Since his triumphant 2004
debut The College Dropout, Kanye
West has been plying the same winning formula to steadily diminishing returns.
That certainly can't be said of his frustrating, fascinating fourth solo album, 808s & Heartbreak, a radical
departure that abandons much of what West does best—hyper-soulful beats,
rapping—while exploring daring new sonic and lyrical terrain. The result
is a fascinating mass of contradictions. It's an icily synthetic album about
tender human emotions and a self-professed "pop" album that takes West's music
in defiantly non-commercial new directions. In an era of ringtone raps and the
iPod shuffle, Heartbreak demands
to be considered as a proper album with a strong, cohesive, overarching vision
and conceptually linked tracks, not just an assemblage of songs.
West creates and sustains
a delicate, tricky mood—a fuzzy early-morning miasma of self-doubt,
regret, and longing for people and places past. Sonically, the aptly titled
disc splits the difference between the Auto-Tune R&B; of T-Pain and the glacial
electronic atmospherics of '80s new wave at its loneliest. Heartbreak can get monotonously minimalist, but its strongest
tracks tweak West's newfangled robo-sounds and "look ma, I'm singing!" amateur
croon in intriguing ways. Soaring strings lend a symphonic grandeur to the
infectiously goofy "Robocop," "Paranoid" veers into the Neptunes' twitchy,
glitchy space-disco, and "Street Lights" is heartbreakingly delicate. Even
West's flaws work in his favor: The fragility of his singing imbues the album
with an appealing vulnerability and intimacy. Heartbreak is a bittersweet sleeper that hovers somewhere
between an interesting failure and a secret success. It seems destined to be
the weird little orphan that fans single out as a favorite. West is aiming for
art, growth, and radical reinvention, so even when he stumbles and strains
there's a nobility in his overreaching.