details, really.

The production on the songs have so much details that every time I listen to it I hear something new in them that I had not heard previously. There's many layers of sounds and you cannot possibly catch everything that's going on with just an initial spin, it's really a rewarding album. Each song also has progression, there's always things switching up in the beats and its done so masterfully. Nothing ever feels forced, everything just evolves so naturally. As far as hip hop productions goes, this is fresh and groundbreaking.

And for Kanye's rapping (an always very criticized area), he hasn't sound this focused as this since his debut album but now with much more technique and less corny lines. Lyrically, he's very full of himself and he's quite the douche; but that musn't take anything away from his music and to a certain extent, that kind of ego is needed for such an overblown sound. I think the rapping is pretty much as good as he can get... He'll never be a Rakim or a Biggie, but he can rap pretty well when he tries hard. The hooks here are excellent as well. They're the type that aren't used merely as hooks but are an integral part of the song and transform some of the tracks into bigger-than-life pop masterpieces.

Basically, the way MBDTF is unreal especially after the sonic diarrhea that was Kanye's last two albums. I don't mind that it's Pitchfork's first perfect 10.0 new album in eight and a half years after Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. It sounds like it deserves it. It's a massive "grower" of an album that is incredibly detailed and layered and that's what makes it fresh and groundbreaking. This will go down in history as a hip hop classic.

 

[RedSky0]

I really think that mainstream rap is going to be seen as the biggest embarrassment of this generation. Everything from the cringeful, tacky and pretentious lyrics that always seem to centre around 4 things (I'm so awesome, my bitches, bling, inequality), to the fact that much of the melody is made up of looped beats, to the fact that let's face it, most of these rappers have no notable vocal talents whatsoever.
 
I've listened to this, and I can see why people like it, it does have a great vibe, there is a lot more going on underneath than most mainstream hip-hop albums, it is quite well layered, but I'm still pretty sure everything I said above holds true. In my opinion I'd say this is a 3/5 album, maybe 3.5/5 at best, but I genuinely think that people are going to look back 10 years from now at people labelling this one of the best albums of all time (ehe) by Pitchfork and others, and shake their heads in confusion.

 

[fuseboxx]

I genuinely think that people are going to look back at the end of this decade and put this mainstream hip hop album somewhere on the top of their "greatest of the decade" lists in the same way that Jay-Z's The Blueprint & Ghostface Killah's Supreme Clientele are seen today as classics. And the thing is... MBDTF is even better than both of those albums.

 

[Uncle Erik]

Jay-Z and Ghostface Killah are "classics?"

I beg to differ. They're the equivalent of 1980s hair metal.

Fun, for some, but are going to be made fun of a few years down the line.

 

[mralexosborn]

If you think this album is terrible, you clearly have not heard "808's and Heartbreak". 

That was far too "experimental" for me. If you could even call it that.
I think MBDTF is Kanye revisiting "Late Registration" because he seems to have more of a focus on several strong tracks (POWER, Monster, Hell of a Life) rather than having one track that is great and having a bunch of average tracks like "Graduation". He also seems to focus more on rapping too.
The worst mastering on any album I have ever heard, hands down though. 
 
Sure it's filled with cliches but that is what rap is about. There are very few uniquely great albums.
One that I would say that would be a gem would be Kid Cudi's "Man on the Moon: End of Day". It is filled with mostly minalmalistic beats with melancholy undertones. His latest album though is mainly s***. A sad attempt at him being mainstream and experimental at the same time.
 
As for classics, I would say N.W.A. (and it's members), Biggie, Wu-Tang Clan and Nas were great in their time and are great still in comparison to artists today. 
As for Jay-Z and Ghostface Killah, I agree with Uncle Erik. 
 
 

 

[moriez]

I happily drop my opinion. 99.9% of pop rap is rubbish. This one is no exception.

 

[Uncle Erik]

I agree, rap is full of clichés, but that is where the genre falls down. It doesn't have to be that way.

Believe it or not, I was a fan of the early stuff. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, there used to be KDAY 1580AM in Los Angeles. (Later resurrected as a FM station.) It was the only station playing rap in LA at the time. I used to listen, as did a lot of my friends. Back then, it really was fresh and new. Something different and a lot of fun. Then rap just stagnated. You kept hearing the same things over and over and over. I lost interest.

Fast forward to today, and they're still recycling themes from 20 years ago.

Sampling was new and interesting at one time, but it's since turned into children's music.

The children's music genre takes a catchy musical phrase and keeps repeating it with lyrics that are frighteningly similar. Rap does the same thing. It runs a catchy snippet over and over and never progresses. Contrast that to classical. In classical, you'll get a musical phrase a few times - enough to establish it. Then the composer will turn the phrase upside down, switch keys around, complicate the phrase and send it to different sections, introduce a countermelody with a variation, and much else. Listening along to what the composer is doing is what makes the music interesting. You can listen 20 times and then notice that the strings are doing something you never noticed before.

It's hard to do this in other genres, but you'll find development in even standard rock songs. The Beatles are particularly good at this. After the first verse and chorus, you'll find them pulling a bunch of sneaky musical tricks as the song goes along. Not as complex as a Beethoven, but the intelligence is there. Jazz musicians will do this, too, and you'll also find it in many genres.

But rap is just pure repetition. You hear one idea - and sometimes it is a good one - but then it goes nowhere. It's like those SNL skits that are funny for the first 30 seconds, but then they'll repeat the same joke for another six. It gets boring, fast.

I blame a lot of this on the lack of music education in this country. If you grew up playing an instrument and having a teacher explain to you how what you are playing is developing through the piece, you come to expect development instead of repetition.

One of few rap albums I still listen to is "3 Feet High and Rising." De La Soul did a great job with it. Even then, they saw the clichés and steered around them. The samples were interesting and revolutionary at the time. The album is tied together with themes and touches on them in new ways throughout. Too bad other artists didn't pick up on this and continue the trend. If they had, I'd be a huge fan of the genre.

 

[mralexosborn]

I liked the album because it isn't pop rap. If you think it is, you are wrong. Sorry but that is my opinion. 
Yes it is mainstream but not pop rap. Pop rap is this disgusting funk between club music and "rap". That is most pop actually. Most artists just make stuff for the club. 
This is an exception (to an extent). It is not a classic by any means but it sheds some light on what rap was 5 or so years ago. You know, rap, not dance music. 
 
Meh.