Online Review: Kanye West – 808s & Heartbreak
Artist:
Kanye West
Prior to his amazing performance at the O2 last night, Kanye West held an exclusive playback of his forthcoming album 808s & Heartbreak. Words by Rajveer Kathwadia
The listening party took place in the VIP confines of the dome’s Gaucho restaurant. Low-level lighting, heart shaped balloons and huge cardboard cut-outs of the man himself adorned the renowned Argentinean beefhouse’s walls, but with a room full of heads eager to hear the new album from ‘Ye rather than gorge on cattle, it was more a case of ‘ate-no-steak and heartbreak’ as the attendees patiently waited for Mr. West. When he finally did arrive Kon quickly set up his laptop before relieving DJ Semtex of his hosting duties to introduce the album.
A lot has been made of Kanye’s recent application of the auto-tune; the majority of which has been negative feedback across blogs, but to be honest Kanye could give two flying cahoots. Explaining that his music is his life and that it is only himself who has to perform them, the Graduate stated that anyone who asks him to change it is like someone walking into his home and saying ‘you can’t sit on that couch,’ before cheekily adding “So respectfully…f*ck you.” West also took time out to explain his musical standing, revealing that he feels he transcends the hip hop genre, instead classifying his craft as ‘pop art’. “I am a pop artist,” he declares. “Stronger was ‘popular’ than a motherf*cker.”
The disc which details love; more specifically the loss of it, is shaped by the passing of his mother as well as the break-up of Kanye and his fiancé. He describes himself as being ‘super devastated’ and that his losses have taught him that life is not promised. Something he touches upon when we was on stage a few hours later where during a mammoth freestyle over Young Jeezy’s Put On he announces that he no longer cares for losing awards as he’s already lost everything else in his life and therefore he now lives life as if he has nothing to lose.
It’s this mindstate that has lead to the drastically different direction that the Chicago native has embarked on with 808s & Heartbreak. Shaping the soundtrack to his life with a combination of the classic 808 drum-machine and the auto-tune implement, West sings through the majority of the album whilst falling back on what sounds more like spoken word than spitting. Frustrated by the traditional confines of hip hop’s rigid three set of 16 bars with a hook format, Kanye’s use of harmonies help him explore his conscience and more crucially exhibit it. Yeezy explained that rap artists have never been grouped together with classic musicians such as U2, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix and feels that hip hop’s reliance on samples is one of the main reasons for this shortcoming. “I’m gonna try and make the music that I used to sample,” he passionately asserts. “I just wasn’t good enough to do that before.”
The obvious fear about this LP would be that with the common fusion of 808, auto-tune and themes of heartbreak throughout the album would mean that every track sounds the same. This however is far from the case as each individual song displays it’s own identity whilst also sounding like they belong together. The pronounced mournful and sombre aura takes on various emotions from confusion, desolateness and anger and the introspection starts from album opener Say You Will where West replaces the snare with a simple beep on a beat that is so sparse it makes the Sahara Desert look like a complex metropolis. It’s almost intrusive listening at points; “I wish this song would really come true/I admit I still fantasize about you.” Kanye confesses. He still sounds lost on the second song, albeit over a much more dynamic backdrop of strings and synths coupled with head-snap drum as he scrutinises the material life he’s been left with since he’s been on his own compared with what might have been. “My friend showed me pictures of his kids/And all I could show him was pictures of my cribs.”
One aspect of showcasing his new musical trajectory with Love Lockdown was the use of African tribal drums which are also peppered over the album. The deep booming throbs accentuate the despondency of West’s circumstance but for him it plays a much simpler role. “I just think it’s cool,” he casually claims. “I just really like autotune, tribal drums and monk choirs. I picked out the coolest sh*t for my album like I would pick an outfit.” Whilst West showcases his disorientated sorrow of being alone, teaming up with Young Jeezy and Lil Wayne causes him to manifest his feelings of anger in the only way that hanging with the boys can. It’s a most menacing ‘Ye who slurs out that “I’m a monster, I’m a killer, I know I’m wrong/I’m a problem that’ll never ever be solved.” on Amazing whilst Jeezy enters to a chorus of beastly screams to truly complete the chilling chant. Weezy assists to add alarm on Tell Everybody That You Know where West almost immaturely declares “I don’t love you no more,”
During playback Kanye pulled up the track Real Bad News which he claimed was his favourite lyrically, but more absorbing is to see West break musical conventions by just having one extended verse over a bouncy hip hop beat which is followed by an extended instrumental. With ten of the twelve tracks narrating the break up of his relationship, the penultimate song Coldest Winter is a dedication to his mother though not in the obvious way that Hey Mama from LateRegistration was. Vague as is it’s subject you could be forgiven for thinking that it was again intended for an ex-lover. What clearly isn’t ambiguous though is the emotion in Kanye’s voice when he asks himself “Will I ever love again?”
So is this album faultless? Not quite. West reveals that a track entitled Haters with Jay-Z didn’t make the cut as it didn’t fit the musical uniform of the disc and instead will appear on Jigga’s Blueprint III a disc which is so far entirely produced by West himself and which he describes as ‘drug dealer rap sh*t’. In terms of not quite fitting the bill, the same could be said of the Kid Cudi collabo Anyway which with it’s 80s like production and light hearted feel just doesn’t sit right between the pillars of doom which tower around it. Similarly Robocop; a track which Kanye says will do well at festivals due to it’s sing-a-long quality doesn’t really have the same effect when listened to through home speakers or more likely through little white headphones and almost seems comical in and around the very serious songs on the album.
Those of you who have followed Kanye’s career from the beginning will remember him stating that he wanted to take the academic theme of album titles through four discs from The College Dropout to Late Registration then Graduation and finally A Good Ass Job but life changing incidents in West’s life have again lead him to drop his educational pursuits and take a detour. Another new album is expected next summer which will most likely see the completion of his scholarly pursuits, but it seems he needed to exorcise himself of his demons before moving on and the only way to do that was through his music. Treating the studio like a psychiatrist’s chair appears to have been therapeutic for the ‘rappa ternt sanga’ as well as bringing out other insecurities in himself. These come to fruition on the final track which is a live freestyle where he details the pitfalls of his fame which he feels has been the cause of his woes and he compares himself to Pinocchio in the sense that he craves to be a ‘real boy’. “Sacrifice a real life for all the fame and the flashing lights…/…get my heart out of this hell, mind out of this jail.” Hopefully making this album will help him do just that and move on to a better place mentally but there’s no need to go anywhere musically for now. Rather than the general hip hop staple he describes his competition as Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, Radiohead and The Killers before confidently affirming “there no f*cking competition.” He might just be right. 808s & Heartbreak might not be the album that many were waiting or even hoping for, but what can’t be denied is that he did a ‘good ass job’. 4/5
Final Tracklistist:
1. Say You Will
2. Welcome To Heartbreak (Feat. Kid Cudi)
3. Heartless
4. Amazing (Feat. Young Jeezy)
5. Love Lockdown
6. Anyway (Feat. Kid Cudi)
7. Robocop
8. Streetlights
9. Real Bad News
10. Tell Everybody That You Know (Feat. Lil Wayne)
11. Coldest Winter
12. Live Freestyle
808s & Heartbreak is out November 24 on Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella
Prior to his amazing performance at the O2 last night, Kanye West held an exclusive playback of his forthcoming album 808s & Heartbreak. Words by Rajveer Kathwadia
The listening party took place in the VIP confines of the dome’s Gaucho restaurant. Low-level lighting, heart shaped balloons and huge cardboard cut-outs of the man himself adorned the renowned Argentinean beefhouse’s walls, but with a room full of heads eager to hear the new album from ‘Ye rather than gorge on cattle, it was more a case of ‘ate-no-steak and heartbreak’ as the attendees patiently waited for Mr. West. When he finally did arrive Kon quickly set up his laptop before relieving DJ Semtex of his hosting duties to introduce the album.
A lot has been made of Kanye’s recent application of the auto-tune; the majority of which has been negative feedback across blogs, but to be honest Kanye could give two flying cahoots. Explaining that his music is his life and that it is only himself who has to perform them, the Graduate stated that anyone who asks him to change it is like someone walking into his home and saying ‘you can’t sit on that couch,’ before cheekily adding “So respectfully…f*ck you.” West also took time out to explain his musical standing, revealing that he feels he transcends the hip hop genre, instead classifying his craft as ‘pop art’. “I am a pop artist,” he declares. “Stronger was ‘popular’ than a motherf*cker.”
The disc which details love; more specifically the loss of it, is shaped by the passing of his mother as well as the break-up of Kanye and his fiancé. He describes himself as being ‘super devastated’ and that his losses have taught him that life is not promised. Something he touches upon when we was on stage a few hours later where during a mammoth freestyle over Young Jeezy’s Put On he announces that he no longer cares for losing awards as he’s already lost everything else in his life and therefore he now lives life as if he has nothing to lose.
It’s this mindstate that has lead to the drastically different direction that the Chicago native has embarked on with 808s & Heartbreak. Shaping the soundtrack to his life with a combination of the classic 808 drum-machine and the auto-tune implement, West sings through the majority of the album whilst falling back on what sounds more like spoken word than spitting. Frustrated by the traditional confines of hip hop’s rigid three set of 16 bars with a hook format, Kanye’s use of harmonies help him explore his conscience and more crucially exhibit it. Yeezy explained that rap artists have never been grouped together with classic musicians such as U2, The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix and feels that hip hop’s reliance on samples is one of the main reasons for this shortcoming. “I’m gonna try and make the music that I used to sample,” he passionately asserts. “I just wasn’t good enough to do that before.”
The obvious fear about this LP would be that with the common fusion of 808, auto-tune and themes of heartbreak throughout the album would mean that every track sounds the same. This however is far from the case as each individual song displays it’s own identity whilst also sounding like they belong together. The pronounced mournful and sombre aura takes on various emotions from confusion, desolateness and anger and the introspection starts from album opener Say You Will where West replaces the snare with a simple beep on a beat that is so sparse it makes the Sahara Desert look like a complex metropolis. It’s almost intrusive listening at points; “I wish this song would really come true/I admit I still fantasize about you.” Kanye confesses. He still sounds lost on the second song
One aspect of showcasing his new musical trajectory with Love Lockdown was the use of African tribal drums which are also peppered over the album. The deep booming throbs accentuate the despondency of West’s circumstance but for him it plays a much simpler role. “I just think it’s cool,” he casually claims. “I just really like autotune, tribal drums and monk choirs. I picked out the coolest sh*t for my album like I would pick an outfit.” Whilst West showcases his disorientated sorrow of being alone, teaming up with Young Jeezy and Lil Wayne causes him to manifest his feelings of anger in the only way that hanging with the boys can. It’s a most menacing ‘Ye who slurs out that “I’m a monster, I’m a killer, I know I’m wrong/I’m a problem that’ll never ever be solved.” on Amazing whilst Jeezy enters to a chorus of beastly screams to truly complete the chilling chant. Weezy assists to add alarm on Tell Everybody That You Know where West almost immaturely declares “I don’t love you no more,”
During playback Kanye pulled up the track Real Bad News which he claimed was his favourite lyrically, but more absorbing is to see West break musical conventions by just having one extended verse over a bouncy hip hop beat which is followed by an extended instrumental. With ten of the twelve tracks narrating the break up of his relationship, the penultimate song Coldest Winter is a dedication to his mother though not in the obvious way that Hey Mama from LateRegistration was. Vague as is it’s subject you could be forgiven for thinking that it was again intended for an ex-lover. What clearly isn’t ambiguous though is the emotion in Kanye’s voice when he asks himself “Will I ever love again?”
So is this album faultless? Not quite. West reveals that a track entitled Haters with Jay-Z didn’t make the cut as it didn’t fit the musical uniform of the disc and instead will appear on Jigga’s Blueprint III a disc which is so far entirely produced by West himself and which he describes as ‘drug dealer rap sh*t’. In terms of not quite fitting the bill, the same could be said of the Kid Cudi collabo Anyway which with it’s 80s like production and light hearted feel just doesn’t sit right between the pillars of doom which tower around it. Similarly Robocop; a track which Kanye says will do well at festivals due to it’s sing-a-long quality doesn’t really have the same effect when listened to through home speakers or more likely through little white headphones and almost seems comical in and around the very serious songs on the album.
Those of you who have followed Kanye’s career from the beginning will remember him stating that he wanted to take the academic theme of album titles through four discs from The College Dropout to Late Registration then Graduation and finally A Good Ass Job but life changing incidents in West’s life have again lead him to drop his educational pursuits and take a detour. Another new album is expected next summer which will most likely see the completion of his scholarly pursuits, but it seems he needed to exorcise himself of his demons before moving on and the only way to do that was through his music. Treating the studio like a psychiatrist’s chair appears to have been therapeutic for the ‘rappa ternt sanga’ as well as bringing out other insecurities in himself. These come to fruition on the final track which is a live freestyle where he details the pitfalls of his fame which he feels has been the cause of his woes and he compares himself to Pinocchio in the sense that he craves to be a ‘real boy’. “Sacrifice a real life for all the fame and the flashing lights…/…get my heart out of this hell, mind out of this jail.” Hopefully making this album will help him do just that and move on to a better place mentally but there’s no need to go anywhere musically for now. Rather than the general hip hop staple he describes his competition as Beyonce, Justin Timberlake, Radiohead and The Killers before confidently affirming “there no f*cking competition.” He might just be right. 808s & Heartbreak might not be the album that many were waiting or even hoping for, but what can’t be denied is that he did a ‘good ass job’. 4/5
Final Tracklistist:
1. Say You Will
2. Welcome To Heartbreak (Feat. Kid Cudi)
3. Heartless
4. Amazing (Feat. Young Jeezy)
5. Love Lockdown
6. Anyway (Feat. Kid Cudi)
7. Robocop
8. Streetlights
9. Real Bad News
10. Tell Everybody That You Know (Feat. Lil Wayne)
11. Coldest Winter
12. Live Freestyle
808s & Heartbreak is out November 24 on Def Jam/Roc-A-Fella
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Comments
pre-10-DA
12 Nov 2008, 22:24
12 Nov 2008, 22:24
Amazing!
Sheiv
12 Nov 2008, 23:52
12 Nov 2008, 23:52
4 back to back classics, Kanye never fails!
Danny Walker
13 Nov 2008, 01:20
13 Nov 2008, 01:20
Brilliant editorial Rajveer.
as
13 Nov 2008, 04:14
13 Nov 2008, 04:14
Great editorial, gives a lot of insight.... ThiThis
Artcha
13 Nov 2008, 11:37
13 Nov 2008, 11:37
Great Editorial, Kanye is the man. I feel him on the constraints of Hip Hop - he is an artist. 09 will be interesting. A!
love juice
19 Nov 2008, 04:30
19 Nov 2008, 04:30
I take a pretty objective look at everything before I make any sort of judgement on it, having said that, fuck you Kanye West, your head has inflated to the point that it's more enormous than your talent, what happened to those sick beats you used to create? Do you know he referred to using autotune as "the funnest thing to use"? Are you fucking kidding me?
Hopefully your new album is titled "re-registration" cuz you need to go back to school son.
Hopefully your new album is titled "re-registration" cuz you need to go back to school son.
joeblow
19 Nov 2008, 15:50
19 Nov 2008, 15:50
love juice is a moron... did you not read the review? He made this album for a reason, not because his "head has inflated to the point that it's more enormous than [his] talent"......
LOL @ you.
LOL @ you.
static 96
20 Nov 2008, 20:01
20 Nov 2008, 20:01
ive herd the whole album and yes its amazing...it grows on you like no other
Nat Roberts
21 Nov 2008, 18:10
21 Nov 2008, 18:10
Brilliant, Artistic, and real. Kanye has created a Masterpiece! This album should be framed, this truly is fine srt at it's best. BUY 2 Copies!!!!
Frame one, listen to the other.
Do the research on the TR -808, And to Kanye; My condolences.
Frame one, listen to the other.
Do the research on the TR -808, And to Kanye; My condolences.
Jellyjammer
25 Nov 2008, 05:33
25 Nov 2008, 05:33
Okay, I cannot agree with the comment's. This is no masterpiece of any kind. This is a concept album through and through. The concept... well his usage of the 808 and well... heartbreak, and how he could combine the two as a form of grievance to understand what had happened to him in the last 12 months.
I agree this is an experimental record. This is no Late registration, nor College Dropout for that matter. This is a record that allows kanye to vent and explore. it is by no means a record that i want people to buy because of the fact that it's not that good. its shotty and show the lack of infinite fine tuning that Kanye is so very proficient at. I'm sorry this is one of those records an artist should put out as an not over hype as a record that will win them a nod for best rap album, because it most definitely is not a rap album.
I agree this is an experimental record. This is no Late registration, nor College Dropout for that matter. This is a record that allows kanye to vent and explore. it is by no means a record that i want people to buy because of the fact that it's not that good. its shotty and show the lack of infinite fine tuning that Kanye is so very proficient at. I'm sorry this is one of those records an artist should put out as an not over hype as a record that will win them a nod for best rap album, because it most definitely is not a rap album.
aquafina
28 Nov 2008, 10:56
28 Nov 2008, 10:56
Jellyjammer said it best.
K. McC glasgow
28 Nov 2008, 13:52
28 Nov 2008, 13:52
great album, different - yes, brave - yes Not Kanye-like, defo not a rap album, so for anyone who thinks it will be similar to his previous efforts - think again.
But you can feel his raw pain and emotion, which in some strange way is assisted by the auto-tune recorder which is used, this is an experiment for Kanye, and i think it has worked. Cant imagine him doing any more albums of this style, but he captured his feelings of a hard year and has produced a new, easy listening album that many people can relate to. 9 out of 10 from me.
But you can feel his raw pain and emotion, which in some strange way is assisted by the auto-tune recorder which is used, this is an experiment for Kanye, and i think it has worked. Cant imagine him doing any more albums of this style, but he captured his feelings of a hard year and has produced a new, easy listening album that many people can relate to. 9 out of 10 from me.
judy k
29 Nov 2008, 21:19
29 Nov 2008, 21:19
Not really into his switching
up style,
but i do think hip hop will merge with
the indie scene this year.
Listen this brooklyn band called
Nite Club and their cover
of Good Life.
http://www/myspace.com/niteclubmusic
up style,
but i do think hip hop will merge with
the indie scene this year.
Listen this brooklyn band called
Nite Club and their cover
of Good Life.
http://www/myspace.com/niteclubmusic
