 It’s easy to hate Kanye’s new album. With the auto-tune at his disposal and present in every song, it may sound as though Kanye has entered one-time radio hits realm of hip-hop; a sort of T-Payne-esque genre hated by many loyal Kanye fans.
But “808s & Heartbreak” seems to go beyond words. After a tumultuous and painful few months that included the loss of his mother and divorce of his fiancée Alexis Phifer, Kanye creates his fourth studio album with a passionate depression. The personal tributes displayed in its songs are a testament to his true character. Kanye proves that he is bigger than hip-hop by producing an album not for sales or good ratings, but simply because it comes from the heart and that’s all that matters to him.
“808s & Heartbreak” is actually classified by Kanye as pop music, reminiscing of the days of Michael Jackson glory. The first half of its title is a reference to the Roland TR-808 drum machine that he uses to create a "minimal but functional" sound. By pure coincidence, 808 is also the area code of Hawaii, the place in which Ye spent a two week period recording the album.
As for the music itself, it requires fans to set aside all they know of Kanye’s sounds. His voice sounds robotic and hollow, to create regretful low-register tones that seem to reverberate throughout every track. These saddened tones combine with poppy hooks, as well as with the 808s tribal synth beats to give the album a clean and original feel. In the second track “Welcome to Heartbreak”, using cello strings and playful keys, Kanye displays his yearning to escape the lonely and isolated life that fame has brought him: “/My friend showed me pictures of his kids/ All I could show him was pictures of cribs//"/ “/Dad cracked a joke, all the kids laughed/But I couldn’t here him all the way in first-class”. /“Coldest Winter” demonstrates the root of his depression (borrowing heavily from Tears for Fears’ “Memories Fade”), in his metaphor to the cold winter of his hardships with his ex-fiancé he sings, “/Memories made in the coldest winter/Goodbye my friend, I won’t never love again/”. The consequences of the breakup are not so subtle as he presents her as a /“RoboCop on patrol”/, and as just a /“spoiled little L.A. girl”. /
Amongst its oddities and stark differences to previous works, Kanye fulfills his desire to shift the direction of hip-hop while escaping the pains of his personal life, proving that he's simply a creator of music’s purest form, art.
8.5/10
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