On The Blueprint 3‘s first single “D.O.A. (Death of Autotune)”, Jay-Z complains about the state of rap and brags about getting back to real hip-hop, but he spends the rest of the album completely contradicting himself: this sounds like Jay-Z trying his hand at a more pop-oriented album – à la collaborator Kanye West – but Jigga isn’t Kanye and his attempts (aside from most of the album’s first third, particularly second single “Run This Town”) generally fall flat and become immediately forgettable, before the album gets downright terrible with the cheese-tastic closer “Young Forever” and the muddled, disgracefully bad “Hate” (possibly one of the worst songs of the year); The Blueprint 3 is clearly the sound of Jay-Z trying to be something he isn’t.

Rating: 5 / 10

September 11, 2009
Roc Nation

808s & Heartbreak is certainly indulgent and the fans and critics are going to tear Kanye West to pieces for it, but the music itself is sound: a collection of emotionally aching tunes built on top of chilly, minimalist beats and mechanical effects, a brave, interesting, and refreshingly focused departure in a music industry where ‘change’ and ‘experimentation’ are four-letter words.

808s and Auto-Tune: Half of the album’s title comes from the Roland TR-808 drum machine which was introduced to Kanye West by composer Jon Brion and was apparently used to generate less typical, hip-hop sounding beats for the album. Also used extensively is Auto-Tune, a vocal processor made obnoxiously famous by T-Pain in recent years. Yes, it’s overused, and yes, Kanye isn’t that great of a singer in the first place.

Unwelcome guests: 808s & Heartbreak features several guest appearances, including the likes of Young Jeezy and Lil Wayne. What’s funny, considering the furor over West’s choice to rap so little on the album, is that the guest spots fall flat, conflicting with the otherwise uniform tone and becoming ultimately forgettable.

Grade: 4.2 / 5

Roc-A-Fella/Island Def Jam
November 24, 2008