My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

How Kanye West made one of the best album's of all time

September 13th 2009- MTV VMA Awards

Taylor Swift has just won the award for the Best Female Video, midway through her acceptance speech Kanye West decides to get up on stage, take the mic off her, and begins stating that although Taylor Shift had a good music video, Beyoncé had one of the greatest music videos of all time and should have won the award. Kanye was already going to be the media headlines for walking across with Amber Rose in one hand and a bottle of Hennessey in the other. Yet he was able to top it by taking away the 19-year-old Taylor Swift's moment to rant. The reaction of the audience was shocked, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé both had no idea what he was doing and watched on in disbelief. What followed was a media massacre. The hate for Kanye West had reached its pinnacle. The most infamous was from Jay Leno questioning Kanye on his late-night show about what his mum would think of him. This question clearly rocked Kanye and made him question where he was in his life responding "I need to analyse how I'm gonna make it through the rest of this life".

Kanye had lost his mother 2 years prior due to a medical accident, this was clearly life-altering (as it would be for anyone) but especially Kanye due to how she died and how sudden it all occurred. A few months after this Kanye and his then-fiancée Alexis Phifer split up after a 5-year relationship. Following this series of events, it would be completely normal for an artist to take a break from making music but not Kanye. Since 2007 Kanye had not stopped creating music, stating after his outburst at the MTV VMA Awards that he was overworked. Kanye had to cancel his upcoming tour with Lady Gaga due to the negative press.

Self-Imposed Exile

Kanye decided to move to Hawaii in 2009 to disconnect from the rest of the world. He wanted to get away from all the hate and just focus on what he did best, making music. This was not the first time Kanye had done something like this, he had apparently created "5 beats a day for 3 summers" while producing for Jay-Z. He created a song called Through the Wire while having a broken jaw and in the hospital following a car accident. He is a man of incredible dedication and focus on his work and he wanted to get back to that.

Kanye spent a reported $3 million on creating this album making it one of the most expensive albums of all time, he would fly in the best producers, rappers and singers over to Hawaii to record with him in secret. Kanye west had rented three AVEX Recording Studio rooms simultaneously for 24 hours a day to work on this album. He would work on a different song in each room and if he ever hit a creative wall with one of them he would switch rooms to work on another song. Kanye didn't have a full night's sleep during this time taking 90-minute power naps in a studio chair. He employed two private chefs to cook for him, one for hot food and one for cold.

The whole crew would have breakfast together in the morning talking about the previous day, and what the plan was for the current day in terms of how they plan on making the music better. They then worked out together and played basketball together. After that they would go to the studio at 4pm and stay there working on music until 4am, nap, wake up then repeat the process. The point of this was to focus the whole crew on the objective of making the best music possible. Kanye West famously put "studio rules" on the wall to prevent any leaking of his music (which didn't work by the way), after which he began recording in hotel rooms for his next album with Jay-z Watch The Throne.

For this album, Kanye wanted to focus in on his rapping skill by increasing his time writing prior to recording the songs. He had much more involvement with artists that featured on the album to create the songs just like he wanted. Famously on the song Runaway, Kanye wanted Pusha T to rewrite his verse to make it seem as if he was the most egotistical man he could imagine. Pusha T did this but felt uncomfortable with it due to his own personal problems at the time. The album also gained Nicki Minaj a lot of praise for her lyrical ability on the song Monster having arguably the best verse on a song that featured Kanye West, Rick Ross and Jay-Z.

Kanye was feeling a lot of the weight of being a celebrity and that’s what the album explores. Themes of the album include excess, wealth, celebrity status and romance. A lot of the album shows Kanye at his very worst describing how egotistical he has become with the status he has gained due to becoming a celebrity. He felt like the media (and the world as a whole) had given up on him as a musician. He was mentally at one of his lowest points and as a result looked deep within himself to make music he cared about, to stop listening to the media and focus on his thoughts.

The Redemption

The album received critical acclaim when it was released, it is considered one of music's greatest comebacks. It is ranked the best album of the 2010s from major music magazines such as Billboard and Rolling Stone. The album success publicly redeemed Kanye and had overshadowed many of the media stories regarding his celebrity family life, controversial public statements, mental health issues, and non-musical ventures. Following the release of the album Kanye West has stated that artists should have no fear when it comes to the craft and say/do whatever they want. Kanye was able to apologise for his actions while simultaneously ignoring his doubters and as a result, created an album that has gone down in history.