Awesome beats are absolutely no excuse to lazily spew some meaningless love-song words and call it a song. Since Kanye on this album is essentially a one-man band, he has a responsibility to put the puzzle-pieces together by himself. The saddest thing a front-man (or woman) can do to their band is waste the instrumental work with lackluster vocals. Weezy's lyrics are hardly enough to save the song, while they are decent they still sound too much like Kanye's vocals to really add any outside substance to the track. The song he does with Lil' Wayne is very disappointing and is a perfect example of a basic tune with no substance, entirely relying on computerized effects to give it the emotional feel that it has.
The songs rely on bass-heavy, dreamy beats with extremely manufactured vocal work. I know Kanye's production very well and I can tell you if he spent not even a month longer in the studio he could have produced something ten times the magnitude of this. It feels rushed all of the beats share a robotic, calculated feel to them. I couldn't put it any better than I just did, 808s and Heartbreak starts off very promising (who in hell doesn't like that Welcome to Heartbreak beat? Maybe I'm just a sucker for the violin) and throughout the album its clear that Kanye was on a one-way road the entire time he was recording the album. But that lasts for one track maybe, with prolonged listening it becomes obvious that effects have been used and the singers efforts loose the organic feel they had at first. I've seen people use voice effects in studios before, they can make the worst singer in the world into a regular Christina Aguilera if necessary. He hasn't exactly showcased any talent in the area in the past, and since his discovery of the Auto-Tuner he hasn't exactly had to. Now, singing is a totally different story for the famed rapper.
Even so if one is ignorant to their weaknesses, those flaws eventually find a way into the ignorant persons expressive work if they make any. But the question is, as a rapper, if you are so in-tune with your ability to produce tracks can't you mesh them with fitting lyrics if you know the beats so well? The pen is not Kanye's strong point and even though he may think so he is feeding himself with an illusion. Listening to those two beats it is clear that Kanye has a knack for at least one side of the hip-hop spectrum, producing some of the most classic beats mainstream rap has ever heard.
As a producer, Kanye is quite musical - thats obvious even with 808s, I also recommend you check out some of my personal favorites which are the song 'Angel' on Game's LAX album and 'Lucifer' on Jay-Z's Black Album. My ears have a bizarre relationship with the work of Mr. Review Summary: Are those really the lyrics?