On my side of the divide the dour one-note largesse just sits there like a fat lump, flattening all intrigue and any ability to love. How you feel about this record will depend in large part on how you feel about its multi-functionality at gulping down the universe while vomiting lament, at encasing melodrama in zeitgeist, at defining urban radio trend as the new New Wave…at a Tears for Fears rip (“Coldest Winter”) on a record with Lil Wayne. Or: “Pain-pop” with both sides of the hyphenate put into absolute, mutually canceling balance. Because, after all, this is distilled pop. So Heartbreak acknowledges its pain without much pain in its voice. Graduation (2007) was a bit of a disappointment for me but still I concluded that it was “constantly compelling in how it splays the conflicted makings of its maker.” With Ye perhaps unable to process fully the level of personal turmoil he’s experienced in the past year, all things conflicted and contradicted are here coolly obliterated into a mellifluous wash.
By severally achieving all of its goals it relegates them to sum total fail it’s emo-ism disaffected and disinfected by technological pursuits it feigns catharsis but treads depression’s cycles it’s robotic when Kanye must imagine it to be neo-neo-soul and it’s funny, as evidenced by just about any lyrical excerpt I could throw at you but especially “Robocop.” It wants to be Marvin Gaye meets Daft Punk but it’s more like T-Pain meets Coldplay. 808s and Heartbreak is everything it wants to be and so much less.
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