Kanye West: 808s & Heartbreak

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.