Nailed it.

Goblin was my album of the year too

as in held back

SUNDAY, I’m pretty pumped to see dr dre, at the drive in, an beirut, BUT THEN WHAT? Any suggestion? Nothing looks good on sunday.

The White Album

Skeletal Lamping

Panda Bear – Tomboy: 49:56
Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues: 49:53
Does anyone else obsess over song/album lengths? For over a decade of buying/listening to music I have always paid attention to the lengths of songs and albums. I love how that book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die lists the album length. Kid A was 49:57. Does anyone else find this interesting or have thoughts to add? Other than the fact that those two albums will get the most rotation for the near future and are the same length.

I think all rap music videos should be like this because the focus is the lyrics.

I think this is a great column and a great inaugural entry choice. Look at the traffic! Bravo!

“All style, no substance” & “All surface, no core”. These are two things I’ve always said about Kanye West. I’ve always loved the production but hated everything else. However, I’m going to argue the opposite. I think MBDTF is the first time Kanye has really had a strong focused core with some substance while maintaining flawless production.

Doesn’t ‘Power’ legitimize the excess of style and surface that came before this point due to the fact that he is actually saying something about it? Power as a theme is an appropriate choice for anyone looking for a core to this album. It is also the strongest example of unified theme and content on this album. Without power, how could a rapper spend so much money on an album and assemble such an all-star cast of players?

Is there any other example in contemporary music of such a massive team of collaborators working together on a song as well as All Of The Lights? Nobody’s appearance on that track is superfluous, and each contribution is impressive. Furthermore, the album makes use of each feature player evenly throughout. Most artists appear prominently and evenly twice on the album and most instrumental flourishes appear twice also (ex. The “look at you!” MPC2000 voice samples mirror the “you don’t see! [?]” voice samples in Power). The album also opens and closes with proper spoken word bookends. All this adds a clear sonic unity to the album.

But, impressively, the lyrical themes of the album appear and build upon each other throughout the dark twisted journey. Some of the ‘lights’ appear in Hell of a Life in a humorous way (“fuck with the lights on”). Despite the humor or awkwardness of this song’s breakdown, I think it builds on the lights theme. Blame Game also uses “all of the lights” in its lyrics. This is just one example. A lot of the lyrical themes reappear and build upon each other (sleepy hallow, the devil, pussy, religion, ect.).

And there are plenty of impressive verses (Gorgeous & Monster especially) from Kanye on here. I’m not saying he wrote it all. But he assembled the whole thing flawlessly. I would love to hear more rap with this much focus and money put into it.

I hope you read this reply post Brandon and I hope it makes you reconsider some of your feelings about MBDTF. This album could be an appropriate inaugural entry candidate for a future column a couple months from now titled ‘Triple Take’.