One of most anticipated albums of the year, 808s and Heartbreak is the third album from the Chicago-native producer and rapper who decided to use Auto-Tune and put together an entire album where he's basically "singing" as opposed to just rhyming on tracks.

The result? Creatively, it's amazing. The guy -- like him or not -- is at the top of his game. Despite the bombast in his act, Kanye West has successfully transitioned from hit-making producer to globe-trotting pop star in a relatively short period of time. The daring nature of the album is itself a risk that has seemingly divided people into two groups: Fans of Mr. West's previous work who hate this most recent LP and those who have had little use for him in the past, who love what he's done here.

In that vein, I say it's mission accomplished for Kanye. In past interviews, West has been public in his desire to create an album that's timeless and able to be played in the jukebox alongside other hits. He's cited Phil Collins as his model. A lot of folks derided that suggestion, but as someone who spent too much time listening to the former Genesis frontman as a kid, I understood what he meant. Mssr. Collins was notorious for producing his own work and on "Both Sides..." he played all of the instruments, as well as singing.

So when you hear "Say You Will," the lead track off 808s and Heartbreak, you can hear the Collins influence, setting the pace for the rest of the album. The production on Amazing is pretty darn good, as the beat doesn't sound like it ought to work, but Kanye manages to meld a bunch of wildly disparate things into a cohesive track there.

The track Bad News is also cut from this cloth and isn't anything life-changing, much less an exercise in effective songwriting, but it firmly rests somewhere between "really annoying" and "the sort of song that some 80s radio station would slip into their rotation to achieve a modicum of relevancy in 2.0 era." The best part of it would be the Jon Brion-influenced break of orchestral strings in the middle part of the song.

Coldest Winter is the candidate for song mostly likely to induce someone in the car to go "wait, is that Kanye West?!" Paranoid is a flawless execution of someone who clearly listened to a lot of 80s music. I think you can see the trend here. It's also the song that's doing the most rapping and as a result, it's probably the best track on the album save for the overuse of Auto-Tune. That said, it'll take you back to a childhood hopped on too much pop radio and when things were simpler than they are now. Something about that is...comforting.

The criticism of this album should abound, as there are plenty of things wrong with it from a strictly sonic perspective. I've heard better songwriting on an Avril Lavigne album and it's not an LP that you can listen to straight through given the nature of the Auto-Tune reliance and the lackluster sound of what at times resembles a basement studio demo tape. But my opinion has changed a lot as I've had time to marinate over it these past few weeks as the first few tracks were leaked. Kanye West has released what amounts to a concept album of the first order.

It's a release to take seriously, but like anything toxic to consume in small doses. When the dust settles and the crowds clear however, it'll be among his most heralded pieces of work.