Ouf.

The individual lists are also worth checking out: http://www.avclub.com/articles/the-best ... ots,48711/

I wonder if I would dig that Kanye at all.

Yeah, you would. It's got some good jams, Jigga's on it, etc. I really like it - probably top 10.

I'd send it to you, but I actually bought it from iTunes.

I've been going back and forth on whether I want to invest the effort in checking out the new Kanye. Pro- Near universal praise for the album everywhere you look. Con - I haven't been interested in rap for a long, long time.

i think the record's worth hearing whether you're going to like it or not. the fact is that there are some moments and sounds on that record that have never been done in hip hop.

Man, I just have a real hard time believing that.

Yes, I've listened to it. Is using a whole indie folk song in a mainstream hip hop song really that big a deal?

name another hip hop record as grandiose as half that record.

he has the bon iver guy on two songs, sure - but his vocals are all autotuned and vocoded to hell.

Didn't he do that himself, as an experiment on one of the post-Emma singles that he released?

has it been done before? no.

Why doesn't someone send me a link and I'll settle this in the next 24-48 hrs kthxby.

re: autotune

sure i don't know, for emma forever ago was decent but not good enough that i want to seek out more of his music - but it doesn't matter who did it

What exactly is it that makes this so "grandiose"? What makes it more grandiose than The Blueprint or fucking Wu-Tang Forever or Speakerboxxx/The Love Below? Or some of Puff Daddy's shit, like those Led Zeppelin-sampling & Sting-guest-starring shit-stravaganzas? Shit was pretty fucking grandiose.

I'm not particularly fond of any of those records, even the Wu-Tang and Outkast ones, and since when is grandiosity necessarily a virtue? I mean I get that in the world of mainstream pop and hip hop, that and excess seem to be ends unto themselves. But I don't hear a whole lot of musical value in this Kanye record, basically. The beats? Meh. One or two really interesting/fun tracks. The big hooks/choruses? Mostly pretty annoying. The verses/lyrics? Man, what the fuck ever.

Maybe not! Holy shit.

The results don't sound remarkably different from a lot of what was already out there.

That's sort of what makes it good is that it doesn't seem like it's trying too hard to be different, but it is.

I understand the grandiose response, touche. Well - not The Blueprint. But the others surely have a huge sound and vision, it's just muddled and wasn't pulled off.

Yea, on "Woods" from the Blood Bank EP. The first minute of "Lost in the World" before the beat kicks in sounds to be the exact song with maybe some minor tweaking.