{"product_id":"9781623565428-kanye-wests-my-beautiful-dark-twisted-fantasy","title":"Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy","description":"\u003cmeta content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\" http-equiv=\"Content-Type\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the first decade of the twenty-first century, Kanye West created the most compelling body of pop music by an American artist during the period. Having risen from obscurity as a precocious producer through the ranks of Jay Z's Roc-A-Fella records, by the time he released \u003ci\u003eMy Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (MBDTF)\u003c\/i\u003e in late 2010, West had evolved into a master collagist, an alchemist capable of transfiguring semi-obscure soul samples and indelible beats into a brash and vulnerable new art form.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A look at the arc of his career, from the heady chipmunk soul exuberance of \u003ci\u003eThe College Dropout\u003c\/i\u003e (2004) to the operatic narcissism of \u003ci\u003eMBDTF\u003c\/i\u003e, tells us about the march of pop music into the digital age and, by extension, the contradictions that define our cultural epoch. In a cloud-based and on-demand culture – a place of increasing virtualization, loneliness, and hyper-connectivity – West straddles this critical moment as what David Samuels of \u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic \u003c\/i\u003ecalls \"the first true genius of the iPhone era, the Mozart of contemporary American music.\" In the land of taking a selfie, honing a personal brand, and publicly melting down online, Kanye West is the undisputed king.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  Swallowing the chaos wrought by his public persona and digesting it as a grandiose allegory of self-redemption, Kanye sublimates his narcissism to paint masterstroke after masterstroke on \u003ci\u003eMBDTF\u003c\/i\u003e, a 69-minute hymn to egotistical excess. Sampling and ventriloquizing the pop music past to tell the story of its future – very much a tale of our culture's wish for unfettered digital ubiquity – \u003ci\u003eMBDTF\u003c\/i\u003e is the album of its era, an aesthetic self-acquittal and spiritual autobiography of our era’s most dynamic artist.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rarewaves","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56451534717302,"sku":"9781623565428","price":9.51,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0092\/7504\/8033\/files\/orig_27297633.jpg?v=1760462887","url":"https:\/\/www.rarewaves.com\/products\/9781623565428-kanye-wests-my-beautiful-dark-twisted-fantasy","provider":"Rarewaves.com","version":"1.0","type":"link"}