Does Kanye’s “Fantasy” Redeem Him of His Past Transgressions?

When you think of Kanye West, notorious incidents like interrupting Taylor Swift at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards, saying that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” at a 2005 telethon for Hurricane Katrina, or even any of his ridiculously entertaining tweets being put to New Yorker cartoons might pop into your head. It seems that he has almost become a parody of himself, exploiting his reputation of being an asshole over representing himself as a musician. Even in his song “Runaway” that he debuted at this year’s Video Music Awards, West boldly sings “Let’s have a toast for the douche bags,” basically as a middle finger to Taylor Swift’s performance on the now (in)famous interruption. (But is he really that affected if they were both singing about him anyway?)

West’s eagerly anticipated album “My Beautiful, Dark Twisted Fantasy” officially drops on Monday, November 22, but has already been leaked and reviewed throughout the internet. It has already caused a controversy with it’s album art, having been rejected from certain stores because of the George Condo cartoonic portrait of a naked Kanye being straddled by a naked winged female (apparently intended to be a phoenix), but is being renowned as “Kanye’s redemption” for its greatness. Even if the album really is that good, it is in no way modest. We’re not really forgiving Kanye for his behavior, but just accepting it as a trade off for entertaining music.

The album boasts an impressive list of featured artists, including Jay-Z, Rick Ross, John Legend, Bon Iver and Nicki Minaj just to name a few. It has undeniably catchy beats and the general sound varies pretty widely from etherial choir vocal backups strengthened with strong piano chords (on the track “Dark Fantasy”) to smooth, almost blues-y guitar riffs (on “Gorgeous”) to repetitive, rock drums (on “Power”), and that’s just the first three songs of a 13-track album.

It is a well developed piece of work that obviously took a lot of time and effort (and is definitely worth the listen), and Kanye uses this to back up himself. He isn’t trying to apologize for anything; in fact, he’s letting us know what kind of person he is even more, outrightly calling himself an asshole and acknowledging his power in media. He does try to reveal slightly vulnerable parts of himself, mainly through the later tracks “Blame Game” and “Lost in the World,” but he doesn’t outrightly work toward redeeming his image, and he doesn’t need to.

Does Kanye care that he’s stepped on anyone’s toes in the past? Does he embrace his douche-ery, or not really care at all what responses he gets from the public? Personally, I think it’s both. This album is, in some ways, a straight response to his controversies of the past and the strong public opinion of him, but in others just an exploration of creativity and self that produced a great piece of work. Sometimes we pay to much attention to everything besides this music, and whether you care for Kanye as a person or not (I certainly find him entertaining), you can’t deny how catchy these songs are.