Kanye West does an album where he doesn't rap?

If you haven't lived under a rock, or had the power to your computer cut off in the last couple of months, you should already know about Kanye West's latest incredibly awesome single "Love Lockdown" which is leading to a new album called 808's and Heartbreak. You likely appreciated "Love Lockdown" as both a dance song and a song about men hating women that are too clingy or that they just don't love as much for whatever reason. Maybe you enjoyed "Heartless" for its use of the phrase "How could you be so Dr. Evil?" Or maybe you quickly casted it off for those exact reasons. Clearly he's just making a minimalist dance record about his lost love, right? And clearly this auto-tune thing is the most godawful annoying thing to happen to hip-hop since people sued for sampling, correct?

Technically, both of the answers to that are yes. 808s and Heartbreak is easily described by its title, and all of it is based around the problems that ruin relationships. Which immediately makes it a tad bit more thematic than say T.I.'s new album Paper Trail being based around the rapper actually *gasp* writing his songs. What a new concept to hip-hop. And fans of Kanye's production don't really get much to chew on, as Kanye strips down songs to a tribal beat and a few occasional beeps and whistles, only busting out an orchestra for a song like "Robocop" that desperately needs musical direction.

Video for "Love Lockdown".

And one thing is amazingly clear on 808s and Heartbreak as well: Kanye is as flawed of a person as the unnamed female (probably an ex-fiancee, but probably better off as unnamed) he loves, misses, derides for her craziness, and eventually leaves. This is probably the most vulnerable a rapper has exposed himself to be and as experimental as a rapper has been since Common's Electric Circus. But whereas Common incorporates love and romance between adults in his music nearly all the time, Kanye never has been forthcoming on his romantic peril in any of his music before this, excluding maybe "Flashing Lights" from last year's Graduation. And even then, he hasn't revealed to this degree that maybe he doesn't love his dream girl quite the way that he had wanted to. That even with everything that he has and a woman that he adores, he isn't really happy.

The entire album sort of speaks in a timeline. You could get that "Say You Will" is about a breakup, leading to "Welcome to Heartbreak" in which West overthinks about the idealized romance of his friends and their inherent happiness over having children and living "the dream". Which makes total sense, since West is 31. In theory, his biological clock is ticking down and he's left with a brief amount of time to find that romance he wants. He's not saying anything particularly new persay, but for a rap artist to admit that his life basically sucks and he needs a woman probably more badly than they need him is a stunning sentiment.

Video for "Heartless".

Songs like "Heartless" and "Love Lockdown" are less dreary, and they fit the pacing of the album because of it. There's a sense of anger on these tracks, but it's anger under the context of romance, and so the chords are a little happier and Kanye has a little bit of his traditional swagger. They also make the second act of a three part act. Act 1 is the loneliness of "Welcome to Heartbreak". Act 2 is the more divine "relationship" songs of "Heartless" to "Robocop". Act 3 meanwhile, fits the more crushing tragic aspect, from admitting that a traditional relationship with him is designed for failure on "Street Lights", to the breakup of "Bad News" and the even more soul-crushing "Coldest Winter" based around the passing of West's mom Donda.

And Kanye seems to feel like crap because he views all of his achievements under a mere word: amazing. That's it. There's seemingly no more pleasure he gets out of his lifestyle, one that's tearing the relationship apart but one he has to do because he grasps for the scope of achievement. He wants to be seen as even more than what he is, and yet on "Amazing", it's drearier than that. As much as he enjoys success, he feels numb. He's already sold millions of albums and said things that are ridiculous and gotten tons of awards for his work. And yet he's not happy. And even with some perceived love, he isn't happy. This isn't a ballad about all of the riches in world not being enough compared to love. It's about the riches being there, and the perceived love being there, and yet there's no pure happiness about it.

West even admits that this is his fault in a way on "Robocop". He admits that he's into "crazy" women. He admits that his life is this way because of his own decisions and thus, even in the context of a song where he's coyly laughing about his girl's precedence to spy into his life, he sees this as all his own fault.

All of this sounds like it is scarily hard to listen to and it arguably is at times, but there's something much more intriguing about West's psychological treatment via music. The auto-tune technique isn't really distracting in any way, and it fits the broken nature of 808s and Heartbreak. The production tends to get more intriguing as the album goes on, so anyone scared off by "Love Lockdown" might find songs like "Paranoid" as up their alley.

If a hip-hop record can get an award for "going out on a limb and doing something no one expects", 808s and Heartbreak would take that award hands down. It is ambitious and mostly accomplished, which means that it's pretty intimate and scary all the same. Still, it's nice to see someone in hip-hop go out on that limb because...wow. There could be some interesting results.