Wake Up, Mr. West

Up until 808s and Heartbreaks came along, I had zero issues with Kanye West. All the cries of "He's arrogant!" and "He's encouraging kids to drop out!" and "He carries a manbag!" fell on deaf ears. My whole theory on Kanye was that he's just a supremely confident artist--in a justified way, sorta like Don Omar--trapped inside the body of a supremely insecure person. A bad combo as far as social skills are concerned, but if your career goal is to achieve pop culture greatness, it's pretty much perfect.

Then "Love Lockdown" dropped. Then "Heartless." And then finally, the album, which sold a paltry (for Yeezy, at least) 450,000 copies in its first week. And now all I want to know is, why are we all still pretending that this album is good? Is it because his last one was so brilliantly crafted that we think he deserves a little bit/TONS of slack? Is it because deep down, we suspect it's bad but are worried that it's really groundbreaking and we just don't get it? (He seems to think so.) Or is it because the thought of yet another Kanye outburst is enough to keep us from opening our mouths to protest a half-assed album? Probably all of the above...but whatever the reason, I think it's time we stop kidding ourselves.

I have to agree with the folks at Spin that if the only way we can enjoy Kanye's new music is through a concerted effort to brainwash ouselves, that's a problem. But please believe that I am a Kanye West fan, as much as this post seems to indicate otherwise, and I would love nothing more than to be proven wrong on this. So if you like 808s and Heartbreaks--better yet, if there's a single person out there reading this who can honestly tell me that they enjoy the song "Robocop"--in a pure and honest way, not in the "I listened to it 150 times until I finally surrendered" kind of way--then please share your reasoning with a comment. I just need to understand!