My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy received general acclaim from music critics.[128] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 94, based on 43 reviews, which indicates "universal acclaim".[128] Andy Gill of The Independent gave it five out of five stars and called it "one of pop's gaudiest, most grandiose efforts of recent years, a no-holds-barred musical extravaganza in which any notion of good taste is abandoned at the door".[129] Entertainment Weekly's Simon Vozick-Levinson commended West's "outrageously hedonistic lyrics" and stated "West has tricked out these tracks with sharper verses and grander instrumental interludes, then lined them up in a sequence that demands to be heard from start to finish [...] essential components of a soundly built structure—easily his most consistently compelling full-length since 2005′s Late Registration".[31] Los Angeles Times writer Ann Powers called its music "Picasso-like, fulfilling the Cubist mandate of rearranging form, texture, color and space to suggest new ways of viewing things".[38] Steve Jones of USA Today gave the album four out of four stars, calling it "an epic, adventurous aural mélange that easily outstrips anything he's done".[51] David Browne of Time dubbed it West's "most extravagant work [...] congested, constantly bustling", writing that it "reasserts the fact that few combine disparate elements as smoothly as West".[130] The Washington Post's Chris Richards called it his "masterpiece [...] pure pop bravura, with hip-hop's biggest ego torquing self-obsession into unapologetic new shapes".[131] Dan Vidal of URB stated "Kanye (much like Miles Davis) has the ability to bring out the strengths of his collaborators — squeezing out the essence of their artistic persona as highlights for the music that he creates".[132]
Kitty Empire of The Guardian criticized its lyrics regarding "women as ruthless money-grabbers", but called the album "herculean [...] a flawed near-masterpiece".[125] Despite noting an inconsistency in West's rapping, Allmusic editor Andy Kellman described the album as "a deeply fascinating accomplishment" in West's catalogue, stating "As fatiguing as it is invigorating, as cold-blooded as it is heart-rending, as haphazardly splattered as it is meticulously sculpted, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is an extraordinarily complex 70-minute set of songs. [...] As the ego and ambition swells, so does the appeal, the repulsiveness, and – most importantly – the ingenuity".[30] Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield gave it five out of five stars, citing it as West's best album and "his most maniacally inspired music yet, coasting on heroic levels of dementia, pimping on top of Mount Olympus [...] Nobody else is making music this daring and weird".[127] Giving the album four-and-a-half out of five stars, Sputnikmusic's Channing Freeman noted "a zest for life in these songs that is really quite beautiful" and viewed it as "the first album in which he's truly lived up to his potential in every way - as a rapper, as a lyricist, as a songwriter".[133] Jon Caramanica of The New York Times described it as "a startlingly maximalist take on East Coast rap traditionalism" and called West "a better rapper than he’s ever been".[126] The Village Voice's Sean Fennessey commented that "Kanye is rapping and singing better and with more tenacity than he ever has on Fantasy", while calling the album "a staggering, often breathtaking work [...] masterfully engineered and sequenced, each song bleeding over like some long night out into the hazy morning after".[33]
Anslem Samuel of XXL gave the album a maximum rating of "XXL" and praised it "Sonically and lyrically [...] intricately constructed tracks framing his heartfelt outbursts and honest inner reflections".[134] Alex Denney of NME called it "an utterly dazzling portrait of a 21st-century schizoid man".[43] Chris Martins of Spin noted its production as "loud and proud, but also poignant and gripping" and called the album "a sinister, orchestral, hugely grandiose affair that owes as much to the artist's self-aggrandizing ego as to the voracious id that would destroy it publicly".[41] Chicago Sun-Times writer Thomas Conner gave it four out of four stars and commented that West's "difficulty in communicating" is "pretty compelling on record".[49] Chicago Tribune writer Greg Kot perceived the album's feel as "a collision of opulence and emptiness" and complimented West's transparency, "his almost pathological allegiance to expressing his emotions, unfiltered [...] a curious mix of bravado and vulnerability".[44] Nitsuh Abebe of New York called the album "adventurous, fierce, and full of vitality", writing that "Its guiding principle seems to be to go in harder on every front: Be more opulent and arty, be more vicious and aggrieved, be more 'complicated' and self-lacerated".[135] Slant Magazine's Matthew Cole viewed it as a milestone in hip hop music and lauded its themes of "self-aggrandizement and self-effacement", writing that it "allows Kanye a thematic palette broad enough to confront his pride and anguish".[40] Pitchfork Media's Ryan Dombal called it "a hedonistic exploration into a rich and famous American id".[32] Giving it a 10 out of 10 rating, David Amidon of PopMatters complimented West's dichotomous themes and noted "there are few more human albums in hip-hop".[39]
