Anthony Fantano's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" Review

About

Anthony Fantano's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" Review refers to a video by Anthony Fantano in which he reviews Kanye West's album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The video would go on to be one of Fantano's most infamous reviews to be uploaded to his channel due to the lukewarm rating given despite critical and fan praise towards the album, leading to largely negative reception to the video itself.

Origin

On November 22nd, 2010, rapper and artist Kanye West released his fifth studio album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy to widespread critical and fan acclaim. The album received a perfect 10 score from Pitchfork,^[1] three Grammy Awards for Best Rap Album, Best Rap Song, and Best Rap/Sung Collaboration; the latter two won with the song "All of the Lights"^[2], and a RateYourMusic score of 4.03/5 from over 27,000 user ratings, making it the highest-rated Kanye West album on the site.^[3] The album also holds a Metacritic score of 94/100.^[4]

On November 16th, 2010, music critic Anthony Fantano uploaded his review of the album to YouTube. While he praised the production and lyricism from Kanye, he felt that the album relied too much on Kanye's persona, which he felt ambivalent towards. He concluded the review by rating the album a light to decent 6 out of 10. Since publishing, the video has received over 770,000 views in the past 9 years but was also the subject of negative backlash with over 20,000 dislikes in comparison to its 7,000 likes.

Spread

Volksgeist and Dead End Hip Hop Guest Videos

During the first 2 weeks of May 2019, Fantano brought on a number of guests to upload to his channel as he would be on tour during this time.^[5] Two videos that were notable during this period were uploaded by Volksgest and Dead End Hip Hop. Volksgeist's video, uploaded on May 9th, 2019 (shown below, left) focused on how MBDTF grew popular among indie music fans. The next day, on May 10th, Dead End Hip Hop's video was uploaded, which was an analysis and discussion on the review itself and the backlash it caused (shown below, right). Both of these videos were met warmly by Fantano's audience, who proceeded to joke about them and their relation to the original review.

Redux Review

Since the publishing of the initial review, there has been a large number of requests to re-review the album due to perceived unfairness in regards to the way Fantano discussed the album. It has also become a well-known joke within Fantano's fanbase as well as Kanye's fanbase.

On January 9th, 2020, Fantano uploaded a redux review of the album, in celebration of reaching 2 million subscribers and due to re-reviewing Kanye West's album The Life of Pablo after it had received a number of updates and revisions since its initial release. It was also a decade after his original review, and the album had generally cemented its place in music as one of the more ambitious releases of the 2010s.

In the redux review, Fantano concluded that the album started strong but ended weakly, though it was made up partially by the features and production. Describing it as overrated, in a word, the album was rated a strong 5 to a light 6 out of 10, deviating little from the original score he gave when he uploaded his original review a decade ago. Within 48 hours of uploading, the video received over 480,000 views, 31,000 likes, and 12,000 dislikes.

Various Examples

Related Memes

You Gave [album] A [score] But Gave MBDTF A 6

You Gave… is a common snowclone comment in regards to comparing one album's score to that of Fantano's rating of Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The snowclone also gained traction when Fantano gave both Kendrick Lamar's DAMN. and Lil Pump's self-titled mixtape a 7. Other albums of note that are seen in comments like this include ScHoolboy Q's Blank Face LP which received a 5, and Lil Yachty's Lil Boat mixtape which received a 7.

Search Interest

External References