TOP 10 NOW: \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\shawty got poll poll poll poll poll poll poll (part II: 2008 ALBUMS)/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

haha right? xpost to dan

"you must be joking
that was a good one
your forst good one in a while"

xp to j0

we have the facts and we're voting yes is a solid album.

Re: Death Cab, I will never ever buy their music because of their stupid name, but I really really love "I Will Possess Your Heart" to an unhealthy degree.

xp: Brainwasher that's like the central point of the entire album!

If someone called me a Robocop as we were on the verge of breaking up that would be the dealbreaker

LOL!

like i love the song but the lyrics are just really clumsy and irredeemable. like i said it's the cognitive dissonance that intrigues me, like, i'm listening and thinking 'i have every reason in the world to hate this song" and i cant bring myself to it. pretty powerful thing imo

I hope there's some surprise albums to come that noone expected like what happened with 50-21

And I dont mean Britney :)

for one i doubt kanye actually called alexis a robocop irl, but idk i think as an inflammatory comparison - and obviously "robocop" is the most acidic song on the album - it's a pretty good one. like if a bf compared me to a robot only intent on suffocating his life i'd be pretty taken aback by it, also it's kanye so obv it borders on "really dumb" and "really awesome", so i guess i think it falls on the latter's side

Is there anything on the album that deals with this relationship that shows Kanye behaving in a manner that would allow any hope of salvaging it? "Robocop" is more explicit in its careening back and forth between an aching description of a bewildered reaction to shitty behavior and the laughable reflection of said behavior on the person complaining about it.

Then, there's that dismissive coda which manages to make "you're spoiled" seem to be a million times more menacing a statement than it actually is.

cuz i dont really recall anyone talking about the album here

It's possible I'm confusing the Chicago thread (Kenan, n/a, Eazy) with ILM, which is what made me think it might place. (And the high placements elsewhere.)

And k3vin is right, it's delivered in a manner that makes Kanye seem functionally retarded, and that is one of the reasons why it ends up working.

I love how we've taken the Fleet Foxes album as a jumping off point to talk about 808s & Heartbreak.

I don't know which is worse, tbh.

fleet foxes:

pleasant, first song is pretty okay. hard to believe that anyone with a serious jones for america and nicks/buckingham fleetwood mac wouldn't have some fondess. or animal collective fans who don't get the "weird" stuff. bores me, though.

fleet foxes hate i assume is the fact theyre so hyped when theres so many better acts making that kind of music

I don't hate Fleet Foxes, but it's true that they're not that far removed from Grizzly Bear aesthetically and yet a good deal more colorless to my ears.

I just disagree with you about it 'working' - he sounds really stupid and bitter, the "spoiled little L.A. girl" thing makes me think "damn dude no wonder she broke up with your ass" - and I can't even enjoy it in a "this is so bad it's good" way, it's just annoying.

*wave*
Two #1 votes? Out yourselves!
― Johnny Fever

Like, it's not a very eloquent song about a break up, and it paints Kanye in a bad light moreso than the supposed "robocop" ex-girlfriend

since you're all talking about Kanye West I may as well post it now

14 - Kanye West - 808s & Heartbreak
194.5 points, 25 votes
10 in P&J, 21 in p4k

http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/7267/kanye808sheartbreakgq7.jpg

Full album streaming: http://www.last.fm/music/Kanye+West/808s%2B%2526%2BHeartbreak

These songs are sticking with me more than almost anything new I've heard this year, popping into my head when I'm not expecting them to. The lyrics sound tossed-off, and maybe they are, but a writer this talented can tap a deep vein even when tossing thoughts off. I don't know, I tend to hear New Order lyrics this way too, just insignificant, tossed-off trifles that stick with me a lot longer and more deeply than I expect.

― Euler

My main impressions:

1) This sounds nothing like what I thought it would based on the commentary here. It doesn't seem unfinished, half-baked, insincere, overly earnest (emphasis on "overly" there), self-indulgent, derivative or embarrassing to me; Kanye gets very introspective and at times self-loathing, but never to the point where he become unrelatable or insufferable and each track seems as carefully constructed as all of his other material (adding more to "Say You Will", for example, would completely ruin the vibe and actually make it sound like something was missing).

2) I really love this. A lot. Especially "Say You Will", "Welcome To Heartbreak", "Love Lockdown" and "Street Lights".

3) "Heartless" works much much much better in the context of the album.

― HI DERE

I've been listening to this pretty exclusively for a couple days now and I really, really like it. Tom is really, really reaching in that paragraph you quoted but the album is absolutely about nailing down a particular mood. The fact that Kanye would lay some of this stuff out so bluntly is embarrassing and sort of admirable at the same time. That line from RoboCop--"I told her there were things she didn't need to know/but she never let it go" (or whatever it is exactly)--I think Kanye KNOWS how bad that sounds but the album is all about playing out the end of the relationship from a certain perspective. It's not typical woe is me stuff at all.

All that and "Love Lockdown" which is basically a new generation's "Tusk".

― call all destroyer

Loving most of this list, btw. So much new-to-me stuff that is interesting and, well, really really good.

I'm not referring to the sickly mush that is The-Dream, obviously.

xxxxp whoa buckingham/nicks-era fleetwood mac had actual songs yo

:-\

ooooook time for #13

I just disagree with you about it 'working' - he sounds really stupid and bitter

like, have you never felt bitter!? it's pretty relatable as far as feeling bitter goes, i think that's why it works. it's really mean but people feel that way sometimes. i think it's a a pretty good snapshot at what it's like to lose your emotions like that... i'm sure kanye doesn't feel that way about alexis atm

xxxposts: yeah, it's too easy to get caught up in whether kanye is painting himself in a bad light intentionally, for artistic purposes, or just cuz he's a dick. main thing is that the effect is there, and it makes the songs/album more interesting.

Honestly I think 808s works a lot better if you listen to it with the standpoint that Kanye's viewpoint isn't intended to be sympathetic 100% of the time, making the ones where he is genuinely sympathetic all the more powerful ("Street Lights").

xpost: I really feel like you are missing the entire point of "Robocop". He is being stupid and bitter on that song and it's put across in a manner that seems intended to make you say "no wonder she dumped you". That appears to be the entire point of the song; the venom, the incoherence, the total refusal to take any culpability for destabilizing the relationship... I don't see how you can go into this song at all thinking that Kanye is trying to get you on his side!

Fair enough if the negative reaction makes you dislike the song, but I really think that negative reaction to Kanye is intentional.

idk if it's intentional, but certainly he knows that he sounds like a huge dick on that song - part of a relationship tho

xxxxp whoa buckingham/nicks-era fleetwood mac had actual songs yo

― call all destroyer

yeah, that's why i get bored by FFs, no songs. but that's definitely the vibe they're shooting for, and they sometimes nail it

do people who hate on 808s also hate on Marvin's "Here My Dear"?

lol let's talk about Fleet Foxes now

well yeah, but it's not bitter in a righteous or relatable way! There are tons of songs that convey the bitterness of a breakup much better than 'robocop', it's not as if this subject matter hasn't been done before so I don't get your point

Marvin doesn't call her 'so dr. evil'.

^^^still amazed that people latch on to the dr. evil line.

well obviously i like it for more reasons than the sentiment - for instance, the chorus, the drums, the violin part - i'm just saying that the sentiment and lyrics aren't a hold up at all for me, and in fact the opposite

kanye is such a dork btw - it's funny like he openly expresses love and admiration for tv on the radio and justice and posts animal collective videos on his blog, but on his album he references: robocop, dr. evil and stephen king (twice)

i mean i'm not trying to say that kanye is in any way comparable to marvin but just in terms of "misogyny" (I had to wade through the 808s & Heartbreak thread for blurbs and it was torture) and self-pity and etc.

"Relatable" is a tricky word there; I think "understanable" is a more appropriate way of putting it. You don't need to endorse the viewpoint to get what's going on there. Also, the full-on cartoony nonsense that is the backing track wrapped up with the narcissistic sentiment kind of pushes the whole thing past "can you believe this shit????" and into "can you believe this shit works???"

kanye is such a dork btw - it's funny like he openly expresses love and admiration for tv on the radio and justice and posts animal collective videos on his blog, but on his album he references: robocop, dr. evil and stephen king (twice)

Kanye = Carlton Banks but w/ Will Smith's attitudinizing.

btw some guy in my building plays 808s every morning between like 7:30 and 8:30. at least it's something i don't mind.

only used the dr. evil line because heartless is the single i keep hearing, but the lyric is stoopid.

(Basically, I'm arguing that had he tried to go for a more balanced tone on that song, it wouldn't have worked because the carnival sideshow backing track would have run roughshod over it.)

i agree

Kanye = Carlton Banks but w/ Will Smith's attitudinizing.

― Cunga

truthbombz

Well obviously we disagree on whether or not it "works".

Which is okay

I just disagree with you about it 'working' - he sounds really stupid and bitter, the "spoiled little L.A. girl" thing makes me think "damn dude no wonder she broke up with your ass" - and I can't even enjoy it in a "this is so bad it's good" way, it's just annoying.

― let's get high off our own supply (The Brainwasher), Friday, February 13, 2009 5:00 PM (7 minutes ago)

dude for me it's not a 'so bad it's good' thing; i really appreciate the way kanye has chosen to make this a "moment in time" piece rather than a carefully-planned epic. it really cpatures the way you feel when your heart is broken (whether you deserved it or not) and who doesnt say or think those kinds of things when they're hurt? to me, it really establishes the album's character as vulnerable and redeemable and makes the whole thing infinitely more relateable. jsut one of the reasons it works so well imo.

many many xposts lol or exactly what jordan said! we are on the same page

i am so glad that the state of the 808 debate has not changed a bit in the last couple months. really takes me back, y'know?

"if you missed it the first time on ILX....."

the difference itt is that anthony miccio isn't trolling