808s And Heartbreak [Digipak] - Kanye West

Ever since 'Through the Wire' hip hop star, Kanye West burst on to the scene in 2003, I feel he has done his job every single time it has came out to putting out a new record. Especially if his job is to split opinion on him as much as possible, as ever since he used the Ku Klux Klan imagery in 'Jesus Walks' to samply Daft Punk on his biggest hit -- 'Stronger' -- this guy has had us talking, or singing his tracks. '808s & Heartbreak' comes as Kanye's ...
...a year that has seen the loss of his mother and the breakdown of his relationship, this shall be the album to divide us all the most. '808s' has already had Rolling Stone magazine referring to Kanye as an emo that has always hid it well is just a snippet of evidence for everything I have said so far. Does that make me emo?

*01, Say You Will (6.14), 1*
*02, Welcome to Heartbreak ft. Kid Cudi (4.24), 3*

Releasing ... more

Ever since 'Through the Wire' hip hop star, Kanye West burst on to the scene in 2003, I feel he has done his job every single time it has came out to putting out a new record. Especially if his job is to split opinion on him as much as possible, as ever since he used the Ku Klux Klan imagery in 'Jesus Walks' to samply Daft Punk on his biggest hit -- 'Stronger' -- this guy has had us talking, or singing his tracks. '808s & Heartbreak' comes as Kanye's fourth studio album and being released at the end of a year that has seen the loss of his mother and the breakdown of his relationship, this shall be the album to divide us all the most. '808s' has already had Rolling Stone magazine referring to Kanye as an emo that has always hid it well is just a snippet of evidence for everything I have said so far. Does that make me emo?

• 01, Say You Will (6.14), 1*
• 02, Welcome to Heartbreak ft. Kid Cudi (4.24), 3*

Releasing an album just 14-months after the hugely successful 'Graduation' is relatively unheard of, although in a similar vein to Britney Spears who felt that she couldn't waste any time getting a new project out. Whilst in Britney's case it was to correct prior mistakes, '808' sees Kanye getting everything off his chest that he couldn't hold in any longer. It also comes as one of the most discussed experiments (musically, not scientifically) of 2008, as Kanye chose to drop his famed hip hop style and replace it with straight forward singing (with a little help from the vocoder) that unfortunately hasn't done any wonders for hiding the fact that rappers just aren't built to be singers. Every appears to be have done in an artistic fashion, that almost makes you feel the album belows in a gallery rather than on the radio. 'Say You Will' is not the greatest way to start the project, which is a shame because if the track was a minute-long it would be a really good introduction. Unfortunately, it's about four-times that length and drags on and on, when all you really want to do is get to the bones of the album that you have been waiting all year for. Kid Cudi is a featured artist on 'Welcome to Heartbreak' and I can honestly say I've never heard of the guy, although after looking up on him he appears to be a rapper that released a mixtape and Kanye happened to take a shining to him -- with an album being released in 2009, he maybe someone to look out for. Carrying on with the discussion of the album, 'Heartbreak' is where the album really begins (those bones I was talking about). After the lab beeps of the intro track, 'Heartbreak' sounds as though it could have an entire orchestra behind it and then it dumbs down a bit. Nothing about Cudi's chorus shouts out hip hop artist, but they do serve as a break between Kanye's verses expressing how heartbroken he is. Having read different reviews, the opinion appears to be that Kanye has always done a good job of getting across a message without sounding as though he is taking himself too seriously, and I'm not sure if it has anything to with his mothers death from botched cosmetic surgery, however it appears that Kanye is no longer going to be hiding his feelings. That could be reading too much into it, "My friend shows me pictures of his kids, and all I can show him is pictures of my cribs," speaks for itself.

• 03, Heartless (3.31), 4*
• 04, Amazing ft. Young Jeezy (3.58), 4*
• 05, Love Lockdown (4.31), 4*

We go from being in 'Heartbreak' to a woman so 'Heartless', which is the second single to be released from the album, and although it is yet to chart in the UK I expect it to be the track that should hopefully launch the album from its current disappointing position in our charts. (Does the UK not have any love for Kanye no more?) An animated video accompanies the track. Young Jeezy appears on the album as a much more recognisable name, however if you are outside of the US and not up with the internet buzz then you are likely to have missed the huge deal over Jeezy and his #1 Billboard album. 'Amazing' continues on from the previous track and packs more of a punch, ("I'm a monster, I'm a killer,") and although as one-word the track may not make much sense it has came to be one of the most catchy tracks on the entire project (maybe I should start calling it that instead of an 'album'). I was one of those hugely confused people when I heard that the climax to the MTV Awards was going to be Kanye West singing, although his performance of 'Love Lockdown' remained one of my highlights as before the track was over I had already caught on with the chorus. The one thing about the track is that I always felt if there was more emphasis on the chorus, then it genuinely could have got stuck in peoples heads. I think a lot of people aren't seeing past the fact that this is a rapper singing, and that is hindering any progress Kanye tries to make in the UK. 'Love Lockdown' was still the best way to launch '808', and quite frankly if you do not get 'Lockdown' you won't have got any of the tracks up until this point and you're not going to get anything else that's coming up. "Keep your love lockdown."

• 06, Paranoid ft. Mr Hudson (4.40), 2*
• 07, Robocop (3.26), 2*
• 08, Street Lights (3.14), 4*

Don't even ask what I know about Mr Hudson, as I can only base it on apparently being something to do with a London based band that has worked with Dizzee Rascal. And we all know how emo Dizzee is going. I thought I liked 'Paranoid' a lot more than I did before I sat down and actually listened to it for review purposes, in fact it's actually not that great. 'Robocop' is a track that sees T-Pain on the song writing credits, incidently that's one of the main names I feel we have to thank for Kanye taking his time out to record this speedily pulled together singing experiment. Incidently, it sees Kanye using the auto-tune effect on his voice so heavily it feels like his balls have dropped another five inches. There was a lot of buzz around this track being one of the biggest on the album, unfortunately I'm not really seeing it. Is Kanye West the Robocop? 'Street Lights' is like your CD-player has suddenly gone wrong, although I think for a lot of people they shall think something went wrong a long time ago. The track soon picks up, when you begin to understand the street lights are moments he's going past. If you ever thought that Kanye West would record a ballad, well -- this is the closest he shall ever come -- until '809s & Heartbreak'.

• 09, Bad News (3.54), 3*
• 10, See You in My Nightmares ft. Lil Wayne (4.23), 5*
• 11, Coldest Winter (2.48), 4*
• 12, Pinocchio Story (6.02), 1*

Lifes just not fair, and now we've got some 'Bad News'. This is not the first time that Kanye's given a reply to his bad news on this album. I feel the effects have been so overused on his voice for this track that you can barely make out what he's saying half the time, but thankfully that is made up for with one of the best beats on the entire project. This may be a good time to refer to review to all those reviews that have rated the album badly due to the very apparent fact that Kanye cannot sing -- calling him an 'American Idol reject' and the fact that the New York Times actually thought it was appropriate to declare that a rapper can't sing makes me wonder why they ever even thought it would be appropriate for them as a highly respectable newspaper to be reviewing an artist that has said 'n*igger' more times than hes said 'thank you'. 2008 may nearly be over, but it still would be an outrage to finish an album without a feature from the artist of the year, Lil Wayne. 'Nightmares' is probably my favourite track on the whole album, and it does it without even having to be catchy. In fact, the song is almost shouting at me in a rock star fashion (maybe Wayne's red trousers have gone to his head) but the track really works. And I mean it even works for radio listening, which is strange because a lot of these tracks are likely to become annoying after a few radio airplays (but that's not to say that the tracks aren't brilliant in their own way, because that's going back to the comment of these tracks being made for a museum and being watched from afar). Lil Wayne is brilliant, and Kanye is back to the greatness we haven't heard from him since he rapped... oh yeah, that wasn't so long ago. 'Coldest Winter' was one of the first tracks I heard from the album, and it's this track that made me realise that I was going to love this album no matter how much everyone else hated it. Similar to how I liked 'Hey Mama', this is the track that is dedicted to the memory of his now late mother ("Goodbye my friend, will I ever love again.") I have my moments when I like this track, then not so much, but like some of the not so great tracks on the album 'Winter' benefits from not being dragged out in length. 'Pinocchio Story' comes as a live freestyle performance to close the album that was added as the request of Beyonce Knowles, I am unsure as to why anyone thought a live performance of the track rather than a studio version would be a good way to end the album, but at least it has more lyrics than 'Say You Will'. Perhaps the track came straight from the heart, a bit spur of the moment?

I've already mentioned how fantastic the presentation of this album is, and the 'pop art' fad spreads out on to the singles that have all been designed in a similar fashion. The general feel of the presentation appears to be 'simple', however I can still spot a Kanye West record a mile out. I know this is going to sound crazy when there have been such great hip hop albums this year from Lil Wayne (Carter III) and T.I. (Paper Trail) but '808s & Heartbreak' is the album of the year for me. I'm not even that big of a Kanye West fan, and I think I was surprised as the next person when he decided to follow up 'Graduation' like this, but for me it worked. Having said that, with his fifth studio album in 2009 I would be expecting Kanye to express himself much differently. If this is what Britney's new album had came out like, everyone would be claiming she's having another breakdown. So where's the media attention on Kanye? Oh that's right, he's a grown ass kid... man.

It's no longer about beating 50 Cent's sales, award show controversy or getting the right pair of sunglasses. It's all about true feelings. 

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