808’s & Heartbreak

In 808’s & Heartbreak, we see a side of Kanye no one had before. His first project after his mother, Donda passed away and his fiance, Alexis Phifer, Kanye was at one of his lowest points in his career. His intro song, Say You Will, shows Kanye is still thinking about Phifer and misses her. Two songs later, and Heartless is one of his best tracks ever, as Ye talks about the breakup between West and Phifer. 

Paranoid is Kanye telling himself to relax, and he is trying to hide behind fun and vibrant instrumentals, while the lyrics are a look inside West’s mind. To summarize the meaning of this album in one line, the last song, Pinocchio Story tells us, “You’ll never figure out real love”. After a while, the album gets repetitive, as in Kanye tells the same story again and again. This album would work much better as an EP, or a shorter project. It was an experimental album for sure, but 808’s just did not work out to be an especially great project.

RATING: 5/10