Alongside several free songs released through West's weekly GOOD Fridays series, he supported My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy with four US Billboard Hot 100 top-40 singles, "Power", "Runaway", "Monster", and "All of the Lights".

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was conceived at Avex Recording Studio during Kanye West's self-imposed exile in Oahu, Hawaii, in 2009, following a period of public-image controversy.

[8][9] He explained the initial recording process to Noah Callahan-Bever, the editor-in-chief of Complex and West's then-confidant, telling him he had resided in Hawaii accompanied by his favorite producers and artists to work on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and provide inspiration.

[2][10][18] Observing these discussions during a visit, Callahan-Bever noted that despite the presence of prominent musicians, "the egos rarely clash; talks are sprawling, enlightening, and productive" around the future, present, and past.

[21] He explained that when the team thought they were focused on a song, West would hear the work of a record producer such as Jeff Bhasker and his attention would be captured as he went through "his mental Rolodex" to the most suitable point for it on the album.

[22] West ensured that the album's recording sessions were secretive, placing paper sheets in the studio reading "no tweeting, no talking, no e-mailing", and also prohibiting speaking with people outside of the location.

[35] My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was described as a progressive rap record by Carl Williott of Idolator and Rolling Stone's Christopher R. Weingarten, with the latter noting that it came at the time of lower album budgets.

[42] The author Kirk Walker Graves thinks West became a collagist, who makes a bold and vulnerable work of art from "scattered pop shards and indelible beats".

[38] Ann Powers of the Los Angeles Times depicted the songs as "pornographic boasts, romantic disaster stories, devil-haunted dark nights of the soul" and perceived West as not welcome nor sure about the purpose of his presence due to the discussion of race.

[38] Powers felt that rather than an issue for West, it is the inherent curse of author Michael Eric Dyson's theory of "the exceptional black man" whose talents are welcomed, but he is excluded for his skin color.

[29] The album begins with "Dark Fantasy", opened by rapper Nicki Minaj narrating a rework of Roald Dahl's 1982 poem Cinderella,[38] followed by a chorus including Auto-Tuned "oohs" and "ah-ah-ah-aahs", as well as backing accents.

"[58] The track's lyrics contain musical and popular culture references, including fellow rapper Nas, the 1820 short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", British singer Leona Lewis, and the song "Sex on Fire" by Tennessee rock band Kings of Leon.

[43][45][60] "Power" features a dark production that relies on a sample of King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man" (1969), which Fennessey found to be "apocalyptic" and it is accompanied by chants loosely resembling a choir.

[58][61] The opening lines mention the death of Michael Jackson and present the narrative of a man who goes through multiple issues including abusing his lover and serving prison time.

[61] West enlisted 11 guest vocalists for the song, including Alicia Keys, John Legend, Tony Williams, and Elly Jackson; Rihanna sings the hook.

[7][51][66] "Runaway" contains a piano-based motif comprising a series of uninterrupted descending half and whole notes,[68] with a coda that incorporates cello at first, before a violin section and West's vocoder-singing,[51] which is distortion that covers the final three minutes.

[34][43] Inspired by West's two-year relationship with model Amber Rose, "Hell of a Life" samples the Mojo Men's "She's My Baby" (1966) and follows a narrative of marrying a porn star that Graves calls "pornographic anxiety".

[81] The album's artwork, designed by George Condo, shows West being straddled on a couch by an armless winged female, who has fearsome features and a long, spotted tail.

[127] My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy opened at number six on the ARIA Albums chart and on September 10, 2021, it was awarded a double platinum certification from the Australian Recording Industry Association for over 140,000 copies shipped in Australia.

Andy Gill of The Independent praised the album as "one of pop's gaudiest, most grandiose efforts of recent years, a no holds-barred musical extravaganza" that forgoes the concept of good taste from the beginning.

[65] Powers, writing for the Los Angeles Times, found West's artistry comparable to Pablo Picasso, reaching "the Cubist mandate of rearranging form, texture, color and space" for suggesting newer viewpoints.

[38] The album was called a work of art and West's most lavish record in a review by Time magazine's David Browne, who said it proved again that few other artists shared his ability to adeptly mix diverse elements.

[39] Steve Jones of USA Today was impressed by West's display "of sonic flavors — old school hip-hop, progressive rock, R&B, classical music" for how he combines and matches these genres, concluding his only predictability is a consistent drive to make every project his best.

[29] James Reed of The Boston Globe said that the album is "seamlessly his personal best" as West becomes self-involved in the varied styles and universal themes, standing as the most original hip-hop record of 2010, through his efforts to push the genre's boundaries.

[64] AllMusic writer Andy Kellman found West's rapping inconsistent on "a deeply fascinating accomplishment" in his catalogue and one of complicated merit that is "as fatiguing as it is invigorating, as cold-blooded as it is heart-rending, as haphazardly splattered as it is meticulously sculpted", and maintains complexity across 70 minutes.

[32] David Amidon from PopMatters desired for West to utilize his rap skills from The College Dropout and that the songs may be good yet he misses "the opportunity to provide us with answers", in spite of the lush production on one of hip-hop's "most bloated, egotistical, fantastical, flat-out amazing release[s]" for a while.

[154] In 2014, Pitchfork named it the best album of the 2010s so far, with Ian Cohen writing, "West broke the ground upon which the new decade's most brilliant architects built their masterworks; Bon Iver, Take Care, Channel Orange, and Good Kid, M.A.A.D City don't exist without the blueprint of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

[159] In 2014, Spin named My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy as the eighth best album of the past 30 years, with Dan Weiss noting it is a world combining samples, interpolations, and vocalists; he expressed that West does not believe "one man should have all that power" of God, yet he "lives one hell of a life".

[162] EW picked My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy as the eighth greatest album of all time in 2016, while it was ranked 21st and 17th on the lists by NME and Rolling Stone in 2013 and 2020, respectively.

[180] However, The Recording Academy's decision not to nominate My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy for Album of the Year was viewed by many media outlets as a snub,[181][182] along with the rejection of West and Jay-Z's 2011 effort Watch the Throne in the category.