" I want to hear more of the Kanye who used to hang out with Common and Talib Kweli, not the new Kanye who hangs out with Lil' Wayne and T-Pain. " --

" I want to hear more of the Kanye who used to hang out with Common and Talib Kweli, not the new Kanye who hangs out with Lil' Wayne and T-Pain. " --
http://jupitersghosts.blogspot.com/

I read this on a blog, and I realized that I agree.

A lot of factors go into good hip-hop music, but there is one necessary, universal condition for great hip-hop (or great art of any sort)

Hunger.

Kanye West doesn't have it anymore. Kanye thinks that he's transcended rap or something, so he's putting out this half-assed auto-tune electronic bullshit. On Kanye's first album, he was spitting some cold technical shit. He always had that "I'm God" mentality, but you can tell he was humbling himself to the game on his first album. He actually tried to write hot lyrics with dope rhyme schemes and interesting concepts. His second and third albums slipped past, despite their clearly inferior lyrics, because of the catchy hooks and amazing production, but I'm not so sure that's its going to work again, especially since T-Pain has shown Kanye the ways of the Vocoder and he feels like he should sing on half his tracks now.

Anyway, we will definitely see. Kanye is good enough at crate digging that his albums have been very entertaining, but we'll see what he can do when his album drops on November 25.