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Kanye West
808s & Heartbreak
Release Date: 2008 11 24
Label: Mercury
Rating:

Remember when Kanye West threatened to make an album where he would bear his heartbroken soul, align with T-Pain, sing on every song with the then inescapable Auto-Tune effect and, less problematically, lean on the common element -- the Roland TR-808 drum machine -- of classics like "Make It Last Forever," "Posse on Broadway," "808," and "Bossy"? It could have been a wreck, a case of an artist working through paralyzing heartache while loose in a toy store. Except West wasn't joking. Not only did he go through with it, but Roc-A-Fella released the result in time for the 2008 Christmas shopping season.

In various spots across 808s & Heartbreak, the constant flutter of West's processed voice is enlivened by the disarming manner in which despair and dejection are conveyed. When, in "Welcome to Heartbreak," he dispassionately recounts sitting alone on a flight, ahead of a laughing family, he makes first class sound like Siberia; he'd swap lives with the father in an instant. The majority of the lyrics, however, are directed at an ex who evidently did some damage; in "RoboCop" alone, she gets compared to the antagonist in Misery and is called a "spoiled little L.A. girl." Earlier in the album, the number she did on him is called "the coldest story ever told," yet he admits he still fantasizes about her. All the blocky drums, dragging strings, droning synths, and joyless pianos lead to a bleak set of productions -- even the synthetic calliope in "Heartless" is unnerved, and the relative pep of "Paranoid" provides no respite, its bitter lyrics subverting a boisterous beat. Several tracks have almost as much in common with irrefutably bleak post-punk albums, such as New Order's Movement and the Cure's Pornography, as contemporary rap and R&B. ("Coldest Winter," where West longs for his departed mother, samples the most desolate song from the first Tears for Fears album.) For anyone sifting through a broken relationship and self-letdown, this could all be therapeutic. Andy Kellman, All Music Guide

Tracks:

	Title	Composer	Time
1	Say You Will	Bhasken, Bhasker, Jenkins, Mills, West	6:17
2	Welcome to Heartbreak	Bhasker, Mescudi, Reynolds, West	4:23
3	Heartless	Jones, Mescudi, West, Wilsos	3:31
4	Amazing	Bhasker, Jenkins, West	3:58
5	Love Lockdown	Bhasker, Englishman, Jones, Menzies, West	4:30
6	Paranoid	Bhasker, Mescudi, Mills, Reynolds, West, Williams	4:37
7	Robocop	Bhasker, Doyle, Englishman, Jenkins, Jones, Mescudi, Mills, Najm, West, Williams	4:34
8	Street Lights	Englishman, McIldowie, West, Williams	3:09
9	Bad News	Bass, West	3:58
10	See You in My Nightmares	Bhasker, Carter, West, Wilson	4:18
11	Coldest Winter	Orzabal, West, Wilson	2:45
12	[Untitled]		8:33
13	[CD-Rom Track]

Other Releases:

808s & Heartbreak [LP/CD]
Release Date: 2008
Label: Roc-A-Fella

Member Comments On This Album.


1 - 9 of 9		9 Comments

	julian456 1	Tue Jul 7 2009 10:22:23
	that X@@##! waz poppin......................ayo kanye west this is the boy that u took a picture with in the movie theater.....wen u was on line ...............the one with the sidekick 08
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	userbaby1 2	Fri Jan 23 2009 18:57:38
	awesome
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	Miss lovely Barnett 46	Fri Jan 9 2009 11:43:07
	Its alrite 2 many ppl like that song i juss think its alright tho newayz I lyke the chorus
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	tottyhst54693 46	Fri Jan 9 2009 11:40:41
	heartless is one of da realist songs he wrote
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	vperson 12	Fri Dec 5 2008 19:40:20
	koo i lov da song heartless!
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	jazzy tartar 73	Mon Dec 1 2008 13:55:57
	cool
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	victor68 24	Fri Nov 28 2008 08:15:07
	I can count on the album being nominated for a grammy.Kanye keeps bringing fresh concepts to the game. GO HARDER GO STRONGER...much love for Kanye
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