WHO WILL SURVIVE IN AMERICA?

Colin Powells, Austin Powers
Lost in translation with a whole fuckin' nation
They say I was the abomination of Obama's nation
Well, that's a pretty bad way to start the conversation

On the eve of an extremely consequential American election, I thought I’d give Kanye West’s 21st-century maximalist masterpiece, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, another spin to see how it holds up fourteen years after its release on November 22, 2010.

Considering it was made during Obama’s first term, it’s amazing how prescient it now seems in capturing the greatly divided and fragmented, Megalopolis-style America of 2024. When Kanye first created the album, it served both as a biographical statement of his life as a celebrity and an "artist terrible" and as a broader commentary on America’s limitations, facing the headwinds of its late-stage capitalist existential crisis.

Now, on the precipice of another pivotal moment for both the United States and the West at large, it will be interesting to consider, in the words of Gil Scott-Heron, whom Kanye samples on the album: Who Will Survive in America.

You're my devil, you're my angel
You're my heaven, you're my hell
You're my now, you're my forever
You're my freedom, you're my jail
You're my lies, you're my truth
You're my war, you're my truce