Kanye West
"808s & Heartbreak"
Released: Nov. 25, 2008
Genre: Hip-Hop/R&B

Official Site, MySpace, Wikipedia

Kanye West has turned a new page in his musical career, and in the process he's made one of the best hip-hop albums of the year.

"I WANT TO be the next Elvis."

Pretty ridiculous to think that anyone could be as big and personify a generation the way the "King" did, but that's just what rapper/producer Kanye West told the world at the recent American Music Awards.

Who is this kid from Chicago to compare himself to the face of American music?

Well, Mr. West might be the next biggest thing, so for now let’s just call him the Prince. (Oh wait, isn't that taken already?)

Kanye has always been known for his excessive egotism, but when he comes out with something as popular and hot as "808s and Heartbreak," he does not seem like a fool.

He is a genius.

So what if he's changed everything that he had built himself to be? He's stopped telling jokes on his tracks, stopped rapping, and sings with a cold metal vocoder. Definitely a dark, dark version of the previous Kanye.

There is a major reason for the change in Kanye's work. Emotionally, this past year has been hard for him, losing his mother, Donda West, to an accident during cosmetic surgery and then a break up with his fiancée, designer Alexis Phifer. On anyone, even Kanye, that would be tough.

You can really see his feelings flow across this entire album. Almost an "emo" Kanye West has arrived, and he just does not seem to have that fun he used to. He may say that the auto-tune device is "one of the funnest things to use," but what he is singing into that piece of metal is not fun or comforting at all.

Also Mr. West has decided to be more influenced by the work of Frank Sinatra than any Jay-Z disc, singing mostly the entire album and having guests Lil Wayne and Young Jeezy do the rapping for him.

That covers half of what the album really is. That part of the album is the Heartbreak; the other part is the 808s, in which Kanye has created a whole new world with his beats, including the Roland TR-808 drum machine.

Kanye wanted to create something that would evoke emotion. Mixing sad lyrics with tribal-sounding beats and a ghostly singer, he believed he would make something groundbreaking.

Mr. West was absolutely right.

This album, when I first listened to it all the way through, had me hypnotized. Nothing could get me away from the eerie genius of it all.

Kanye seems to have bared his entire soul to the world and told everyone exactly what's on his mind.

His lyrics on some songs are quite repetitive, including his hit single "Love Lockdown," but there are portions of this album that are truly genius.

“Goodbye my friend, will I ever love again?/ Memories made in the coldest winter,” cues West on the track "Coldest Winter," dedicated to his late mother. This really shows the pain and sorrow that he went through the past year.

Kanye was extremely close to his mother. Donda West had to work hard for Kanye to get the simple things in life.

It's tragic that now Kanye has his fame and fortune, he loses the one person who had always been there for him and helped him up when he was down.

You may hear loads of people saying that this new album is whack and they want the old Kanye back, but they have to realize that when something as traumatic as losing a parent happens, it's hard for a person not to change.

It's not an absence of thought or a lack of ideas; it's just the pain of a man.

Musically this album is amazing, lyrically it's amazing, and conceptually it's amazing. In a track also called "Amazing," Kanye tells the world how big he is, that "No matter what / You'll never take that from me/ My reign is as far as your eyes can see."

This is definitely something different from this modern-day genius, but just like Elvis, the Louis Vuitton Don is able to break boundaries and create something unique and — dare I say it again — amazing.

Note to readers: For Laura Dripps' review of "808s and Heartbreak," click here.