Kanye West: 808s & Heartbreak

Even by Kanye West's standards, delivering an album of meditations on loneliness and paranoia, entirely sung through Autotune, is an audacious statement. 808s & Heartbreak shouldn't work: West's takes on the solitude of the superstar are solipsistic and clumsy ("How could you be so Dr Evil?" he asks on Heartless). That he ultimately pulls it off is testament to his talent: it is the stylised, minimal music that lends the album its power, and which helps West convince as a man beset by demons and femmes fatales. In his hands, Autotune is a weapon, not a gimmick: ironically for a device used to dehumanise the singer, it makes him sound more vulnerable, as though playing smoke and mirrors with his own emotions. Taut string arrangements, doomy bass and looped piano motifs add to the claustrophobia; captivating as it is, the isolated moments of levity (the disco bounce of Paranoid; Young Jeezy's guest spot on Amazing, on which he rhymes "podium" with "sodium") are a relief. This album is admirable for much more than just its creator's chutzpah.