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808s & Heartbreak, his fourth album, was the distillation of pain and confusion. Wrestling with his grief, West decamped to the greenhouse heat of Honolulu to record the coldest story ever told.
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Compounding this harrowing period of his life, West and fiancée Alexis Phifer permanently dissolved their engagement and on-again, off-again relationship, which had begun in 2002. The story of the record is destined to be immortalized in the history of pop music, casting back to November 2007, when Kanye’s mother, Donda West, died following complications arising from cosmetic surgery. In the cast of 808s & Heartbreak, they’re unambiguous. As it turned out, heartbreak was the sound of a Roland TR-808 drum machine.Īlbum origins are often mythologized.
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MIKE DEAN 808S AND HEARTBREAK CRACKED
His response was a work of desperation and catharsis, the attempted exorcism of a cracked soul. The fragile, ping-ponging beeps that underpin opening track “Say You Will” resemble the hollowed-out audio signals that ring from the machinery used to prolong human life-sounds that once they cease, typically signal death. It begins with the devastating sounds of a life support machine. They like, “Oh god, why Dean Van Nguyen go so hard?” Any donation is immensely appreciated: / passionweiss Kanye replied “these beats are dope”.This website is user-supported. Stunned by the man playing his own music for himself, Aziz asked why. It is sometimes joyous, sometimes mournful, always captivating.Īziz Anzari tells of visiting Kanye’s house – finding him blaring 808s on his own hifi system. But while Kanye West makes music for himself, he always makes music he would want to listen to. It’s clearly a deeply personal work – paying tribute to the 80s pop of Kanye’s youth while providing an emotional bloodletting amidst terrible loss. Several lyrics are deeply silly, and Kanye’s heavy autotune – revolutionary as it was – sounds somewhat dated to a 2018 ear.īut for track after track the album grips and grieves – this is dance music to cry to. It’s not perfect – the opener and closer are both lacklustre, providing little sense of overture or climax. So, does 808s and Heartbreak actually hold up? In short, yes. Its somber introspection still infests present pop hits.īut influence does not equate to quality. The cultural effect, revolutionary.Ĩ08s paved the way for Drake, Lorde, and the (hugely popular) genre of trap-soul. Simultaneously, West revolutionised autotune, distorting and dehumanising his voice to blend with the cold electronica surrounding him. What 808s introduced was a downbeat, introspective type of hip-hop – it made it okay for rappers to talk about their feelings. But it works, because every instrument plays a complete and total earworm.īut hooks and layering are not new. Normally this means grandiosity, but on 808s his layering is sparse – a synth, an 808, his voice, and then maybe some strings or a brief piano. As a child he used video game programmes to layer sounds on top of each other, thus creating music. The album is a great demonstration of Kanye’s true musical gift – layering.
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The melodies on “Heartless” and “Robocop” swerve up and down like Paul McCartney writing synthpop, “Love Lockdown” and “Amazing” use rhythm and texture to evoke what Kanye called “Thom Yorke in the strip club”. The album basically continues in this vein, except that from here on in, Kanye proves his true genius as a pop songwriter. Look back on my life and my life gone – where did I go wrong?” And what is he not-breathing about? “Chased the good life my whole life long. A droning, unvarying melody is sung above a lamenting cello, while an 808 drum machine pounds away relentlessly, never letting Kanye breathe. But the album really begins with the second track – “Welcome to Heartbreak”. Kanye pleads with an ex-lover to stay, then disappears, letting the song’s cold electronica continue unabated. Opener “Say You Will” flickers into existence. Synths and drum machines to create an impersonal bleakness, above which he nominally wailed about a recent break up. Kanye sang – his voice sometimes distorted, sometimes clear, always pained. The album he created was 808s and Heartbreak, and it changed popular music forever. Kanye responded by doing what he did best – making music. He premiered it on Oprah, pulling his mother onstage while he rapped “Come on mommy just dance with me, let the whole world see your dancing feet”. He rapped about her more than once, writing “Hey Mama” for her. She was a professor of English literature, published author, and the chairwoman of a national literacy foundation targeted at black youth.