Kanye West - 808s & Heartbreak (Album)
Oh Yeezy. You had it all, my man. You had credibility, bursting onto the scene and out from under the shadow of Jay-Z with College Dropout, one of the best debut hip-hop albums, well, ever. You had genius, exploding onto international radio and jukeboxes everywhere with Late Registration, creating one of the best songs, well, ever, in Touch The Sky. You had mainstream superstardom with Stronger, and even though your album Graduation wasn't widely regarded as excellent, it was pretty damn good (personally, I regarded it as excellent).
And then there was your performance at the 2008 MTV VMAs. You revealed a new, interesting song that didn't. Feature. Any. Rapping. Gun to my head, it didn't feature any singing either, really. It was unlike anything we'd heard before from Kanye. It was kinda unlike anything we'd heard before from anyone; it wasn't a typical pop song, it wasn't a typical R&B song, and it wasn't a typical hip-hop song. It was Love Lockdown. It featured an almost tribal drum beat and a lot of auto-tuned vocoder vocal nonsense. It was like Kanye was doing a live version of Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, but with an R&B twist. It was intriguing, to say the least. Would his new album all be like this? Would that be a bad thing? Is this song actually any good?
I suppose that's what I'm here to answer, with the recent release of 808s & Heartbreak sitting on my desk, staring up at me all forlornly, the deflated heart-balloon on the cover looking both minimalist cool and kinda... like a deflated heart-balloon. What have you done, Kanye? What is this?
Firstly, it's not like anything Kanye has done before. That much is plain to hear. And if you buy this album hoping or thinking it will be, you'll be sorely disappointed. As each track leaked I hoped and prayed it would sound like vintage Kanye, and every time my hopes were dashed and I had less and less interest in the new album. What I felt became more of a perverse, morbid fascination with how bad it would be, one that was continually fed. However, now that I have the album in my hands and on my iTunes, a different feeling has come over me. One of reflection. And one that insists, 'this is not like anything Kanye has done before and it wasn't meant to be, so judge it on its own merits.'
This is a mellow affair, that much is obvious. It's an electro-beat driven, pop-R&B album. It features strong drums, and synth-bass that hearkens back to the 80s. And at the same time, it's unforgivingly modern. The first track, Say You Will is a slow, brooding build-up to an album that bears out many of its production peculiarities and sonic sensibilities. The more I listen to this song, the more it strikes me that, once again, Kanye has proved he is a better producer than rapper or singer. The simple bass and piano makes for an understated but beautifully melancholic mood, and the more I listen the more I like. The more I distance myself from my expectations, the more I appreciate this album.
Love Lockdown is, well, Love Lockdown. We all know it, we all either like it a bit or hate it for what it represents; the New Kanye. Heartless, the second single, is a much better song. It has a better melody, and is more catchy. I like it a lot more, and it is Heartless, rather than Love Lockdown, that represents 808s & Heartbreak most accurately. It has the same style of production and vocals as Love Lockdown, but it's just... better. Better written, I suppose. The more I listen to it, the more I bop and dance and appreciate it for being an interesting, different, good pop song.
And I suppose that's how I feel about the album as a whole. It's a grower. And it's one that is worth letting grow. Give Yeezy a chance; he just might have made something amazing. Again.
