The album’s opener is the almost-titular Dark Fantasy, a spanning piece of postmodern hip-hop that explores hedonism, money, success and popular culture, while questioning the fulfilment of such endeavour. For all of his visceral brashness, there was a vulnerability, too – a Fantasy it may have been, but it was a world built on honesty, however warped the narrative may have been. This was a shared space where West could brag to have fallen in love with a pornstar over a Mojo Men sample on Hell Of A Life, before borrowing Aphex Twin’s Avril 14th and an extended Chris Rock monologue to unguardedly depict the breakdown of that very relationship in Blame Game. For every Power, there was a Lost In The World, for every Monster, a Runaway. At almost seventy minutes long, it’s a sweeping, grandiose confessional, an intricately crafted portrait of every inch of Kanye’s psyche. For all of the accuracy in the adjectives that were fired into the public conversation, they were, still, second-hand observations. Here was a man many claimed to know and understand following his 2009 VMA’s controversy arrogant, brash, obnoxious, crazy, whatever. It showed him at his most inquisitive, not just with the themes, textures and influences of his music, but with himself as an artist – and human being. It’s Kanye West, one of the final purveyors of the album as a collective entity, at the peak of his expansive creative powers. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is a perfect record.

Kanye west dark fantasy tracklist