You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, Dylan sang-a line, incidentally, from the first electric song of his that most people would have heard (“Subterranean Homesick Blues”). Like Dylan, the new direction made him a genius to some and a traitor to others-a split that highlighted both the divisiveness of his art and the conservative streak in a scene where the imperative to keep it real can be as stifling as it is comforting.

Like Dylan, Kanye didn’t need the fame or credibility: His third (and third multiplatinum) album, 2007’s Graduation, had come out only a year earlier, and he’d already established himself as the kind of visionary who could steer the conversation while hovering somewhere above it. West had a wide-ranging landscape of music inside him, but to hear 808s is to appreciate how truly diverse his musical mind is.Perhaps the best comparison for 808s & Heartbreak is when Bob Dylan went electric in 1965. 'Bad News' is a densely layered track that takes an almost emo approach (in a good way, if that’s possible), and Paranoid indulges Kanye’s fetish for the 80s with synth-heavy melodies. Lyrically, Kanye wanders into new poetic territory with lines like “ and that haunted me, all the way home.” It works in part because it’s surprising to hear such ambient soul come from Kanye’s mouth (so to speak), but 'Love Lockdown' is predictable compared to the rest of 808s, an album that sometimes sounds more like Coldplay than the work of a man who can’t be told nothin'. (How many other rappers could say that if we can continue to call Kanye a “rapper?”) ' Love Lockdown' takes a more eclectic approach, floating on a repetitive piano line and sparse bass before exploding into a drum-heavy chorus. If we take away one lesson from this album it’s that Kanye doesn’t have to rap in order to make hits.

Kanye west 808s and heartbreak tracks