Kanye West – 808s ands Heartbreak Review
With more leaks prior to its release date than “that time of the month,” Kanye West’s fourth album has finally arrived.
Coming off the huge success of “Graduation,” the tragic loss of his mother, the break-up with his fiancée and his constant battle with his fame – West has cooked up what Ron Burgundy would call a “glass case of emotion”. Except ten times less funny.
As most of us know, “808s & Heartbreak” has West singing throughout and here’s the worst part – it’s all on Auto-tune (made famous by T-Pain). I absolutely hate Auto-tune and left feeling the same way about it after listening to this album.
On the contrary, West uses this tool effectively to cover up his shortcomings as an RnB singer and to display themes of loneliness, despair and vulnerability that saturates the entire album. On “Bad News”, a distorted voice effect makes it seem like Kanye is crying as he sings, “Didn’t you know I was waiting on you, waiting on a dream that would never come true”.
On a production level, most of the instrumentation is minimal. Oh yeah, there is plenty of 808’s. The minute and euro sound inspired approach he takes musically works well on a few songs – such as the lead single “Love Lockdown”, where a simple 808 pattern is met by a catchy piano melody and chest pounding tribal drums. On “Welcome To Hearkbreak”, West cooks up a pattern on the drum machine that separates him from many other hip-hop producers. “My friend showed me pictures of his kids, and all I could do was show him pictures of my cribs”. Simple and effective. Unfortunately the rest of his album sounds like nursery rhymes.
Where I think this album really falls short is its lack of ability to connect. West constantly preaches about making music that connects and speaks to people. Well it didn’t connect with me. Unlike some of his prior work (mainly College Dropout), “808’s” is an album Kanye created for his own personal reasons, which is okay – but part of his appeal has always been his capability to relate to his audience. It is not that these songs go over my head– matter of fact – the lyrics are just as straightforward as the production. On “See You In My Nightmares”, Kanye comes off a little pretentious, lyrically – lines like, “I got my life, and it’s the only one, I got the night, I’m running from the sun”, make me appreciate “College Dropout” a bit more.
So here is the verdict. Kanye West – undoubtedly a music genius in his own right, has pushed the envelope, crossing musical boundaries to give us his most ambitious work to date. I will definitely give him kudos for taking risks. But whatever it was he wanted to accomplish lyrically, it just didn’t fly for me. It gets highly repetitive fast and I KNOW he can do a lot better – as he’s shown that in the past. He is definitely a more enjoyable listen when he’s “talking his shit” rather than vulnerably moping.
But every great artist has produced at least one album that was a head scratcher: “Electric Circus”, “Kid A” and now “808s”.
Kanye, please leave the singing in the shower and the Auto-tune well….who cares.
3.5/5
Kanye West – Welcome To Heartbreak (ft. Kid Cudi)
Tags: album
pretty interesting… been waiting on this, and its definitely
a curious cat.