While his first two masterworks presented a complex and complete portrait of a man, you likely bought The College Dropout and Late Registration on CD and could resolve the contradictions and flaws by cutting out the skits and skipping the last couple of tracks. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy impresses with its impenetrable wholeness. Befitting a record that owes its creation to a mythical, Dream-Team recording process on a Hawaiian island, there’s one way in and no guaranteed means of escape: unusually lengthy songs impervious to fast-forwarding are filled with guitar solos, extended outros, surprise guest verses, and French horns. It's post-Twitter, pre-Vine and Snapchat; the decade's information overload with a vinyl-era attention span, forcing you to acknowledge and appreciate every stumble on the way to an emotional and musical breakthrough.
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