Review: Kanye West - "808 & Heartbreaks"

To say Kanye West has the biggest ego in pop music today is not hyperbole. It's cold hard fact. But he often lives up to his self-hype, churning out unusual music with great hooks and beats. 808 & Heartbreaks is no exception, but it does present many suprises.

The major difference between 808 and the trio of college-inspired titles that preceded it is the unified artist statement. The sound is a heady brew of vocoded vocals, world beats, new wave flourishes and classical strings, but it's a consistent sound. On Kanye's earlier albums there would many great singles but never this level of complete artistic statement, a soundscape that plays on the edges of electronica and hip-hop and never wavers from it's course. From the lead single "Love Lockdown" with it's tribal beat juxtaposed with the vocoded vocal and very emo lyrics, to Lil' Wayne's singing on the more synth heavy "See You In My Nightmares" Kanye never drops the plot. His lyrics reflect a man who has experienced pain and loss, and he colors both his vocals and his beats with a sense of foreboding and anguish.

He utilizes a wide range of sources, from a sped-up sample of the Great Expectations soundtrack on "Robocop" and the opening drum beat of Nina Simone's "See-Line Woman" paired with a moody piano on "Bad News" to a flute-esque keyboard tone on "Heartless" and an angelic choir layered under a video game beep on "Say You Will," to present a soundtrack unlike any other hip-hop album. I don't even think this is hip-hop anymore, it puts me in mind of Radiohead, Patrick Wolf, Bjork and Regina Spektor: artists with a sound that you can't really label. You can call it noise-pop inspired retro-fetishing rap with jazz and punk influences, but it doesn't even fit in that niche.

But after all that, can I say it's good? Yes, I can. It's sometimes brilliant, other times Kanye's experiments fail but the good makes up for the bad every time. If you like music, you will probably find something to love about 808 & Heartbreaks. Especially the title, how fantastic is that?