Kanye West SNL

Kanye West was the musical guest on the December 13, 2008, episode of Saturday Night Live, hosted by Hugh Laurie This was West's third time as musical guest on the show; he performed "Love Lockdown" and "Heartless" from his 2008 album 808s & Heartbreak.

West's performance was panned by critics, who called his voice "lackluster" and "feeble at best," leading to charges that he had been partially lip-synching.ABC News: Music's Top 5 Lip-Sync Scandals (December 16, 2008) Most music critics concluded that the issue was not one of lip-synching, but a failure in the vocoder (autotune) equipment that is commonly used by performers to enhance their vocals.MTV News: Kanye West on SNL: What Did You Think? (December 15, 2008)

808's & Heartbreak, West's fourth studio album, was released on November 24, 2008. The album's first single, "Love Lockdown," which West performed on SNL, had debuted at the 2008 Video Music Awards.

1. Name: Kanye Omari West
2. Born: June 8, 1977
3. Birth place: Atlanta, Georgia
4. Label: Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam
5. Hometown: Chicago, Illinois
6. Grammy Awards: 9

"We say the scandal is not that Kanye lip-synched through a live TV performance, but that he failed to lip-synch through a live TV performance. If he'd had all the right bells and whistles on board, we would have been all like, "Wow, this rules," rather than all like, "Wow, this hurts our ears."—The Blender BurnerYahoo! Music: Kanye West Caught Lip-Synching? (December 19, 2008)

"Autotune allows you to hit every note perfectly. You're not going to be sharp or flat...I think the effect wasn't fully realized, [the autotune] might have been set up wrong. But it's foolish to suggest he was lip-syncing. If he were lip-syncing, it would've sounded exactly the way he wanted it to."—Rob Levine, executive editor of Billboard MagazineABC News: Music's Top 5 Lip-Sync Scandals(December 16, 2008)

• Yahoo! Music: Kanye West Caught Lip-Synching? (December 19, 2008)

• ABC News: Music's Top 5 Lip-Sync Scandals (December 16, 2008)

• MTV News: Kanye West on SNL: What Did You Think? (December 15, 2008)

• LA Times Blog: Digging Kanye West's singing? Rate the 'SNL' performance (December 14, 2008)

• XXL Mag: Kanye "Locks Down" Spot on SNL (December 12, 2008)

• Chicago Sun-Times: Kanye West Booked on SNL (December 4, 2008)