Downloaded it Tuesday when Amazon was offering it for $3.99. Granted Amazon MP3 downloads leave a lot to be desired, but I find this nearly unlistenable on headphones. I thought maybe there was something wrong with the Amazon rip, but the iTunes samples sound more or less the same.
Sounds much better in the car, which is where I generally do most of my hip-hop listening anyway.
Sonic imperfections aside, I can't for the life of me figure out why so many critics are branding this Album of the Year. To me, it's maybe a 6 or 7 out of 10. In a worse mood, I'd give it a 5. It's adolescent and crude, and lacks the infectious hooks and smart, memorable turns-of-phrase I had come to expect from Kanye after College Dropout and Late Registration.
Maybe I'm just spoiled by Girl Talk's All Day, but I can't help but think that music critics got together on some sort of under the radar tweet up and decided to brand this disappointing diatribe AOTY just for grins. Either that, or Kanye and his label pinpointed the 10 most influential critics and agreed to payoff their underwater mortgages in exchange for rave reviews.