808's and Autotune

I've been listening to the new Kanye West stuff a bit recently and its starting to grow on me. I have to admit when I first heard "love lockdown" and the autotune I thought it was a career killer but after getting more into the rest of the tracks and understanding the ideas of the album a bit more I totally get it. I've loved Kanye since way back and was always a fan of his beats and production, so the drastic change in sound was a real shock and it's taken me up until now to actually give the tracks a chance. To me, the whole album is Kanye experimenting with new ideas and technology, whilst dealing with issues in his life. The autotune takes a while to get used to, but Kanye was never a singer, he's just used the technology available to enable himself to put his emotions on the album, there's no way he could convey the same feeling with sampled beats and rapping. I'm certainly a lot more open to the album and wish I could have seen him live on his recent tour, I'm sure it was amazing. When I heard the tracks I didn't think he would ever be able to pull them off live, but after watching this video of him on Saturday Night Live I'm convinced; with live instruments, visuals and the energy Kanye puts into the performance it's just awesome. The album is definately on my christmas list anyway. For all you hater's check out this performance of "heartless".