My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is an incredible record for a lot of reasons—Kanye upends about a million preconceptions about how a rap record should sound and function, and also it has some cool songs. However (SPOILER ALERT) it’s not my number one pick for 2010. On an intellectual level I think it’s fascinating and daring and all sorts of good things, but I never just want to put it on full blast and go completely nuts. I think that’s a requirement for my record of the year.
There are isolated spots on MBDTF that do make me feel that way. The big one is “Monster,” the weirdest trunk-banger of the year—Nicki Minaj’s verse is probably the best 80 seconds of rap music to happen in 2010.
Today a teaser clip from the video to “Monster” made the rounds. Considering how great the song is, Ye’s recent history of mind-boggling videos, and the breathless reactions filling my Twitter feed, I was pretty excited to click through to it.
Turns out that I am not among the “Monster” video’s early fans.
Here’s the clip that’s been going around: