Regardless of how many individual units Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy moves next week, the album should already be considered a success. Not only is he getting the best reviews in a career filled with best reviews, but for the last two months, Kanye West is all anyone has been able to talk or think about (and by anyone I mean me). Even though by the time Fantasy leaked online last week, most of the songs had been heard, either in Kanye's short film/long video Runaway, or courtesy of his GOOD Friday initiative, there was still a thrill hearing the songs in their final, fully mastered form. But is the thrill large enough to make you go out and spend your hard-earned money on a self-proclaimed douche bag? GOOD question!

In today's dystopian record industry, paradigm-shifting success happens only once or twice a year, and is usually measured by how close to the million-mark an album comes in sales in its first week. When Taylor Swift's Speak Now sold over one million copies in its first week, it was considered a mega-smash, and earned comparisons to Lil' Wayne's Tha Carter III, the last album to reach that milestone before it. The question is: Can My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy reach Swiftian heights, despite online oversaturation and a fairly early leak? Yes, we think it can, and here are five reasons why.

Kanye West is rapping again: The last album West put out - 2008's 808s & Heartbreak - sold 450,145 copies in its first week. Those are huge numbers for any artist, but it was puny compared to his 2007 release Graduation, which despite its solemn September 11 release date, sold 957,000 (yet still failed to force 50 Cent's retirement). The difference? Actual rapping. As we all know, 808s was Kanye's emo-fueled sojurn into sing-song autotune electroclash, or something. And even though it was better than most of the stuff that came out that year, the masses will take a slick simile over a woe-is-me verse any day. Plus, the album got the most mixed reviews of Kanye's career. Which brings us to our next point.

The reviews have been unprecedented: Even though some major music pubs have withheld expounding on Fantasy until its official release date (namely those dudes with the fork), Rolling Stone has already given it five stars, and Spin gave it a 9 out of 10. Even the smaller hip-hop blogs, who don't have to worry about landing West on their covers, have raved, the word "masterpiece" being tossed around like a midget at my bar mitzvah. A lot of "Kanye is setting the course of pop music" rhetoric is being used, and they might not be wrong. With its 8-minute opuses, the eschewing of a verse-chorus-verse structure, and Bon Iver on not one, but two tracks, has there ever been a rap album like this one? Nope. Which means in some ways, its an historic album, and people want to own a part of history.

The track sequence: A lot of reviews I've read claim that Fantasy is truly an album that needs to be listened to in order, from start to finish. That three minute, auto-tuned epilogue at the end of "Runaway" might seem self-indulgent on its own, but as a pit-stop on West's dark, twisted journey, it probably fits right in (I wouldn't know, since I have yet to take the whole trip). But isn't that part of what makes Sgt. Pepper such a perennial bestseller? Besides its awesomeness, it has cohesiveness. The idea of an entire album as a complete work of art doesn't really exist in today's ringtone-ready pop music landscape, hence iTunes. But fuck iTunes, is what we imagine Kanye West saying.

5 album covers!: Only Lady Gaga matches Kanye in terms of emphasis on visuals - everything from their videos, to their tour sets, to their album covers, gets almost as much attention as their music (and in some cases, more). Speculation about Fantasy's album cover started weeks before its release date. What will it be? Was it banned? Then, during a live interview on Ustream, West revealed five different album covers (including a pixelated version of the banned one). Collectors, Kanye West fanatics, and indecisive people, get ready to pay.

The publicity tour of a lifetime: Hype works. It's why Hollywood keeps selling bad movies, it's why I use the internet, and it's why Kanye West is going to sell a shitload of albums next week. The guy has been everywhere in spectacular fashion: Twitter, Twitter's office, Facebook's office, the VMAs, the Today show, the BET Awards, a Delta flight, SNL, in the nude, and most of all, in our psyche.