It is the culmination of all his work prior, and it is the breakthrough of thought and narrative that had been building up in a genius since he crashed his car and rapped about it through a wired-shut mouth.

This is where “ My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy ” enters. The aforementioned “ 808s & Heartbreak” caught the supernova of a celebrity, a beautiful and tragic explosion triggered by the death of his greatest love, and the realization - whether true or just a wishful thought - that he would never sacrifice a real life for the fame and flashing lights. “ Graduation” (2007 ) captured the end of a transformation for the hip-hop king - a shedding of the humility that comes with being unproven and the donning of an attitude shaped by fame and status. “Late Registration” (2005) found an up-and-coming star musing on the morality and meaning of what his life was becoming, having accomplished the goal of fame but trying to balance it with who he was before. “ The College Dropout” (2004) saw an unknown artist with globe-trotting aspiration s and a five-beats-a-day-for-three-summers drive, r apping about his desire to abandon the life of a retail employee and fly off on a spaceship. One thing that is inarguably true about any Kanye record is that it expresses exactly where his head is at the time of creation. Drawing from the pain that he caused to others and to himself, Kanye fashioned his magnum opus. During the summer prior to the November release of “ MBDTF ,” Kanye and Amber Rose ended their two-year relationship - West’s highest-profile relationship by that point. “808s” was the transitional album from “Old Kanye” to “New Kanye,” with “ MBDTF ” completing the evolution. Though he had released “ 808s & Heartbreak” (2008) shortly after his mother’s death, “ MBDTF ” was really the first piece of work that found Kanye in a different stage of his life. Even former President Barack Obama weighed in. A piece of pop culture that can be viscerally recalled using a mere four-word quote, “Imma let you finish,” this moment simultaneously elevated Kanye to his greatest celebrity and sunk him to his lowest approval rating. You almost definitely know about Kanye’s Hennessey-aided stage storming of Taylor Swift’s MTV Video Music Awards acceptance speech in 2009. Luckily, context is abundant for “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” (MBDTF) (2010). As always, context is needed to back up such a bold, superlative claim. If this sentence makes you recoil, then allow the rest of this article to make up for it. It has been a full decade since Kanye West unleashed the greatest album of all time.

Kanye west dark fantasy cover