Its astute blend of R&B and hip-hop tropes, paired with heartfelt, emotionally vulnerable lyrics, reshaped the rap and R&B landscapes, profoundly influencing a slew of musicians such as Drake, Young Thug, The Weeknd, and Frank Ocean in its wake.
Greater still was 808s & Heartbreak’s lasting influence on contemporary music. Kanye West announced long ago that mere hip-hop superstardom was not enough for him he wanted to be the number one artist in the world. 1 on the Billboard 200, selling 450,145 copies in its first week. The album proved to be another big hit for Kanye West, though, as it debuted at No. The album met with mixed reviews when released, on November 24, 2008, with critics initially scornful of the perceived over-reliance on Auto-Tune and the apparent self-pitying nature of the lyrics. Recorded in California and Hawaii in a mere three weeks, 808s & Heartbreak was the first of Kanye’s albums to feature his “creative CEO” style of recording, boasting over five co-writers on nearly every song. The desolate contents of the album were perfectly encapsulated by its minimal artwork, which depicted a deflated and broken heart on a spare grey background. Stream songs including Say You Will, Welcome To Heartbreak (feat.
West chose to pair these raw, uncompromising and bleak lyrics with a production characterized by minimalist, harrowing synths offset with stark brutalist beats (generated by the titular Roland TR-808 drum machine, a mainstay of early 80s hip-hop and synth-pop) alongside various offbeat additions such as taiko drums and monk choirs. Listen to 808s & Heartbreak by Kanye West on Apple Music. He uses Auto-Tune better, too, now that I think about it.Ĭlick here to listen to samples of "808s & Heartbreak" at “Coldest Winter” deals harrowingly with the loss of his mother, who’d passed away due to complications with cosmetic surgery: “Goodbye my friend, I won’t ever love again/Never again,” he sings, while the bitter aftermath of his break-up with Phifer is addressed on the likes of “Robocop” and “Heartless.” “Welcome To Heartbreak,” meanwhile, was a distraught missive from a man coming to terms with the shallowness of his life, his dreams of success beginning to turn into a nightmare: “My friend showed me pictures of his kids/And all I could show him was pictures of my cribs/… Look back on my life and my life gone/Where did I go wrong?” I’m not totally down on it, though: “Heartless” works a bouncy flute loop and Kanye actually sings, sounding just fine “Amazing” replaces Southern bounce with a heavy piano and organic percussion, providing a nice bedrock for Young Jeezy’s guest verse, and “Paranoid” is an modern uptempo take on ‘80s synth glam.īut the first single, “Love Lockdown,” largely misrepresents the depth of "808s & Heartbreaks." It’s a good example of what I think ‘Ye might have been shooting for on the whole album.Īn R&B record with almost no harmony? Even T-Pain knows better than that. Even his musical style is a departure on the melancholy 808s & Heartbreak, reportedly because Wests mom just passed away, and he was hurt when an. The songs cover fairly generic love/hate/make-ups-to-break-ups, which in turn throws the spotlight back on the production, that at times sounds almost like an unfinished version of a regular mid-tempo Kanye song.īut even the Kanye West Mid-Tempo Jam has taken on a lot more character in the past. That leaves mainly the lyrics, and it's hard to turn a clever, punchy phrase as an R&B robot. But it just doesn’t make sense here, particularly given that Kanye’s actually got a pretty good singing voice (the several times he sings sans digital assistance, he sounds just fine).īut on "808s," with its already-spare soundscapes, his voice plays front and center, and all of the manipulation gives things a weird, plasticized feeling. Now, someone like Lil’ Wayne, who has no discernible singing talent? I understand why HE would want to Auto-Tune himself into submission. The most mystifying part about all this is his album-long penchant for everybody's new favorite musical toy, the Auto-Tune. What I’m trying to say is that too many of the songs here seem overly, intentionally simplistic, like ‘Ye is trying to drive the metaphor home with a sledgehammer and, unfortunately, it makes for a lot of sluggish songs during the course of "808’s" 52 minutes (relatively short for a Kanye album).
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