Cover:
Alternate Cover:
iTunes and KAWS Special Christmas Packaging Cover:
Kanye West's 4th studio album, "808s and Heartbreak," was released on November 21st in some European countries (including Denmark and Germany) and November 24th in North America. The album is a marked departure for Kanye. It was finished over 3 weeks in Hawaii and was made in response to the death of his mother, Donda West, in November 2007 and the breakup of his relationship with fiance Alexis Phifer. Kanye decided early on that every song was to feature Kanye singing with the use of Auto-Tune and the TRS-808, an electronic drum machine. The first 10 tracks of the album deal with his breakup with Alexis while the 11th track, Coldest Winter, is about the death of his mother. The final track, Pinocchio Story, is a freestyle he performed during a concert in Singapore. It was added to the tracklist just before the album was sent to manufacturing, supposedly at the behest of Beyonce Knowles. The story goes that she heard the freestyle and liked it so much that she bugged Kanye to include it on the album. Kanye has stated that he wishes the album to be classified as pop because, as he said, "People think pop is bad, but Michael Jackson was pop and who can compare to him?" The album is now available for purchase at iTunes with an exclusive video of Pinocchio Story. It is also available from the Amazon MP3 store.
A version of the album with "special christmas packaging" artwork by artist KAWS will be released on December 16th (source). This artwork will apparently also be included with the album on iTunes. A sample of the new artwork is below:
Tracklisting:
1. Say You Will
2. Welcome to Heartbreak (ft. Kid Cudi)
3. Heartless
4. Amazing (ft. Young Jeezy)
5. Love Lockdown
6. Paranoid (ft. Mr. Hudson)
7. Robocop
8. Street Lights
9. Real Bad News
10. See You In My Nightmares (ft. Lil Wayne)
11. Coldest Winter
12. Pinocchio Story
The tracklist is slightly different for people who preorder the album through iTunes:
11. Coldest Winter
12. Pinocchio Story (Live Freestyle in Singapore)
14. Pinocchio Story (Exclusive Video)
15. Heartless (Video)
Welcome To Heartbreak has strings from Jon Brion and Herbie Hancock contributed to Robocop.
1st Single: Love Lockdown
The first single is "Love Lockdown," which he premiered during the closing performance of the 2008 MTV VMAs. He posted a studio version of the song on his blog several days later. Kanye claims he wrote the song 2 weeks before the VMAs and that it's his favorite song that he's written to date. After fans complained about the chorus being hard to understand in the version posted to his blog, Kanye announced that he had redone the track, completely re-singing it and changing the taiko drums and posted this version on his blog the next day. Kanye posted a new mix of the song, believed to be the final one, to his blog in November.
The video was shot in early September and features a juxtaposition of Kanye, alone in a white room, with an angry Africa tribe. He premiered the video on Ellen on October 7th and it went up on iTunes that night.
2nd Single: Heartless
Kanye performed parts of this song during different tour stops in August and September before revealing that it was the second single during a surprise appearance at a T.I. concert. Kanye posted an unmastered version of the song on his blog (WARNING: Link is NSFW) on October 15th. It was added to the iTunes Music Store on November 4th. The video was leaked on November 7th and Kanye posted a clear version to his blog later that day. The video is patterned after the movie "American Pop" and both feature full rotoscoping of live action video, where each frame is traced over with animation. Kanye posted a newly mixed version of the song, believed to be the final one, on his blog in November.
Guardian (UK) 4/5 Stars
Billboard
URB Magazine 3.5/5 Stars
Chicago Sun Times 3/4 Stars
Times Online (UK) 5/5 Stars
USA Today 4/4 Stars
Newsday A
Washington Post
Prefix Magazine 9/10
Delusions of Adequacy
