Let me just get it out of the way right now, I'm giving this album a 10.0. For better and worse, it's the quintessential Kanye West album. It's Kanye West telling everyone and everything that isn't Kanye West to fuck off, including rap music and Kanye West's fans. Kanye West doesn't care about any of that shit. Kanye West only loves Kanye West. Kanye West knows Kanye West is invincible. Kanye West can premiere Kanye West's latest video on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show." It doesn't matter. There's no knocking Kanye West. Kanye West can make an entire album using autotuner, and expect Kanye West's fans to pay money to own it. Kanye West knows that putting the name Kanye West on Kanye West's latest album guarantees the album will sell 500,000 copies (minimum) its first week. It doesn't matter that it's an over-produced, boring, pile of shit which gets old before the first listen is even through. It's the "Metal Machine Music" of autotuners.
Sure, it could be qualified as a hip-hop album. After all, Young Jeezy shits out an awful verse on the annoying-beyond-belief "Amazing", and Lil Wayne almost sort of raps (terribly) on "See You in My Nightmares." Kanye West fans will wonder why Kanye West doesn't rap on the entire album. Kanye West will say something about how Kanye West is "expanding the very meaning of hip-hop, and forever changing the nature of the music for the better" or some bullshit. The truth is Kanye West is content to do whatever Kanye West wants to do, and will continue to do whatever Kanye West wants to do as long as Kanye West is making money, and then Kanye West will speak out against every review which dares question the artistic merit of "808s & Heartbreak" and question the integrity of the Grammy Awards (as if they had any to begin with) when the album fails to win every major category. The thing is, at first I thought it was all just a big gimmick on the part of Kanye West. Kanye West's ego couldn't possibly be that inflated, right? I was wrong.
I think Kanye West actually believes this is a classic masterpiece of an album, a 10.0 album. Kanye West will stand up for and defend this album against anyone and everyone. Kanye West will hear the criticism, sure, and Kanye West will address it as Kanye West always does. The thing is though, it won't really bother Kanye West. Kanye West will know at the end of the day that Kanye West is still the greatest musical composer since Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Kanye West won't let the fans' disgust at this horrid album unruffle Kanye West. George Bush doesn't care about black people, and Kanye West doesn't care about Kanye West's fans. "808s & Heartbreak" is the archetype Kanye West album for precisely that reason. It's not made for you, the fans. It's made for Kanye West, and you know Kanye West loves it and thinks it's flawless.
Rating: 10.0
(Kanye West loves the score I gave Kanye West, but did complain that I didn't use Kanye West's name enough.)
2 comments:
Haha this was the best post ever on here, hilarious. It's such a terrible album.
I really love "Street Lights."
(great review, too.)
Post a Comment