People are falling all over themselves for this album. Rolling Stone gave it a 5/5 - they last bestowed that honour on a new release in 2006. Pitchfork, that bastion of online music journalism, gave it a 10/10 - something it hadn’t done for a new album since 2002. Guys, I’ve got some bad news and some good news. Bad news: I’m not gonna be disagreeing with them. The good news: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is the best album of 2010.

I got this record the day it dropped. It spent at least two weeks in constant rotation on my iPod. On my mobile phone. On my computer. In my flippin’ kitchen, even. Hooked. It wouldn’t have been a good time to write a review right after buying it, then. I chose to procrastinate… err, delay writing this review, until after the initial fanboy enthusiasm had faded away. There was just one tiny flaw in the plan. It hasn’t.

It’s not been a particularly great year for music in general. Justin Bieber is still a chart-topper. Ke$ha (aka John Travolta) made a killing with her toejam dance music. Katy Perry hasn’t taken her top off. And Lady Gaga hasn’t died yet. Damn. It hasn’t been that much better for hip hop either. Eminem’s Recovery was a solid album, but like last year’s Relapse it was still way below his pre-hiatus standards. Drake did his thing. If you count Gorillaz’ Plastic Beach as a hip hop album, there was that. Lil’ Wayne spent most of the year in jail, and the hip hop community spent most of the year repeating the phrase “Free Weezy.” Not so exciting. Big Boi had a pretty strong release in the first half of 2010 - it sold well, and got good reviews, but I’m guessing it’s already faded from most people’s playlists. Oh yeah, there was a recession on too, that wasn't fun. We didn't have much to celebrate. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy came in and made us forget about all that.

So why is Twisted Fantasy such a good hip hop album? The formula for great hip hop is pretty simple, I think. Catchy beats and sound production - always a Kanye strength; clever, inventive lyrics (check); good collaborations (see below); and two or three entertaining interludes.

You knew this album was gonna make it when the best lines were popping up on your friends’ Facebook statuses. Even if you don’t have the album, you know the lines already : “…too many Urkels on your team/that’s why your Winslow,” or “…if you fall on the concrete/that’s your asphalt” or “I met this girl on Valentine's Day/f****d her in May/She found out about April/so she chose to march.” Heh.

Kanye even managed to get the “Caribbean” superstars, Rihanna and Nicki Minaj, sounding good on their tracks - ‘All of the Lights,’ ‘Monster’ - Minaj’s rip-it-up verse on “Monster” was one of the highlights of the album, and of the year in rap generally. This, by the way, is coming from someone who’s less than impressed by her "Trinidadian-ness". We heard a return to form from Jay-Z on ‘Monster’ and ‘So Appalled’ after last year’s mediocre Blueprint 3.

But if this were just a good hip hop record, it wouldn’t be getting the amount of attention it’s deservedly received. Casual hip hop fans (and non-fans) wouldn’t have been lapping it up as they have done. The immense hype, which Kanye himself helped to stoke, meant that the album had to transcend the genre and meet general approval to be considered a success. Lucky for him, though, it worked out spectacularly. This is pop music, in the best sense of the word.

So why is Twisted Fantasy such a good pop album? For one thing, it’s big. The scale of the production meant huge budgets, huge staff, and major production. You can tell where it went. The deluxe version contains a 35-minute movie - entertaining, crazy, beautiful. Technically, the diversity of samples he used on the album showed that the rigidities of genre mean little to Kanye. His intention now is to make music for everybody - and that’s what I mean by ‘pop music.’ He sampled Black Sabbath on ‘Hell of a Life’ (“no more drugs for me/p***y and religion is all I need”). He linked up with folk-music darling Bon Iver for ‘Lost in the World.’ Imagine my happy surprise earlier this year, when I saw the video for ‘Power’: “ooh, nice video… hey, he sampled King Crimson! Nice.”

Let’s forget about 808s and Heartbreak for a bit, since Auto-tune and I have a fairly frosty relationship. Thinking back to College Dropout, Late Registration and Graduation, you can see a definite progression in his writing, his humour, his outlook. Between then and now, however, it’s not been a progression so much as a a Carl Lewis-style long jump into music legend. The wit has always been there, the bravado too (“hard to be humble/when you stuntin’ on a JumboTron”). But now there’s a well-honed self-awareness to his lyrics, the product of a surprising amount of introspection. His genuine affection mourning for his idol (“Somethin’ wrong/I hold my head/MJ gone/our n***a dead”) - is touching. Strip away the collaborators, the beats, the samples, and the core of this Kanye’s internal battle with his own personality. On the one hand, you have the king-of-the-world Kanye, on ‘Monster,’ ‘Gorgeous’ and ‘So Appalled.’ On the other, in ‘Power,’ 'Lost in the World,' ‘See Me Now’ and ‘Runaway,’ the king worries that he has no clothes. By the end, he realises that he’ll never be the nice guy, but why mope? “Let’s have a toast to the douchebags!” As a bastard par excellence, I can only say cheers to that.

I’m not sure how to classify ‘Who Will Survive in America?’ - is it a song? an interlude? a poem? Whatever it is, this bit of sampled spoken word artistry from Gil Scott-Heron is powerful. A soulful poet/writer/musician, Scott-Heron has a strong 2010 album of his own, I’m New Here - definitely worth a listen.

But it’s not just about the music, of course. With Kanye West, it can’t be. So of course there was his idiotic Taylor Swift epic fal
To interject/make one’s presence known/hang around when one is completely unwanted/uninvited; sometimes bordering on sycophantic. at the VMAs - the drunken jump-in that spawned a billion t-shirts. Of course there was President Obama calling him a jackass. Of course there were the controversial ‘Good Friday’ free track releases. Of course the album cover got censored in some places. Of course he sent a girl some naughty pictures. But looking back on West’s year now, it would’ve been more surprising if all those things didn’t happen. He’s the kind of guy who could make a spectacle of napping in a straitjacket. As we’ve learnt from Twisted Fantasy, it’s just how he does things, it’s how he gets through life. Is the douchebaggery essential to the music? Yeah, probably. That’s why we put up with it. He’s saved music in 2010. Thank Yeezy.

Oh yeah, the interludes. Or specifically, Chris Rock’s bit at the end of “Blame Game.” If you haven’t heard it yet, you need to. Worth the price of the album by itself. Thanks to Kanye, every time I hear the word 'reupholstery' I will think of… that thing I already spend 95% of my time thinking about.

Buy My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy for US$4.99. Or get the Deluxe edition, with extra tracks and the 35-minute film.

Read more from Robert Martinez http://www.crimesagainsthumility.tumblr.com or follow him on Twitter @elrob