Indeed, it often seems as if West thought making a moving album would be as simple as flipping a “sad” switch. In interviews leading up to the album’s release, West said that “heartbreak” was his nickname for the Auto-Tuned burbles, cracks, and splinters in his voice- 808s and Heartbreak refers, respectively, to the beats and the bleats. It’s a spiteful breakup album in which he plays the mostly blameless victim, a nasty feast of wound-licking and backbiting, and a claustrophobic pity party that brooks hardly any self-reflection. Ironically, though, 808s and Heartbreak is the least vulnerable thing West has released.

On the surface, this stripped-down, haunted album promises a paean to vulnerability-in other words, all self-doubt, no arrogance. These gestures make West’s art more complex but expose something unattractive about him, too, so that, in his bigheaded moments, we can’t help but see the little man trembling behind the curtain. Other times, in his songs, he’ll spike brags about his wealth with lyrics that reveal the feelings of inadequacy driving his materialism, or toast his commercial success while acknowledging the pangs of artistic guilt that have accompanied it. When West argues for his greatness, he often does so with a needy whine: ranting onstage and off at awards shows about perceived snubs using his blog to attack an Entertainment Weekly reviewer who gave West’s recent tour a mere B+ rating. anoints himself, simply, king, they are imperious about it. When Lil’ Wayne calls himself the best rapper alive or T.I. Part of the answer lies, it seems, in one of West’s most human-scale traits: the way he’ll undercut his arrogance with evidence of the self-doubts gnawing beneath. Complaining about a rapper’s outsized ego is a bit like complaining about a professional bicyclist’s outsized calves or a clown’s outsized pants: They’re part of the job description. Even West’s fans, on message boards and in comments sections, often separate his work, which they adore, from his self-regard, which they tolerate with varying degrees of amusement and irritation. What is it about Kanye West’s self-love that annoys people so deeply? No other rapper is taken to task as frequently and as fervently for crimes of the ego.

Who is 808s and heartbreak about