As of this review, Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is the most recent album to receive treatment in Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 book series. Given the album’s near universal critical acclaim and Kanye’s broad notoriety, it is surely no mistake to think it deserves some level of attention. Kirk Walker Graves book promises a “theory of Kanye West” (8). It must be said that it is somewhat unclear what sort of theory this would be: psychological, sociological? Most likely it would fall in the interdisciplinary purview of “cultural studies.” Yet Graves approaches Kanye through no sophisticated theoretical lens. Instead, Kanye receives here an adoring fan’s treatment. From an intellectual perspective, Graves is very lightly armed to take on Kanye: he employs a middlebrow psychological framework, roughly Freud minus anything “murky” (as Graves himself labels Freudian psychoanalytic theory). Reference to Christopher Lasch’s 1979 The Culture of Narcissism, might arouse hopes for some deeper treatment; alas the insight mined from that book comes from its title: we are living in a culture of narcissism, and Kanye is its representative. And that, essentially, is our theory of Kanye: he is a narcissist. This is surely the most boring claim that could possibly be made about Kanye, not because it is obviously true, but because everybody thinks it is true, and the book makes no effort to look into whether this might be a crafted artistic affectation (perhaps it just isn’t) or to probe at any depth its evolving cultural significance. Instead Graves quickly moves on to further superficial observations such as “the most appealing and appalling parts of Kanye’s persona has [sic] always been the doubleness of his ego – a weirdly complicated childish streak that charms and disgusts in the space of a single gesture” (34).

The book is broken down into two parts. The first part is a sort of prelude, presenting Kanye’s career preceding the titular album, including some GQ-level observations about his notorious claim about George W. Bush and the Taylor Swift incident, then treatments of albums leading up to MBDTF. Graves even devotes an entire chapter (albeit of one page) to lauding 808s and Heartbreaks, generally thought to be Kanye’s weakest studio album. Though the album may have its merits, Graves bald assertion that it is “an avant electropop masterpiece and a frozen reflecting pool of self-doubt” does not add up to an argument on its behalf. But then, the book contains no real arguments, and its appreciations are repetitive and rife with psychobabble: “Gorgeous” (a track on MBDTF) sounds like “a dance craze for brooding obsessive-compulsives”; “Monster” (another track) is a “schizophrenic horror show.”

The second half of the book is a track-by-track treatment of MBDTF. In addition to throwaway appreciations like those just cited, it contains some useful information about the origins of the samples Kanye uses and some discussion of the lyrics. Still, the information could be easily tracked down by anyone who had the interest, and the insights into the lyrics, again, do not go very deep. The book gives the impression of being written quickly, particularly as there is no evidence that Graves did any research for this work beyond diligently reading his Facebook feed. The sources he relies on are prominent discussions of Kanye in The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, and the on-line music site Pitchfork; all this without any interesting critical reflection. Although readers of this series might not be looking for anything intellectually heavy, they might have hoped for some insight, which, regrettably, they will not find here.