808's And Heartbreak - Kanye West

Kanye West - 808's And Heartbreaks Fresh, Unique, Full Of Spirit and Brilliance (although electronics are overused) Intro ~~~~ I have all Kanye West's albums and enjoy them all. I use to dislike his music a long time ago however I find him to be the best hip hop star out there today. With his style, freshness on his music and the spirit that lives through his songs is brilliant. I have recently been to his glow in the dark tour in Glasgow and loved it. He is full of energy on stage just as is the case with the energy he puts into his songs (some more than others) I was very sceptical about his new album, no rap and all singing, ...  Read the complete review

I came to Kanye West quite late - about 12 months ago. I picked up his albums and immediately fell in love. I'm a lover of rap and Hip-Hop, and Kanye became my number one. His word-play was amazing: filled with double meanings and internal rhymes, I just loved it. Musically, his tracks all had a strong sense of energy too, and a positive vibe. Whereas 50 Cent and Eminem had very pessimistic vibes, Kanye was much more positive, with horns blaring. With all that in mind, last week I got hold of 808s, and was very excited - until I started playing it! Most of the album features Kanye SINGING! Track after track is devoid of his trademark fast and clever lyrics, ...  Read the complete review

808s & Heartbreak, hip-hop maverick Kanye West's fourth studio album is, it's fair to say, a curious affair all round. Abandoning (momentarily at least) the politically astute, rapid-fire, hook-heavy rap that made his name, the record consists almost entirely of bleak, icy, vocoder-slathered R&B ballads, most concerned in some way with loss, stagnation, loneliness and death, metaphorical or literal. The opening Say You Will provides the blueprint for much of what follows, delivering on the sonic and thematic promises of the album title - beats pulled from a Roland TR-808 drum machine ping-ponging around a sparse, almost minimalist reflection on a ...  Read the complete review

For his fourth album, Kanye West choose to make significant changes to what he is about as the person know best for his work as a producer and rapper, changes his focus by doing a Pop album, one in which he doesn't rap in at all. Kanye, can't actually sing, which is a great problem for an album full of songs, however he overcomes this proble, by using the robotic auto-tuning which T-Pain is known for using throughout the whole of "808s & Heartbreak", a concept album which hopefully won't trickle into future material from him. He calls the style which he uses in this album "Pop Art", and all other artistic movements in fine arts and ...  Read the complete review

Ever since 'Through the Wire' hip hop star, Kanye West burst on to the scene in 2003, I feel he has done his job every single time it has came out to putting out a new record. Especially if his job is to split opinion on him as much as possible, as ever since he used the Ku Klux Klan imagery in 'Jesus Walks' to samply Daft Punk on his biggest hit -- 'Stronger' -- this guy has had us talking, or singing his tracks. '808s & Heartbreak' comes as Kanye's fourth studio album and being released at the end of a year that has seen the loss of his mother and the breakdown of his relationship, this shall be the album to divide us all the most. '808s' has already had Rolling ...  Read the complete review