According to ABC News, Kanye West added himself to the roster of music’s most infamous on-stage mishaps Saturday when he failed to nail his performance of “Love Lockdown” on “Saturday Night Live.”

To be fair, West’s greatest strengths lie in rapping and producing.

“Love Lockdown” and the album from which it hails, “808′s and Heartbreak,” is West’s first foray into singing. But whether by fault of his own or because of his audio equipment, his attempt to serenade “SNL’s” audience came off as feeble at best, fueling rumors that he requires a little help in the vocals department.

Well, duh.

While Kanye has absorbed a fair bit of criticism for his use of vocal help on his new CD he’s never disguised that fact. So to lump him in with the Milli Vanilli’s of the world is a bit disingenous. If you watch this clip below it’s clear that Kanye West is NOT lip-synching, which is to just mouth the words over a pre-recorded track. Unfortunately, you can hear every poorly sung note from Kanye. Though it doesn’t sound that good, it is HIS voice.  Did he have some technical difficulties? Yes. But while Kanye West can be an arrogant filli-in-the-blank, he isn’t a liar.

It’s a safe assumption that there are no gray areas in Kanye West appreciation. Either you consider him a genius or you want to send him on a shopping spree with Sarah Palin using an an expired Amex Black card and a stack of I.O.U’s from MC Hammer. After listening to the leak of 808s and Heartbreak, I won’t be petitioning for his MENSA membership anytime soon.

Mr. West has been tried in the court of public opinion ever since he announced this ambitious (or pretentious, depending on what side you’re on) project. But before you render a final verdict on this most-likely unfinished version of 808s & Heartbreak keep these observations in mind:

The Truth: Kanye West fell asleep with A-Ha’s “Take On Me” playing on his 80 inch plasma and woke up with this album in his head. Realizing that his natural-born vocals couldn’t adequately convey what was burning inside of his soul (or some other part of his anatomy) he enlisted computerized help. Bundle this with some heartache over losing his mother (as he insisted in interviews, though I hear no evidence of such) and some anonymous love interest/supermodel that we’ve never heard of and you have the makings of The Miseducation of Kanye West.

The Secret: The title is actually a typo. The actual title is 80′s Heartbreak and that makes much more sense given the Don Johnson and Punky Brewster-era synthetic sonics that define this disc. It appears Ye’s white blazers and open shirts were not just a fashion statement, that is indeed his state of mind.

The Good: “Heartless.” This is pretty frickin’ dope. Not just because Kanye is rapping for most of it, the beat is simply superior to “Love Lockdown” and when he does use the auto-tune it is actually… in tune. This is a great post-argument-pre-break-up driving to the strip club for a revenge lap dance track. “I’m gonna take oooofff tonight…”

“Anyway” Melody is an inviting example of Reagan-era nostalgia done right. It also helps that he enlists actual back-up singers to fill out the hook and leans off the auto-tune a bit. Again, he’s rapping more but the balance works.

“Tell Everybody That You Know”  You can tell Kanye has been hanging a lot with DJ Toomp and its been rubbing off in a good way (pause).  It’s a good track with a catchy hook but Jeezy would have sounded better on this than “Amazin,” and Lil Wayne’s granola bar : “Girl you think your shit don’t stink but you’re mrs P-U…” pushes it closer to the laughable end of the spectrum.

The Bad: “Robocop.” This is a bad case of “I found this cool sound effect and I really wanna use it, but no theme makes sense.” It reminds me of a chopped & screwed version of that AT&T “zero bars” commercial where the guy is stuck in the hostile with Slad and Veter the Techno Twins and their boombox. Except it’s not funny.

“Love Lockdown” This leak version is clearly the unpolished demo because it’s even more off-key than the official joint. People like this because it reminds them of cheering on your best friend at the high school talent show. You admire their balls for getting on the stage regardless of how they sound and they autographed the homemade burn of their CD to make you feel special. The problem here is that Kanye has already forgotten the little people and the addition of R.Kelly just underlines why Ye shouldn’t be singing.

The In-Between: Kanye channels his inner N.E.R.D for a danceable “Coldest Winter” that would have better served Chris Brown or Omarion. Topically, Kanye taps into some pretty dead-on observations of relationships that few people like to express, it’s just hard to take him seriously sounding like a chipmunk drowning in a toilet bowl.

Verdict: Kanye West can’t deal with our acceptance. He likes being the underdog. When he first came on the scene he won us over and made us see him as a legit MC, not just a producer lip-synching in the mirror. But as he became successful (sales and critically) he just couldn’t chill. Being an asshole is way more fun and it’s hard to be that when people like you. So in the name of pushing the envelope he’s concocted this experiment. The irony is that Ye is doing just the opposite here. For the first time in his career Kanye is a follower and to call the disc derivative is being kind. There are definite bright spots but merely being different does not make you brave or innovative. Manson was different. (Marilyn or Charles…take your pick). Either way the results were mixed, just like this album.

Sentencing: Check out The Death of Auto-Tune on Rappersiknow.com.

To hear a stream of the complete 808′s & Heartbreak go to Kanye’s Myspace page!

Click to listen.

Okay. Maybe that’s not all a smarty-art Negro can gather.

The video plays like a fucked up IKEA commercial that tells you where your furniture really comes from. Homeboy has visions of getting your love locked down, inspected, sold through the Middle Passage, inspected, sold to Captain Jackson and put to work in the Carolina tobacco fields.

Mind you–there ain’t nann notta African in this video. He caught a bunch of Lion King understudies on their lunch break and convinced them to act an ass on camera. These niggas is runnin around with fades and Invisalign. Closest thing you might got to an African is the one dude from Cleveland or some shit.

Some of these young ladies got perms and Yaki. See now, they was already Dark & Lovely before the conquistadors. They ain’t need Lark Vorhees or Stacey Dash on the side of a no-lye relaxer box to tell them so. There’s no Yaki in ancient African society. I don’t know if they was doin the 100% Human Hair thing or what, but I’m pretty sure there was no Kim’s Beauty Supply back then.

I know Kanye’s been waiting for his Spaceship for sometime. Is this where he wanted it to take him? If so, is Kanye aware that those Africans would probably exile his ass to the lion-infested plains for his incessant displays of bitchassery?

I’m surprised Ellen Degeneres let him drop graffiti-titty bitches at 10 am… Nevermind. No, I’m not.

How the only thing he got in his living area is a telescope? He spends all night looking at Uranus from atop his own special volcano on Sex Planet.

It’s gonna be okay, Kanyevel. We all long for that special someone’s black hole from time to time.

Ellen, I know you want to help. You’re a cool-ass broad. I fucks with you. Been fuckin with you since Open House, but please, I implore you–Stop telling this nigga he’s “brilliant.” He’ll never come down from this. “Different” and “brilliant” are not synonymous. This nigra need to know he wrong for sittin his Billy Ocean ass down in the corner with that Miami Vice suit on. Instead, Degeneres calls “Love Lockdown” brilliant, giving him full permission to go on another coke bender at the next awards show and telling us he’s the greatest soul singer of all time too.

No. Wait. Maybe Kanye’s onto something! I’m getting something! The drums! Our ancestors are speaking to me though the mangled Japanese drumkit! They’re saying… Ummm, sounds like… “The weed’s too strong.”

Hmm. I wonder what they mean by that.

Questions? Comments? Requests? Have you inspected your love’s gums yet? ron@ronmexicocity.com

Despite the fun I’ve had poking fun at him, I don’t hate Kanye West. Seriously. I think he is easily one of the best hip-hop producers of the new millennium with above average mic skills. But everyone needs to know their lane and Mr. West just swerved out of his like that night six years ago when he busted his jaw. This is not hate: Kanye West SHOULD NOT sing.

After breaking his boycott of the VMA’s (wait, is it a boycott if you’ve been to all of them?) in exchange for bringing an end to one of the worst broadcasts in MTV history, Yeezy took the stage drenched in a single spotlight with a blinking heart pinned to his chest. Somewhere Liberace is applauding. But with a finger on the auto-tune button he ran into his new single, “Love Lockdown” to the screams of the lemmings in the audience.

For someone with such a strong sense of melody he was horribly off-key until the computer kicked in. And if you could get past the vocal performance to listen to the words the song makes no damn sense:

I’m not lovin you, the way I wanted to
What I had to do, had to run from you
I’m in love with you, but the vibe is wrong
And that haunted me, all the way home
So ya never know, never never know
Never know enough, til its over love
Til we lose control, system overload

Da fuck? Syntax error indeed. This will be a hit at the karaoke bar because when you sound awkward in front of your drunk friends, you’ll sound JUST LIKE THE ORIGINAL.

However, none of this is Kanye’s fault, as evidenced by the applause and screams. This is all of our faults for letting vocal mediocrity in music slide for so long. It is just enough to get by, to be “aight” on the mic cuz our ears have been desensitized since Barry White and Luther died. The people who make careers singing are barely singing these days so the rappers figure “why not me?”

Remember that debacle called Best of Both Worlds? Jay-Z took it upon himself to sing on “Honey”-badly. At first I took it as a joke, a-la Erick Sermon vamping Luther Vandross on “Sowhachasayin?” But Jay-Z, (who is LL’s only real contender for the G.O.AT) kept doing it throughout the song. He was FEELIN himself and nobody pulled him to the side and said “umm, you got R. Kelly standing right there. Maybe you should step back in the booth and do that rain man thing you’re so good at and leave that to the pee-pee bandit.”

That was 2002. Six years later T-Pain (who I give props for simply pimpin’ the system) has anyone with a mic thinking they can sing. And when I say sing I don’t mean holding a note for a couple bars on a hook (Mos, Pharoahe, love you like cooked food but don’t get carried away). These fools really think we want to hear whole songs/albums of them shrieking into a microphone. I think what bothers me is that Kanye stood there taking him self SO SERIOUSLY. I can hang with Pharrel’s bad Curtis Mayfield impersonations because at the end of the day he’s just having fun. But nothing is just for fun to Kanye. He is an artiste and we should be grateful to hear anything he graces this world with. Untitled Please.

It’s gotten so bad that you got Ne-Yo telling Lil Wayne to sit down over his own beat. (He sounds ridiculous rapping, too, but I think that was his point.)

I am pleading with any rappers contemplating a career change to ask themselves these questions first: If you hadn’t gotten respect as a rapper first and this was the first impression of your talent to the world, would you still sing? Would Quincy Jones, whose taste runs the gamut from Michael Jackson to Al. B Sure, be impressed by your singing ability? And lastly, if your recording contract depended purely on your ability to sing, not produce or rap, would you still have a deal?

If you can’t answer yes to those three questions, shut up and rap.