The Real K.I.N.G.

Billboard Review: Favorable

Kanye West has had a rough year (the death of his mother, splitting from his fiancee), so it's not surprising to hear raw emotion and frustration on his fourth album. He's not mincing words when it comes to women: He's the victim who's been mistreated on "Heartless," and he's unable to wrench himself away from an ex-lover on "Say You Will." While interesting, these tracks aren't nearly as fun as the cocky "Amazing" ("I'm a monster/I'm a maven") and the Lil Wayne-assisted "See You in My Nightmares," where he gains the upper hand in a breakup. Sonically, West pushes the envelope by relying on the drum machine from which the album takes its title, as well as the ever-popular vocoder. In the end, it seems that no matter how pained West is, as long as his one true love—himself—is intact, he will prevail in the face of adversity. —Mariel Concepcion

http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/conte...7e84f65a5f5c6c

Daily Mirror 4/5

His planet-sized ego and temper are almost as impressive as Kanye’s musical ingenuity.

The buzz bomb single Love Lockdown introduced this album’s twin sonic devices – Kanye’s new-found love for auto-tune vocals and the ominous but supple sound of the 808 drum machine.

As explored here, they lead to a brilliant, weird, dark and compulsive ride. Living the dream hasn’t ensured West’s happiness – but his music is absolutely magnificent.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/tv-entertain...5875-20911434/

The Times 4/5

The title of West’s fourth album is entirely apposite, given that he has lost his mother and split with his fiancée. A vintage 808 drumbox dominates, while West disguises his vocals with autotune throughout this eclectic, impenetrable set.

Robocop rides on a classical sample, Paranoid salutes Eighties electro, the taut Street Lights is almost hysterical and the bleak Coldest Winter admits his loss. Young Jeezy’s jolting, gritty verse on Amazing suddenly reminds listeners of a world beyond the studio walls.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co....cle5199257.ece


The Huffington Post: Favorable

Since 1991, when Soundscan started, Garth Brooks has sold more albums than any other artist. Brooks moved nearly 70 million records on the strength of poptastic country songs that spoke sweetly, snarly and simply to working class America, as well as a legendary live performance. But then, in 1999, Brooks went from having friends in low places to being a weirdo in an emo kind of place. He donned a black wig and became Chris Gaines, a fictional character based on a movie that was never made. Garth Brooks in...The Life of Chris Gaines bewildered most of his fans and retailers were forced to discount the album to rid themselves of the overstock. Despite a Top 5 single, it largely marked the end of Brooks' until-then unstoppable career, even starting a "partial retirement" that still hasn't really ended. (Even as he's continued to make Wal-Mart money without doing a whole lot.)

As 808s & Heartbreak readies for release, that's the reference point for Kanye West. Other than Brooks--and arguably the moments when Bowie donned drag and the Beatles tried drugs -- there has never been an artist at such a commercial peak to take such a drastic, "artistic" risk. West's previous material was a parade of sing-along hits that few rappers can parallel in such a stadium-sized chorus. Others are close and others choose only to record, but Jay-Z and 50 Cent are the only active hip-hoppers besides West who can tour with such word-for-word enormity. However, after three albums of hits, the non-presidential hero of post-Jordan Chicago was dealt a tumultuous and painful few months that included the loss of his mother and the end of a long relationship. With a career track record comprised of doing exactly what he wanted to do and receiving hyperbolic pop-appraise (and making a vocal point about announcing said action and said result), Kanye did the only thing Kanye could: He made an anti-pop album.

Donda West passed away after a "cosmetic surgery" went wrong. In his speech after the 808s & Heartbreak LA listening session, Mr. West said that many of the ideals on his first three records -- and certainly the resulting move of mother and son into the limelight -- weighed heavy as contributions to such a personal tragedy. For years, he spent time in the public's ear triumphing the very beautification industry that took his mom's life. It's only human that lyrics from some of his most famous songs--"All them mocha lattes/You gotta do Pilates"--would leave a nasty taste in his mouth. Even as that snippet from "New Workout Plan," the third single on his debut album, is an anomaly among Kanye's pretty liberal and respectful depictions of women... such anomalies still exist. Quite literally, on record.

808 is that bleak and depressing. It's the antithesis of an entire career built upon celebration. "Heart of the City," "Through the Wire," "Touch the Sky," "Good Life." Quite tellingly, the two most upbeat songs on 808 are titled "Paranoid" and "Heartless." The latter of which has a Waking Life-like animated video that features the rapper/producer smoking. Cigarettes. Depression has driven him to a hip-hop rarity: tobacco. The last respected MC to smoke smokes on camera was Tupac. That might make you feel old.

The most vocal and recent decry against popular hip-hop, however "popular" is calculated these days, has been one against Autotune. T-Pain's weapon of choice, a ubiquitous assault on the singles chart paired with a ripple effect among like-minded/trend-humping artists, has produced pop-chart supremacy and essays on the device's murder of hip-hop. Sasha Frere-Jones wrote the most mathematically precise deconstruction of the recording program's history, but the bottom line is its divisiveness. Festive dance parties versus condemning blog comments. However, Kanye's use of Autotune, despite what 50 Cent says, is not making a T-Pain record and it certainly isn't "Pop Champagne" looking for the familiar aesthetic ground of commercial radio.

Kanye's Autotune is tweaked a little differently. Hollow and robotic, the album's vocals are an emotionally void thread that strings together drums with despair. On "Welcome to Heartbreak," Kanye pits his prized possessions against the simplicity of "real life," marking the basic juxtapositions with a disconnected yearning: "My friend showed me pictures of his kids/All I could show him was pictures of cribs." In the landscape of 808, Kanye's aspirations for fame have created a mutually exclusive dichotomy with family and love. His robot isn't quirky and futuristic, it's depressed and mired in the bloated consequences of past decisions.

As for the songs themselves, putting aside tragic and Autotuned context, some work and some don't. "Amazing" delicately plods along beautiful builds until the bottom drops out and Young Jeezy delivers the record's one rap verse with monstrous (and yet understated) flair. "Streetlights" is a drum-heavy ballad that flirts with cheesiness, but in the end is saved by layers of vocals and a moving melody. And despite adding Lil Wayne's supersized ego to "See You In My Nightmares" falls surprisingly flat and forgettable...other than the cringe-worthy absurdity of Wayne's "You think your shit don't sick/But you Mrs. P.U."

Without a doubt, 808s & Heartbreak will top the charts when it's released on Monday with strong Soundscan numbers at the start of holiday shopping's season, but it remains to be seen if Kanye's fans will embrace his hurt. Or whether Kanye himself will continue as Chris Gaines for more than just an album.

Kanye West's fourth studio album 808s & Heartbreak will be released on Monday, November 24.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brando..._b_145068.html

Sun Times 3/4

Although it's yielded several game contenders, hip-hop has yet to produce a dark night of the soul masterpiece or brilliant, introspective musing on the fleeting nature of life to match rock classics such as Neil Young's "Tonight's the Night," Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks," the Flaming Lips' "The Soft Bulletin" or the third albums by Big Star and the Velvet Underground.

Arriving in stores Monday, "808s & Heartbreak" by multi-talented Chicago chart-topper Kanye West doesn't rise to that level. But despite some flaws, it is a fascinating attempt.

Over the course of his first three albums--"The College Dropout" (2004), "Late Registration" (2005) and "Graduation" (2007)--this larger than life son of the city's South Side established himself as one of the most innovative and adventurous forces in hip-hop, with music that has stretched the genre's boundaries further than any mainstream artist since the early '90s, and lyrics that offer a portrait of young African-American manhood which, for all its inconsistencies and flashes of rampant egotism, is as refreshing an alternative to the prevailing gangsta caricature as the one provided by his former neighbor, our President-elect.

West's fourth studio effort originally was intended to follow the progression of life established by its predecessors: After all that schooling, he was set to earn his reward with a disc called "A Good Ass Job." But that album title and, one presumes, the next installment of the hip-pop trajectory of his earlier sounds both were abandoned in favor of an unexpected and utterly unique detour prompted by the painful losses of his mother and his long-time love.

The star's mom, co-manager and mentor Donda West died as a result of complications from cosmetic surgery in November 2007, and Kanye's engagement with Alexis Phifer ended five months later, in April 2008. West already had rapped earnestly and movingly about Donda on "Late Registration," while many of the lyrics on "Graduation" found him bravely questioning his own boastful public persona, admitting the insecurities that it masks and wondering if he is worthy of true love. It's no surprise that he shares even more on the new album, which comes adorned with cover art of a deflated balloon fashioned in the shape of a heart.

West is not always successful in voicing the depths of his pain: The disc ends with a track called "Pinocchio Story" that opens with a paraphrase of the 1961 Elvis Presley hit "(I Can't Help) Falling in Love With You" before shifting into the fashion-plate rapper bemoaning, "There is no Gucci I can buy/There is no Louis Vuitton to put on/There is no finer smell that they could sell/To get my heart out of this hell/Or my mind out of this jail." Ouch.

But the artist can be forgiven this stumble by virtue of the facts that the song is a freestyle rap recorded live onstage in Singapore, and that he turns things around by slowly working an effective if not especially deep literary metaphor: "They always say, 'Kanye, he keeps it real, boy'/Pinocchio's story is, 'I just want to be a real boy'... It's funny: Pinocchio lied, and that's what kept him from it/I tell the truth, and I keep running... There is no Geppetto to guide me, no one right beside me/The only one who was behind me, I can't find her no more."

West is even more eloquent in the preceding track, "Coldest Winter," when he sings, "If spring can take the snow away/Can it melt away all our mistakes/Memories made in the coldest winter/Goodbye my friend/I won't ever love again/Never again."

All of us have felt that way at some point, and as with the great albums cited above, the best moments on "808s & Heartbreak" offer a sense of redemption and uplift via the power of music, though they require fans to set aside almost everything they think they know about the Kanye West sound. Even his familiar and beloved string sections are employed in a very different way here than we've heard on his stellar hits in the past.

In scattered comments to the press and on his blog, West has cited the naked, minimalist vibe of Phil Collins' first solo album "Face Value" (1981) as a big inspiration. (A raw account of his divorce, this was an entirely different Collins than the pandering pop star of "Sussudio" and later hits.) West gets the primal, tom-tom-heavy African drumming right--generated by the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer, one of the first programmable drum machines and the source of half the disc's title--but rather than the spare guitar and piano that subtly fleshed out songs such as "In the Air Tonight," the Chicago artist favors more elaborate synth sounds (shades of the Daft Punk electronica of "Stronger") and ubiquitous computer auto-tuning.

The only real rapping on the album comes from brief cameos by guests Young Jeezy and Lil' Wayne; West's vocals are all sung in a flat, Lou Reed- or Bob Dylan-like monotone that shows an almost punk disregard for key or melody. The auto-tune isn't used to improve the quality of his singing (it's doubtful that anything could), but to add a distant, metallic, echoey effect more akin to a vocoder, heightening the sense that this is a man reaching out from the bottom of a deep hole.

The formula is touching and very effective at times, notably on "Say You Will," "Welcome to the Heartbreak," "Coldest Winter" (which builds on the 1983 Tears for Fears song "Memories Fade"), "RoboCop" and "Love Lockdown." But a formula it is, and it wears thin and becomes slightly predictable and repetitive over the course of 12 tracks.

If West had interspersed the more mechanical tracks with some that were the exact opposite--say, simple piano interludes provided by his old collaborators John Legend or Jon Brion--he might have made a masterpiece. Instead, he's merely given us an extremely intriguing, sporadically gripping, undeniably fearless and altogether unexpected piece of his troubled soul.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/derogatis/...break_roc.html

NME 7/10

Kanye’s 2008 has been a shitter. His ma, Donda, with whom he vocally shared an inseparable bond, passed away late last year. Then
a split from fiancée Alexis sent him into something of an early-30s meltdown. Poor chap. It’d be odd then, for him to follow this with, say, a reggae-themed party album. Although one might argue it’s just as perplexing for him to take epiphany-type inspiration from a track by British cod-hop also-rans Mr Hudson And The Library (the forthcoming ‘There Will Be Tears’), decide to quit rapping, and record an 11-track album entirely sung through vocoder-esque auto-tune. The latter however, is what he’s gone and done (yup, every track).

As the title foretells, there are two themes powering the college drop-out’s fourth full-length studio album: ’80s tech-nostalgia (the Roland TR-808 is the iconic, tinny drum machine that drove proto-hip hop), and erm, being well sad. Lead single ‘Love Lockdown’ was
a scare for many Kanye-watchers. A brooding, dulcet elegy of quivering emotion without a single spoken couplet, it painstakingly arches from sub-bass ‘pooms’ to tribal fills over five minutes of melancholic digital-warped crooning. Those that didn’t buy into this fanfared rebirth will be trampling their shutter-shades at this absurd album concept.

But from the tortured opening cello groans of ‘Welcome To Heartbreak’, it’s clear the man is still in possession of his marbles. “My friend shows me pictures of his kids/All I can show him is pictures of my cribs”. Hmm. Still, though, there’s a cold, metallic bleakness at play from the get-go, invoking cinematic flashes à la Arnie’s The Running Man, that empowers the woe-is-me slush. The planet’s under attack from scowling hip-hop androids and Kanye’s leading the assault. New single ‘Heartless’ fulfils the promise of its predecessor. Aside from being the only track on which he actually raps, its cathedral organs and lava-lamp rhythmic thuds underscore a dancehall-style tormented chorus that impacts with flooring intensity.

Elsewhere, ‘Street Lights’ is an endearingly broken-sounding ‘where am I in life?’ cold-soul heel-scuffer, and Young Jeezy cranks out some much-needed gruff machismo on sizzurp-addled juggernaut closer, ‘Amazing’. It’s not all killer. The Mr Hudson collabs ‘Paranoid’ and ‘Say You Will’ fail to distract from their flaky hooks and backpack-rap-style beats with Frenchie-coffee-table-lektro blips and Enya-brand flute toots, respectively. The resounding verdict is that it’s a surprising, but bold and brave progression from last year’s confused ‘Graduation’. As for the lack of raps, in truth, the less we have to put up with all that small-man prep-school-canteen bragging, the better.


http://www.nme.com/reviews/kanye-west/10009

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R.O.B.

suss3it

A lot of positive reviews, it sounds like a good album from what I heard. Nov 24th a good day for Def Jam.

YoungChungyBoyz

this shit be a classic mann

iTzMe

classic? the college dropout is a classic, not this

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"Cool As AC Cuz The Heat Secure Me"- Bank$ aka The PLK

anzee11

You guys use the word classic too loosely. Classic is albums that continue to play in many homes and cars for years on out. Albums that stand the test of time.

Anyway, the album is aright if you ask me. It's therapeutic for people who probably been in some of the same situations, if not all, that Kanye West had went through for the past year.

My favorite joints are Paranoid and Amazin'.

Shoottokill

Fuck kany no gangsta!!!

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