It’s easy to criticize Kanye West. Unfortunately, it’s even easy to hate Kanye West. He’s probably the most controversial person in America, excluding politics. If all you know about him is what you see in the news, he’s ostensibly temperamental, whiny, jealous, angry, and I have no doubt there are many who would call him racist. And on some level, some of that might be true. If you listen to what he says in his music, however, you come to understand the man behind the curtain, and how he became this way. He quit college and risked everything on a music career, so what else could he do besides have ultimate confidence in himself and his product? People who go halfway go home. Unless they have rich parents.

So yes, he’s cocky as hell. That’s established. The question is, does he have the credentials to back it up? The answer is a resounding yes. Aside from being an amazing producer and beat maker, I would argue that at this point he’s smoother and more refined than ever. Not to mention louder than ever. After the whole Taylor Swift fiasco, Kanye sort of went into self-exile mode, and rethought his whole approach. And he also found Twitter. Now, instead of blowing up award shows, he just blows up peoples Twitter home pages.

But I digress! My point as far as his credentials go is this: Kanye West works harder than any musician in the mainstream. A few months ago, he started putting out GOOD Friday songs every Friday. Each one of the songs was extremely fleshed out, often with three or more guests on one track. The beats were consistently incredible, it was something great to look forward to each week. His live performances recently have been high production affairs with tons of effort put into them, and then there was his short film, a 34 minute spectacle that involved a Phoenix exploding down from the sky and becoming his girlfriend, as well as the now infamous giant Michael Jackson head. And then he had a whole album coming out, too! I think we can all agree that with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye’s back and more aggressive than ever. The disc is composed of about half GOOD Friday songs, which is kinda unfortunate, considering how long some of these songs have been out. It takes some of the freshness out of the album, however I recognize this is largely due to being spoiled from Kanye’s generosity.

Even though they’ve been out for a while, the GOOD Friday songs are still amazing. “Power,” the song that started his comeback, is kind of the thesis statement for the album. Combative and upbeat, Kanye lays the heat on SNL as well as others that have taken shots at him. “Monster,” the finest example of the GOOD Friday outings in my opinion, appears on the album, and is almost as fresh as ever. Even if only Jay Z and Kanye were on that song it would be amazing, but Nicki Minaj has an unbelievable verse, and then Justin Vernon of Bon Iver shows up in a fantastic outro. The beat for “Monster” is so simple, but so perfect, and only slightly better than “So Appalled,” a brooding slower track in which six different artists tell us how “This shit is fuckin’ ridiculous.” It’s more than a solid song, and a little bit funny. “Devil In A New Dress” is a song that I personally would’ve switched out with “Christian Dior Flow,” another GOOD Friday song that I think is vastly better, but I get why Kanye kept “Devil” in. It has a more laid back feel that would’ve been missing in the album if it were left out. Then there’s “Runaway,” the “toast to the assholes.” He got a bit indulgent with this one… I thought the intro was a bit long, then I heard the outro. But it’s still a good song.

The rest of the songs, thankfully, are new. The album starts out with “Dark Fantasy,” which features Nicki Minaj doing her silliest British accent, which leads to a lovely uplifting multi-vocal piece, which further leads to probably one of the coolest beats Kanye has ever featured on an album. “Gorgeous” features Kid Cudi and Raekwon, and has Kanye doing an almost spoken word kinda rapping in the verses. “Blame Game” has John Legend soulfully serenading over a wistful melody, and Kanye’s voice modulating pitch as he raps, perhaps indicating the different emotions he’s going through. And then, all of a sudden the song turns into a Chris Rock skit for like three minutes. It’s pretty hilarious for a minute or two, but after listening to the song a few times gets a bit old. It speaks to Kanye’s influence that Chris Rock would just hop on a Kanye song. It’s part of the influence that other artists had on this album, that I’ll talk about later. “Lost In The World” samples Bon Iver’s “Woods,” a four line, autotuned vocal melody that Kanye tweaked a bit, and then put a beat behind. This song bleeds into “Who Will Survive In America,” which features Gil Scott-Heron’s “Comment No. 1″ over a bongo beat. It’s a piece that I’m sure it will divide listeners, but is powerful nonetheless.

For this album, Kanye bought out a studio in Hawaii for an indefinite amount of time, and practically lived there. He invited a long list of the industry’s best talent to help him form the album, and they served as a sort of “committee” to which he could pitch ideas and get honest input from. Hell, for just the song “All of the Lights,” Kanye had Alicia Keys, John Legend, The-Dream, Fergie, Kid Cudi, Elton John, Ryan Leslie, Charlie Wilson, Tony Williams, Elly Jackson, and Rihanna singing parts, but layered, so you can’t make out their individual voices. If you want to see the full list of people who influenced the album, go here. With this in mind, you can really understand how this epic album got its sprawling variety of sounds, tones, and vibes. It’s an interesting experiment that Kanye undertook, and it obviously greatly paid off, as this album has songs all over the spectrum, with a large number of talented guests and a consistent quality standard. It’s kind of funny that even though there was an enormous amount of people involved in the making of this album, this is perhaps his most intimate material yet, as far as lyrical content goes. It’s an interesting duality to hear, one of insecurity and bravado, uncertainty and cockiness. It’s one that West practically pioneered, and it’s when he’s at his best. That’s why Kanye is so much better than everyone else out there in hip-hop right now. He takes chances, he’s always hungry, and he puts his heart and soul into everything he does. Basically, he doesn’t afraid of anything (not a typo, look it up noob). That’s why the biggest names in hip-hop line up to work with him, and it’s why his music is continuously the best in the genre.