Sure, in a field of hedged bets and half-measures, lunatic excess is to be welcomed, but there are too many lazy lyrics, too many unnecessary guests (All of the Lights seems to feature everyone bar Brandon Flowers, Willie Nelson and MC Skat Kat), too many foot-dragging codas, too much dead-end self-absorption for this to live up to its billing.

īut it feels like many people are applauding the idea of the album, rather than the reality (or even just the idea of West – one review spent as much time discussing his Twitter feed as his music). If it walks like a masterpiece and it quacks like a masterpiece. Because West is, depending on what Lady Gaga's up to that week, the most interesting pop star in the world because his ego is as big as the Death Star because his first two albums were hip-hop landmarks because Twisted Fantasy is so overstuffed and overwhelming, it almost forces an awestruck response. It's always worth pausing for breath when hyperbolic music spawns hyperbolic prose. He says he's the best ergo, he is the best. West recently profiled himself for XXL magazine now it reads as if he is reviewing himself as well. The album's current score on review aggregator Metacritic is a whopping 98% at the time of writing. Other critics have described Kanye as 'coasting on heroic levels of dementia, pimping on top of Mount Olympus', producing 'a monument to self, to desire, to smashing limitations', and making 'the Sgt Pepper of hip-hop'. Pitchfork ( which awarded the site's first perfect 10.0 for a new album in years) congratulated West for 'taking his style and drama to previously uncharted locales, far away from typical civilisation'. It's not that West's effort is a dud like Be Here Now – in fact it's sporadically brilliant – but the critical rhetoric seems similarly dazzled by its scale and ostentation. Britpop's armageddon came to mind when I was reading reviews of Kanye West's fifth album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. British music critics of a certain vintage still shudder at the mention of Oasis' Be Here Now, a record that inspired five-star hyperbole far out of proportion to its modest virtues.

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