808s

 A couple thoughts on Yeezy. He has an ego. Probably a god complex. Last night on Conan, he likened his celebrity battle against the paparazzi to some of his family members' activism in the civil rights movement and later interrupted the interview so that he could go pee. He followed all this with a fairly bad performance of "Heartless." At various music award shows in the past two years he threw tantrums when someone else won the awards he felt should have been his. When he finally wins a few, he says they should have gone to someone else. He recently made public his intent to be declared the next Elvis. Clearly his level of celebrity and success have affected his self-perception as well as his perception of the world.

However, I love the guy. He genuinely believes in his work, which is rare in popular music nowadays, especially in this genre. He's more innovative and thoughtful about his "craft" than probably just about every other current mainstream pop act, and in the day and age of over-processed, over-produced and over-polished radio garbage, I can appreciate that. While the public's view of him is pretty poor (and probably rightfully so), I hate to see that bleed over into his worth or credibility as an artist. For me, Kanye's latest album, 808s & Heartbreak (entitled as such because all songs were created from the Rolan TR-808 drum machine and an Auto-Tune/distortion/delay vocal effect Kanye nicknamed "heartbreak"), is evidence that Mr. West continues to be Mr. Fresh and is definitely worth checking out. Sample the tracks (my current favorite being "RoboCop") at hype machine.