It is common knowledge at this point that Kanye West is one of the greatest artists of the 21st century. With numerous commercial hits and street anthems under his belt he is undoubtedly the most decorated rapper of this generation. And a large part of this acclaim comes from his 2010 effort, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. This project is widely considered to be the greatest rap album of the 2010’s and maybe even of all time. However, the incredible story behind this amazing record starts a few years before its release.
It all started at the 2009 VMA’s. This iconic image of Kanye West going inside the auditorium with a bottle of Hennessy and Amber Rose to his side. It was evident to everyone that Kanye West was going to do something crazy that night. And he did, he stormed the stage while Taylor Swift was getting an award. The backlash after this incident was incredible, Kanye was rebuked by the entire music community. He lost multiple endorsement deals, his upcoming tour was boycotted and then canceled. With his back against the wall, Kanye left the states and went to Europe to start a new life. He quit music and started interning for Louis Vuitton. While in Rome he was introduced to the world of high end art and art collecting. It was at this time that he met George Condo.
George Condo is a self described artificial realist. According to him he attempts to create “the realistic representation of that which is artificial.” Essentially, he aims to create portrait type art that is intentionally unrealistic and cartoon like. Similarly to Basquiat, his paintings focus on the surreal in order to expand the genre of canvas painting. And after making Kanye’s acquaintance he was eager to work with Kanye on his comeback album. As mentioned earlier, Kanye was unanimously disliked, and so his only chance of ever being in good public standing was to make literally the greatest rap album of his career, anything short of perfection would see my panned endlessly by the public and critiques.
Kanye West set up camp in Hawaii early in 2009, and started flying out artists, producers, creatives, and ballerinas to help him with his upcoming album. After a straight year of work, the final product was ready and all that needed to be done was add a fitting album cover. The album has a wide range of sounds, from violins, to guitar and drum solos, a wide variety of synths and 808’s as well as iconic samples from Avril 14th, Comment No. 1. and many others. Everything about the album sounds like luxury. This was the inspiration that George Condo was given as he went to work on the album cover. He made 3 covers the now iconic phoenix cover, the “King’s Head” cover, the ballerina cover, as well as various other alternate visuals for the physical release.
Each cover represents something important about the album, the main cover that is now censored on every public release depicts Kanye in bed with a Phoenix. This cover represents the obscenity and corruption of morality that comes with celebrity. The ballerina cover symbolizes the European standard of beauty, which is proper, prissy, and white, and how Kanye wants to take this beauty and reappropriate it. The cover with Kanye’s head is symbolic of his public character assassination after the incident at the VMA’s.
As his album was released, the ballerina cover was chosen for the physical releases due to the lack of censorship needed for that cover. For digital releases, Kanye had the Phoenix cover pixelated as to avoid another backlash. And the rest is history, Kanye’s album was received with open arms by the public and he was able to move past his public outburst. His success with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy shows that no matter how much the public dislikes you, no matter how badly your being criticized, the only way to retaliate is to put your head down and make your best work.
