In certain sense the end to Kanye West’s nearly impeccable “My Dark Twisted Fantasy” is bound to be interpreted as blasphemy. I won’t talk about all that, though. I’ll leave Gil Scott-Heron alone in his one bedroom in Spanish Harlem to stew if he must over old vinyl records and warm American beers. But he’s not stewing.
I just know he’s not. It’s a new day infinitely far from 125th and Lenox circa 1970. That’s for historians to sort out, though. On the other hand I guess in some ways not much has really changed at all. New problems replace old problems and some things last a very long time.
Gil Scott-Heron probably even likes Kanye. Shit, the dude probably hasn’t even listened to the record for all I know. I don’t want to talk about all that, though.
This is far from the most interesting or best song on the record. Its inclusion could be first mistaken for a bonus track but when it ends with the meager claps that originally met Gil Scott-Heron’s acerbic words, I wonder if it is not deeply purposeful for Kanye.
I really just want to talk about this strange ending translated into an impossibly ambitious struggle of blackness, celebrity, America, excess, entitlement, greed, art, blood, money, sex, and the will to power from which one might find deliverance. There are other things I’m missing, I’m sure. Still it is the will to power from which identity is formed and beginnings emerge that captivates me. Us living as we do upside down. Who will survive in America? Is this song as serious as it sounds? I really hope so.
(Kanye West: “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy”)
