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I recently got my hands on a copy of Kanye West’s 4th album, this one entitled ‘808s and Heartbreak’, set for release on November 24th. As a followup to ‘Graduation’, could this be another Kanye classic?

We’ll start with the tracklisting:

1. “Say You Will” 6:18
2. “Welcome to Heartbreak” (feat. Kid Cudi) 4:23
3. “Heartless” 3:31
4. “Amazing” (feat. Young Jeezy) 3:58
5. “Love Lockdown” 4:30
6. “Paranoid” (feat. Mr Hudson) 4:38
7. “RoboCop” 3:26
8. “Street Lights” 3:10
9. “Bad News” 3:59
10. “See You in My Nightmares” (feat. Lil Wayne) 4:18
11. “Coldest Winter” 2:44
12. “Pinocchio Story” (Freestyle live from Singapore) 6:02

The Basics:

After tearing up the rap game for the last five years, putting out mega-platinum albums such as ‘College Dropout’ and ‘Graduation’, Ye decides to go a different route with this album. Shedding the title rapper, instead using ‘artist’, he explores all options on his tracks. Most of the songs contain him using the much maligned auto tuner, others have different voice effects, and it’s more singing than rapping, not to mention most are self-produced. He wanted to shed the label of rapper and he accomplished his goal, not sure if that’s a good or bad thing though.

Tracks I Liked:

*Note* Since this is a relatively short album (only 12 tracks), I’ll put my top 3 tracks in each category.

• Welcome To Heartbreak (It opens pretty dramatically with violins, then come the drums and then the full fledged beat. The one thing that struck me was how well the beat was done, it sounds pretty epic. Then comes Kanye on the auto tuner rapping/singing. This could be my favorite track overall because how nicely everything comes together. Kid Cudi, one of Lil Wayne’s new young artists, was a surprisingly nice feature).
• Amazing (Again, the beat is simply bananas. When it opens you get a nice 6 second glimpse of the aforementioned beat and then Ye comes on with the hook, which is catchy even if it’s a little repetitive (So amazin’, so amazin’, etc).  He uses a distinct type of audio sound effect, it’s kind of hard to explain but it works well. About 2:15 in, the song goes silent for a minute, at first I wondered what the deal was but then out comes the best feature on this entire album, Jeezy. He totally kills Kanye at his own song, but all in all a great track).
• See You In My Nightmares (As it seems to be the theme of the album, the song opens up with yet another sick beat. About 10 seconds in, Kanye announces his presence on an auto-tuned sentence then Lil Wayne joins him on the T-Pain machine. 45 seconds in, Kanye starts the hook off with a powerful punch. Alot of singing, as opposed to rapping on this track. Even Weezy sort of softly raps his verse, as opposed to murdering it like he always does. Gotta give him credit, he can really make the vocalizer sound good, not many artists can say that).

Tracks I Didn’t Like:

• Heartless (One of the very few tracks with a pretty bland beat. It kind of sounds like you’re 5 years old hitting a xylophone. The worst is how hard Kanye tries to rap over the beat, which was made sounding like it should be for an R&B song. Overall, the beat is weak, the hook is weak, the verses are weak. Just a weak track).
• Coldest Winter (Note to Kanye: You can try to be any type of musician you want but let’s get one thing straight: You are NOT an R&B singer. You are a great producer, a great rapper, a great everything other than R&B singer. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get to the music. The beat is actually pretty nice and the setup of the song sounds good, but to me Ye ruins it by screaming and trying to pass that off as a ’silky smooth, squeaky clean’ R&B song. I always skip over this one).
• Pinocchio Story (Meh, this one only made the Didn’t Like because it’s not a real track, it’s a live performance done from Singapore. From the sounds of it, it’s strictly a soft track, never picking up intensity throughout. Again, it’s hard to judge because it was a live performance and hard to hear at some moments but definitely not on par with the rest of the album).

Overall

If you’re not on top of your new music game, you wouldn’t have realized that most of the album leaked months ago. I wanted to save myself the surprise and listen to most of the album all at once and it was actually better than expected. The early leaks (Love Lockdown, Heartless, Coldest Winter) gave off the same feel as a wannabe R&B album with autotuner thrown in. That view quickly changed from me when I heard Amazing, See You In My Nightmares, etc. In summation, these songs are good for alot of radio play and are tailor-made for the clubs but to throw in your car’s CD player and right around to? Not gonna work.

This isn’t on the same planet as Graduation, let alone College Dropout, so don’t have those expectations when you finally hear 808s, just expect alot of singing with good production and the occasional rap verse.

My Rating: 7/10

“808s And Heartbreak” is set for release on November 24th, go out and get yourself a copy. Support your favorite artists.