You probably don’t think of Kanye West as a generous person, and with good reason. His newest album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, is the sound of a relentless perfectionist realizing something massive, warped, vicious, and all-encompassing, taking only a few seconds to breathe between his bombastic and gaudy orchestral productions. Leading up to the album, he made headlines not so much for the music he’d been making but for all-caps outbursts on his blog and on Twitter and the public equivalent, outbursts like his rant over Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the 2009 MTV VMAs.

Yet Kanye West spent several months before the realization of his Dark Twisted Fantasy releasing free music online through his GOOD Fridays series, offering teaser singles, B-sides, and other material every Friday from August through the end of January (with a few weeks missed following the album’s release). He used the service first to release a remix of the album’s first single, Power, which added new verses from Jay-Z and Swizz Beatz as well as a detour into C&C Music Factory’s “The Power” in its second half, then premiered “Monster,” “So Appalled,” “Devil in a New Dress,” and several other songs that ended up becoming part of the album.

Through this, West used the program on a few occasions to reveal what were essentially works in progress; the finished album versions of several songs ended up changed considerably from the versions that he released through GOOD Fridays, most notably the addition of Rick Ross’s verse to “Devil in a New Dress.” However, he also showed his seemingly long-absent goofball side by tackling projects such as a remix of Justin Bieber’s “Runaway Love” with Wu-Tang Clan member Raekwon, and later extended something of an olive branch to critics within Dipset by featuring Cam’ron and Jim Jones on year-ender “Christmas in Harlem.”

Users who followed him on Twitter would see West writing frantically on Friday nights about how he was running late and working to get something out for the series on several occasions, and many of the tracks that didn’t become part of the new album are utterly worth hearing, such as “Chain Heavy” (which features production from Tribe Called Quest MC Q-Tip), “Lord Lord Lord” (which prompted Mos Def to announce his now being signed to GOOD Music, West‘s record label that’s had successes with Common and John Legend, among others). Continue reading →