2. The Album The fifth album by Kanye West, MBDTF was highly anticipated by all due to West’s hype-building tactics. In the run up to it’s release, West launched a scheme known as GOOD Fridays where he released a completely free new track each Friday, accompanied with a picture which contained a colour desaturated artistic photograph with the song’s title and contributing artists superimposed. Via Twitter, he also announced some of the GOOD Friday songs would be on the album, but not which ones. The covers looked a little like this:
3. The Album The album was conceived during West's self-imposed exile in Oahu, Hawaii, following a period of legal and public image controversy amid an overworked mental state at the time, including his (understandable) outburst at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. Once released in November, West went all out with promotions, releasing the first single POWER, which had already been partially leaked on the internet. More impressively, West also wrote, directed and starred in a 30 minute film called Runaway which opens with the first track off the album and includes snippets from the whole album as well. A series of interviews, radio appearances and live performances ensured that the album sold as many copies as possible.
4. Production Kanye recorded the album mainly in Avex Recording Studio in Honolulu, Hawaii during his self-imposed exile as well as supplementary recording sessions taking place in California and New York. Whilst in the Avex studio, West had booked out the studio’s three session rooms indefinitely in order to work on his album. Constantly experimenting and creating, West contacted and experimented with all of the following artists during the album’s creation, with only a small number of them making the final cut: Raekwon, The RZA, Pusha T, Rick Ross, Charlie Wilson, Big Sean, Prynce Cy Hi, Swizz Beats, Dwele, Nicki Minaj,T.I., Drake, Common, Jay-Z, Eminem, Lil Wayne, John Legend, Fergie, Rihanna, The Dream, Ryan Leslie, Elton John, M.I.A, Justin Vernon, Seal, Beyonce Knowles, Kid Cudi, Mos Def Santigold, Alicia Keys, Elly Jackson and Tony Williams. The album also features a lengthy monologue at the end of Blame Game from none other than American comedian Marty the Zebra from Madagascar.
5. Production The total money used for Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Roc-A-Fella totalled to: $3000000
6. Distribution The album is being distributed by The Island Def Jam Music Group, a subsidiary of Roc-A-Fella Recordings which in turn is a subsidiary of UMG. It has been distributed in over 40 countries including Sweden, France, Mexico, Germany, Belgium, Spain, and the Netherlands.
7. Exhibition As of January 30, 2011 the album has sold 981,000 copies in America alone and is a certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America, meaning it’s sold over a million copies. It is available both physically and from iTunes, Amazon, etc. The physical album comes with a red cover like the one shown below and the picture can be changed to any of the five on seen on the first slide. The picture below was actually banned from certain record stores and this inspired west to use an interchangeable style. All the paintings were made by artist George Condo who after listening to West’s music, both old and new for hours on end, painted eight or nine different potential cover arts with five being selected for the final product.
8. Horizontal and Vertical integration Universal Media Group (big scary company) Roc-A-Fella Recordings (label that released the album) The Island Def Jam Music Group (distributors) G.O.O.D. Music (West’s record label)
