I bought six tracks from the MBDTF album, and I’m really enjoying most of them. I haven’t decided about some of the tracks yet.
The more I listen to songs from this album, the better it gets. It’s definitely moving right up there with my favorite albums of all time - and that includes all genres.
So, I’m looking to buy this, but want to use the Taylor Swift album art in my iTunes. Has anyone seen a good copy of the cover?
My googling doesn’t even turn up that it exists - was this just some merry hoaxster?
You know, according to Google, there are only the set number of covers (6 or something)-- but on Twitter, folks were reporting finding all kinds of things at their local stores (posting with pics). I don’t know if you’d be able to find a higher quality image, though.
Hmmm. Guess I’ll just keep my eyes open.
The physical copy has a window at the front and comes with some cards so you can decide which of the covers you want - none of them are of Taylor Swift and I’ve heard nothing official about there being a Swift cover. How could they even do that without breaching copyright on her album art? The window at the front makes it quite easy to just put your own image in there, so my instinct is that it’s fake.
Here is a list of samples used for the album:
01 Mike Oldfield – “In High Places” (Dark Fantasy)
02 The Turtles – “You Showed Me” (Gorgeous)
03 Cold Grits – “It’s Your Thing” (Power)
04 King Crimson – “21st Century Schizoid Man” (Power)
05 Continent No. 6 – “Afromerica” (Power)
06 Manfred Mann’s Earth Band – “You” (So Appalled)
07 Smokey Robinson – ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” (Devil In A New Dress)
08 Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth – “The Basment” (Runaway)
09 The Mojo Men – “She’s My Baby” (Hell Of A Life)
10 Black Sabbath – “Iron Man” (Hell Of A Life)
11 Aphex Twin – “Avril 14th” (Blame Game)
12 Bon Iver – “Woods” (Lost In The World)
13 Manu Dibango – “Soul Makossa” (Lost In The World)
14 Lyn Collins – “Think” (Lost In The World)
15 Gil-Scott Heron – “Comment #1″ (Lost In The World)
16 Backyard Heavies – “Expo ’83″ (Runaway)
17 Tony Joe White – “Stud-Spider” (Hell Of A Life)
The songs on MBDTF sound very different from the original samples, but you can hear some similarities. After hearing the source samples I don’t know how anyone could think that MBDTF was a hack job. No amateur would have used those samples the way Kanye did.
MBDTF is also topping every “top albums of the year” list I have read.
I’d assume they could call it parody and get away with it, as the colors were distorted in what I saw. That doesn’t mean they could necessarily escape the court of public opinion though.
I’m not really a rap/hip-hop person in general, but after hearing how this was a fantastically great artistic masterpiece of wonderful musical genius and so forth, I had to check it out.
And wtf, turns out I like Kanye. My favorites are “All of the Lights” and “Lost in the World”.
I listened to parts of Graduation, one of the previous albums, and didn’t like it nearly as much. It was a lot less musical, I thought. Like it was mostly rapping and not much singing or melody, which isn’t really my cup of tea. Was this one unusually musical for a Kanye album or are there others like it?
The album that came between Graduation and Dark Twisted Fantasy was called 808s & Heartbreak and I think it has some of his strongest melodies and songwriting - however, the musical concept was to use minimalist drums and heavy autotune to create a robotic, cold effect. If you can get past how odd it sounds at first (I quite like autotune in the right setting so I didn’t have a problem with it but I know lots of people do) it might be his best album ever as far as strong individual songs are concerned.
His debut The College Dropout strikes a nice balance between rapping and great melodies, but the style of that album - especially the production - is quite different to Dark Twisted Fantasy, Dropout is much lighter and less paranoid/claustrophobic.
Kanye flat-out admits that he can’t sing or dance, so you’re unlikely to find a lot of conventional “singing” on any of his albums - unless you get a guest spot from Rihanna. And I agree with multimediac17: While I don’t like AutoTune being used to make me think someone who can’t sing can actually hold a tune, using it the way Kanye did was pretty cool. Considering it was the first album after the death of his mom and a bad breakup, it makes sense artistically.