Dominating its production, West was assisted by fellow producers No I.D., Plain Pat, Jeff Bhasker, and Mr Hudson, while also utilizing guest vocalists for some tracks, including Kid Cudi, Young Jeezy, and Lil Wayne.

Instead, West performed sung vocals that were processed through an Auto-Tune processor against an electronic production and minimalist sonic palette, including prominent use of minor keys and the Roland TR-808 drum machine.

West's lyrics on the album explore themes of loss, alienated fame, and heartache, inspired by the distressing personal events, as well as his struggles with pop stardom.

Despite varying responses from listeners, the album received positive reviews from music critics, who generally commended West's experimentation, and was named one of 2008's best records in several year-end lists.

Among West's most influential records, 808s & Heartbreak made an immediate impact on hip-hop, pop, and R&B music, as a new wave of rappers, singers, and producers adopted its stylistic and thematic elements.

Drawing inspiration from 1980s synth-pop and electropop performers such as Phil Collins, Gary Numan, TJ Swan, and Boy George, West felt that the 808 was a resourceful instrument that could be used to evoke emotion; the concept was introduced to him by Jon Brion.

[32] In the opinion of Rolling Stone's Brian Hiatt, the record is a "downbeat detour into depressive electro pop,"[33] while another writer for the magazine called it an "introspective, synthpop album".

[39] Andy Kellman of AllMusic writes of the music, "Several tracks have almost as much in common with irrefutably bleak post-punk albums, such as New Order's Movement and The Cure's Pornography, as contemporary rap and R&B".

[40] NJ.com columnist Trist McCall wrote that the record "stripped modern art-pop down to its iconic rudiments — beats, charismatic personalities, hand-selected melodies, and computer-assisted vocals".

[47] Canadian writer Stephen Marche viewed that West used "the shallow musical gimmickry of Auto-Tune, a program designed to eliminate individuality, and produced a hauntingly personal album".

[12] According to Christgau, the closing "Pinocchio Story" is "the only track here about what's really bringing [West] down: not the loss of his girlfriend but the death of his mother, during cosmetic surgery that somewhere not too deep down he's sure traces all too directly to his alienated fame".

On the set's dark-violet stage, he appeared wearing an Afro-mullet and a gray tweed jacket tailored with a broken-heart-shaped pin that would symbolize the 808s & Heartbreak-album era in West's career, according to Rolling Stone writer Charles Holmes: "His voice wavered, his onstage confidence was clearly fragile, but the 808s epoch began nonetheless.

[62] When it came time for him to speak, West stated that he'd been a fan of Beecroft's work and strong imagery, saying that he liked the idea of nudity because "society told us to wear clothes at a certain point."

[83] On January 27, 2009, 808s & Heartbreak was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), serving as West's fourth album to ship one million copies in the United States.

[105] Reviewing in November 2008, Chris Richards from The Washington Post called the album "an information-age masterpiece",[114] while USA Today critic Steve Jones said, "West deftly uses the 808 drum machine and Auto-Tune vocal effect to channel his feelings of hurt, anger and doubt through his well-crafted lyrics.

"[112] Rolling Stone's Jody Rosen commended West's incorporation of the Roland TR-808 drum machine and described the album as "Kanye's would-be Here, My Dear or Blood on the Tracks, a mournful song-suite that swings violently between self-pity and self-loathing."

"[115] PopMatters critic Dave Heaton was impressed by West's "song and album construction, and with the way he captures a particular feeling through unusual, evocative, carefully crafted music that's both simple and complex, cold and warm, mechanical and human, melodic and harsh".

[116] Writing for MSN Music, Robert Christgau found it "brilliant" with a unique "dark sound" and "engaging tunes", despite a second-half drop-off, and praised West's use of Auto-Tune, which he felt "both undercuts his self-importance and adds physical reality to tales of alienated fame that might otherwise be pure pity parties".

In the Chicago Sun-Times, Jim DeRogatis contended that, "If West had interspersed the more mechanical tracks with some that were the exact opposite—say, simple piano interludes provided by his old collaborators John Legend or Jon Brion—he might have made a masterpiece.

[118] West's singing was panned by Slant Magazine's Wilson McBee[119] and Jon Caramanica from The New York Times, who singled it out as the "weakness for which this album will ultimately be remembered, some solid songs notwithstanding".

The magazine's writer Colin St. John cited 808s & Heartbreak as one of the worst of 2008, and editor Steve Smith named it third on his best-of list, while calling the album "the year's most misunderstood triumph".

Knocked completely sideways by the 'Shakespearean tragedy' of the death of his devoted mother following plastic surgery, and the split from his fiancée, West poured out his soul, showing glimpses of a hitherto unseen humility.

[153] In 2011, Jake Paine of HipHopDX dubbed the album as "our Chronic," noting West's effect on hip-hop with 808s & Heartbreak as "a sound, no different than the way Dr. Dre's synthesizer challenged the boom-bap of the early '90s.

"[154] In Rolling Stone, journalist Matthew Trammell asserted that the record was ahead of its time and wrote in a 2012 article, "Now that popular music has finally caught up to it, 808s & Heartbreak has revealed itself to be Kanye's most vulnerable work, and perhaps his most brilliant.

[156] Todd Martens of the Los Angeles Times cited 808s & Heartbreak as "the template [...] for essentially the entirety of Drake's young career," and that he "shares West's love for mood and never-ending existential analysis.

[160] According to Greg Kot, 808s & Heartbreak initiated the "wave of inward-looking sensitivity" and "emo"-inspired rappers during the late 2000s: "[It] presaged everything from the introspective hip-hop of Kid Cudi's Man on the Moon: The End of Day (2009) to the wispy crooning, plush keyboards and light mechanical beats of Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and British dub-step balladeer James Blake.

"[162] Consequence credited it with shaping subsequent developments in "indie R&B or electropop or whatever you want to call it": "808s' is flooded with R&B and it digitizes the raw emotion and isolated feelings that [James Blake and the Weeknd] have carved their brands out of today.

Olivier contended that, by "morph[ing] his shattered soul into a piece of wondrous millennial art-pop", West had "played anti-hero to his acclaimed collegiate trilogy" and begun "the demolition between rap, pop and EDM genre lines in earnest", drawing "a blueprint for hip-hop in the 2010s, where minimalism and melancholy could prove just as propulsive as boom-bap and classic gangster bravado, and where oft-maligned auto-tune could weaponize a voice and reshape it as a compelling new instrument".

[170] In a March 2024 interview, West credited "the autotune album" as having invented a style of music used by the likes of the Weeknd, Travis Scott and Drake, as well as rappers Future and Young Thug.

[171] Lil Boosie reacted to West's statement via Instagram Stories by writing that he is not influential nor relatable to him, while Kid Cudi responded by posting a screenshot of the Wikipedia page showing his inspiration on 808s & Heartbreak.