How Do We Feel About Kanye West These Days?

Since the initial flurry of excitement over “Love Lockdown” and the inevitable, appropriate backlash, a few songs from Kanye West's upcoming album 808s and Heartbreak have leaked to the internet. It appears the LP is a collection of love songs, short on rapping and full of auto-tuned wailing over sparse beats. As a devoted Kanye album-purchaser, Glow In The Dark tour-attendee, and “Jesus Walks” sing-alonger, I’m having a really hard time making up my mind on how I feel about this.

On one hand, it’s great to see him push the boundaries of what modern hip-hop can be. It’s great, in this age of ringtone rap where a guy like Flo-Rida can ride one decent (okay, amazing) song to the bank while his filler-heavy album sells miserably, to have a rapper approach an album as one singular vision, both thematically and sonically. It’s great he isn’t afraid to take risks instead of pumping out watered-down “Gold Digger” retreads for the next decade.

On the other hand, all these songs are really terrible. Wonderful ideas, awful execution. Kanye, don’t be like recent Penn guest Alicia Sacramone: learn to stick the landing.