Heart-to-heart with Kanye
After a turbulent year, super producer/rapper Kanye West returns with the dark, emotionally charged and ultimately groundbreaking “808’s & Heartbreak.”
The album strips away the labels and braggadocio that West is known for in return for a cold, hard look at how someone in the public eye can deal with loss.
After a turbulent year, super producer/rapper Kanye West returns with the dark, emotionally charged and ultimately groundbreaking “808’s & Heartbreak.”
The album strips away the labels and braggadocio that West is known for in return for a cold, hard look at how someone in the public eye can deal with loss.
The concept of “emotional nakedness” – less of a buzz word than it seems – kept being thrown around by West during the promotion for this album. Accompanied by the Roland TR-808 drum machine and the polarizing, pitch-correction program Auto-Tune (popularized by T-Pain, who contributes to the songwriting of several tracks on the album) Kanye has developed a sound that betrays his usually sample-driven creations. The result is one that is half Portishead, and half Phil Collins-minimal, juxtaposed sounds meets strong songwriting.
And the songwriting serves as the album’s best quality; such as “Welcome To Heartbreak” (“My friend showed me pictures of his kids/all I could show him was pictures of my cribs”) and the Young Jeezy-assisted “Amazing” (“I’m the only thing that I’m afraid of”), which portrays West cracking under the loneliness that fame has brought him. The ode to the cell phone/PC-password-checking girlfriend “RoboCop” stands out in particular, as well as having the distinction of being one of the album’s most complex and peculiar productions.
“808’s” is also particularly effective in that there is no rapping on it whatsoever, save a few verses. Armed with the pitch-correcting Auto-Tune (think T-Pain), Kanye puts caution to the wind and actually sings or harmonizes most of the tracks on the album. It’s a jarring but energetic change for the album. Kanye has transformed from a mere emcee to a pop artist. As for his claim of “emotional nakedness,” he is bearing his soul through a method that is of course, uncomfortable (trust me, he’s no Luther Vandross).
Though dedicated to his own losses, “808’s & Heartbreak” is Kanye’s most down-to-earth offering yet, trading the Goyard trunks and the American Express Black Cards for a chance to sit in on his own therapy session.
Grade: A
Download (don’t steal): “RoboCop” by Kanye West.
