In the presentation of this countdown, Sebastian predicted that autotune was doomed to lose its position in 2009, since it’s already reached its climax. Kanye West has always had an interesting status in the business- being able to transform small trends or upcoming tendencies into easy listening mainstream hits that even your mother sings in the shower. Therefore the overuse of this robot-voice-effect on his record 808’s & Heartbreaks is a quite surprising. The all-pleasing, getting-hipster-kids-to-love-hiphop-hit-machine released a record with a hysterical narrow theme, both in music and subject.

Overall, 808’s & Heartbreaks is quite fascinating. It’s brave and pleasing at the same time. And yes, it’s too much autotune. And yes, it’s too much self-pity. This guy is confused. But in some of these songs, for the first time, between the non-human robot-voice and the all-human-frustrated lyrics, you really get him. ‘Heartless’ is a outstanding example. I really hope that everyone that found this track boring and pop-ish gives it another chance. Cause in the end, we’ll all sob and blow our noses in last year’s gucciscarf.

Kanye West - Heartless (prod. by Kanye West)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.