When, in 'Welcome to Heartbreak,' he dispassionately recounts sitting alone on a flight, ahead of a laughing family, he makes first class sound like Siberia he'd swap lives with the father in an instant. In various spots across 808s & Heartbreak, the constant flutter of West's processed voice, along with a seldom interrupted sluggish march of aching sounds, is enlivened by the disarming manner in which despair and dejection are conveyed. It was indeed a wreck, if a kind of fascinating one, which helped make the material - voiced by someone who could not really sing, whose substantial shortcomings were not made less obvious by a polarizing studio device - seem a little less difficult on the ears. Not only did he go through with it, but Roc-A-Fella released the result in time for the 2008 Christmas shopping season.

Remember when Kanye West threatened to make an album where he would bear his heartbroken soul, align with T-Pain, sing on every song with the then inescapable Auto-Tune effect and, less problematically, lean on the common element - the Roland TR-808 drum machine - of classics like 'Make It Last Forever,' 'Posse on Broadway,' '808,' and 'Bossy'? It would have been a wreck, a case of an artist working through paralyzing heartache while loose in a toy store.

Best songs from 808s and heartbreak