Defsounds

It is said that the most vulnerable and most irrational point in any man's life is the point just after a heartbreak.

For a man, a broken heart means many things because along with feelings being hurt and the heart being broken, a man's pride takes a serious hit.

Most men hide from these feelings for fear of looking weak, and in return they react irrationally in other ways. But the truth remains the same and the hurt is still prevalent.

Rapper and super-producer Kanye West is the current subject of heartbreak but unlike most cases he, instead of losing one, lost two of the most important woman in his life.

The kind of loss that would break a regular man down to a point of no return has instead produced us with a form of art that we may or may not be willing to accept. Kanye's pain and loneliness is splattered across his latest offering 808's & Heartbreak. So instead of dwelling in his own sorrow, we have the chance to help him put it back together. This review will be unlike any other, because unlike any other album this album was more for Kanye himself than it was for ourselves. So we will take a numerical look into what Kanye must feel about this album.

Production - 8

You can take the ignorant or frustrated fan approach and turn away your ear from every musical production that comes from this album, but whether you like the lyrics or not, every single beat is a head nodder. Heavy drums with bass heavy after-effects, and the robotic rhythms of auto-tone induced sound effects give this album a very different sound, but it is not one that is horrible. The production seems techno driven with a hip hop flair giving it a tech-hop sound. The bass of the production leans more towards the simple side, but the way they all seem to blend into each other makes for a very smooth sound, as you can take out all of the lyrics and run every beat and they would transfer very smoothly. The technique seems to be original in the sense that most artist have never used this, but catchy because it is something that can become very popular in the coming years of hip hop.

Lyrics - 7.5

How do you judge the lyrics of someone who is basically pouring their heart out on every single track? That is the dilemna that every single reviewer should have trouble decyphering. This album is clearly Kanye's venting session and in this production it feels like he took no time to think about what the listeners would say when hearing this album for the first time. Instead of hard lyrics this album offers an auto-tone voice with constant reference to lonesome time and hurt feelings. Punchlines are non-existent and wordplay is clearly an afterthought. If you were looking for hard lyrics and catchy rhymes you should check the other album releases this week. 808's & Heartbreak is a tech-hop album filled with harmonies that give it a blatant undertone of R&B.

Songs - 8

The songs on this album take you on a journey through the heart of a broken hearted man. After listening to this album, a legitimate listener will come up with one of two conclusions. The first one being that Kanye is lonely, or that he is seriously depressed and potentially suicidal. I chose the latter. He lost the love of his life and his number one girl (his mother) all in the same year, and with the life that he lives, it is almost impossible to find someone who will be sincere in her feelings for him, or love him inspite of himself like his mother did. Kanye realizes this, so the majority of the album is speaking about those feelings while channeling them into a techno-hop auto-tone induced rant. While some people cry over the loss of a loved one in the privacy of their own homes. We are all witnesses to the many tears that Kanye has spilled over everyone that is no longer in his life. So for every track that plays through our speaker, a million tears have been shed for the feelings that motivated the production of hit.

Conclusion-8

At the conclusion of this album many listeners will be confused and utterly disappointed with this album. He may well likely lose millions of fans because of this, but for those who actually listened to the lyrics and read between the lines, the reaction should be different, because you, like me, will understand just how important this album was for Kanye. You will understand how this album is and was more for him than anyone else. Yes, we have the ability to purchase this album, and we can judge it any way we want. But it remains a fact that Kanye's production of this album was clearly the reaction of a broken heart. Through this work he say's that he was able to have fun with music again, and that was all he cared about because he made the work that he was the happiest with. So in Kanye's eyes, this is the perfect album, and for those who have suffered a serious heartbreak, or lost a love one, and can feel where Kanye is coming from this is a 10...plain and simple it has no flaws.

BUT... through the eyes of the realist and the reviewers such as myself, there is no such thing as a classic album anymore. Especially with a musical production such as this. 808's & Heartbreak took a drastic left turn in the musical highway intersection of Hip Hop, some might even argue that Kanye seriously put his career on the line with this album. But after listening to it several times it is clear that this is not bad as many would like to say. Kanye took a big chance, and in the process created his own genre, "Techno-hop". The true judgement of music is the artist's willingness to stray away from the norm and push his artistry to another level. Kanye does this in this album, whether we agree or not. For that alone this album deserves praise, but for numbers sake we will give it an 8.