By Ryan Broderick

The buzz surrounding Kanye West’s newest release, “808s & Heartbreak” has been ferocious and has only grown after the release of the first two singles, “Love Lockdown” and “Heartless.” By buzz, though, it’s less of a “wanting to hear it” and more of a “what the hell is this?” factor. If you’ve heard either of them, you’re probably pretty surprised. After listening to the most recent full-length leak of it, “808s” as a whole is even more surprising.

“Love Lockdown” is easily the weakest on the album, but at the same time not an outrageous choice for his first single. The song, which features lo-fi autotuner and tribal drums is a bold but fairly accurate choice of how to introduce the album.

The tribal theme stays throughout, which could seem pretty outrageous, but oddly enough it fits the record. “Heartless” features carnival-esque polysynths and hand claps and has a purer rap lyricism than most of the other tracks, but it’s still nothing like his previous albums.

To describe the other 10 tracks is almost impossible, especially if you’ve heard any single track that West has ever released. Every song has a dark, ghostly, digitized aesthetic that is intriguing and hard to turn off. It’s like watching a hip-hop Cirque du Soleil: It’s so weird you just can’t look away.

By the end, though, there’s definitely a feeling of something missing.

“808s” opens with the six-minute techno ballad “Say You Will” and features sweeping synths and repetitive lyrics that don’t really fit. The album quickly shifts (if only slightly) to much fuller song construction, but still staying within West’s “Opium Daft Punk” motif. The next stand out track is “Amazing” featuring Young Jeezy is slightly more like rap, but it’s still that weird middle ground between hip-hop, pop, techno and tribal.

West’s album isn’t without its sweet spots though; tracks six through eight are easily the best of the album. What makes them so good? They have hooks and while they still sound nothing like his other music, the production makes sense. Their melancholy fits and sounds real and the autotuner is turned down significantly.

The biggest question burning up the message boards as more and more complete copies of the album leak on to the Internet is “why?” Why would West, known for upbeat, tightly produced rap albums, release an album of stripped-down electropop and almost zero actual rapping?

He declared at a recent CD listening party, “I don’t know if you noticed, but I don’t talk about any of that stuff on the album-no stuntin’, no flashin’, just real things.” Also, recent interviews with him mention the idea of heartbreak and losses being the reasons for autotune, as a way to musically imitate those feelings.

What is apparent is that West, the biggest ego in rap, has lost his confidence. And what also makes sense over the 12 desperate and raw tracks of “808s & Heartbreaks” is that if he had done what he wanted to do in this album on a hip-hop one it would have been terrible. Hip-hop as a genre isn’t really meant for the type of heartache and loss he expresses.

So what does that mean for the album as a whole? Without his ego, glory and almost maniac levels of confidence and swagger, is it any good? The unfortunate thing is that there isn’t an easy answer.

The last song even adds to the cheated feeling the album gives off. It’s a six-minute live track of a freestyle he did in Singapore. And yes, this has been confirmed as being the final track on the album, not some bootleg toss in from an Internet “music pirate.” The quality of it only makes it more apparent that the effort just simply wasn’t there this time around. What West can’t seem to get right in the newest album is the difference between crippling heartache and morose laziness.

If the final product, released on Nov. 24, is anything remotely similar to the 12 most recent tracks leaked on the Web, the album isn’t meant for most hip hop fans, or even Kanye West fans. What “808s & Heartbreaks” aims to be and almost succeeds in being is a pop music diary of losing the person you care about the most. What it actually ends up being is a dry, repetitive and unimaginative 12-track therapy session.

Hopefully, for West’s career, art won’t imitate life, because there is no glimpse of hope to be found in “808s & Heartbreak,” just the sound of a man with a crushed ego.

3 Stars