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New single ‘Heartless’ fulfils the promise of its predecessor. The planet’s under attack from scowling hip-hop androids and Kanye’s leading the assault. Still, though, there’s a cold, metallic bleakness at play from the get-go, invoking cinematic flashes à la Arnie’s The Running Man, that empowers the woe-is-me slush. “My friend shows me pictures of his kids/All I can show him is pictures of my cribs”.
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Those that didn’t buy into this fanfared rebirth will be trampling their shutter-shades at this absurd album concept.īut from the tortured opening cello groans of ‘Welcome To Heartbreak’, it’s clear the man is still in possession of his marbles.
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A brooding, dulcet elegy of quivering emotion without a single spoken couplet, it painstakingly arches from sub-bass ‘pooms’ to tribal fills over five minutes of melancholic digital-warped crooning. Lead single ‘Love Lockdown’ was a scare for many Kanye-watchers. The latter however, is what he’s gone and done (yup, every track).Īs the title foretells, there are two themes powering the college drop-out’s fourth full-length studio album: ’80s tech-nostalgia (the Roland TR-808 is the iconic, tinny drum machine that drove proto-hip hop), and erm, being well sad. Although one might argue it’s just as perplexing for him to take epiphany-type inspiration from a track by British cod-hop also-rans Mr Hudson And The Library (the forthcoming ‘There Will Be Tears’), decide to quit rapping, and record an 11-track album entirely sung through vocoder-esque auto-tune. It’d be odd then, for him to follow this with, say, a reggae-themed party album. Then a split from fiancée Alexis sent him into something of an early-30s meltdown. His ma, Donda, with whom he vocally shared an inseparable bond, passed away late last year. The emotionally raw album may not be the easiest listen among Kanye West’s work, but it is arguably the most innovative and influential album of his career.Kanye’s 2008 has been a shitter. Its astute blend of R&B and hip-hop tropes, paired with heartfelt, emotionally vulnerable lyrics, reshaped the rap and R&B landscapes, profoundly influencing a slew of musicians such as Drake, Young Thug, The Weeknd, and Frank Ocean in its wake. Greater still was 808s & Heartbreak’s lasting influence on contemporary music. 1 on the Billboard 200, selling 450,145 copies in its first week. The album proved to be another big hit for Kanye West, though, as it debuted at No. The album met with mixed reviews when released, on November 24, 2008, with critics initially scornful of the perceived over-reliance on Auto-Tune and the apparent self-pitying nature of the lyrics. Recorded in California and Hawaii in a mere three weeks, 808s & Heartbreak was the first of Kanye’s albums to feature his “creative CEO” style of recording, boasting over five co-writers on nearly every song. The desolate contents of the album were perfectly encapsulated by its minimal artwork, which depicted a deflated and broken heart on a spare grey background. West chose to pair these raw, uncompromising and bleak lyrics with a production characterized by minimalist, harrowing synths offset with stark brutalist beats (generated by the titular Roland TR-808 drum machine, a mainstay of early 80s hip-hop and synth-pop) alongside various offbeat additions such as taiko drums and monk choirs. Opener “Coldest Winter” deals harrowingly with the loss of his mother, who’d passed away due to complications with cosmetic surgery: “Goodbye my friend, I won’t ever love again/Never again,” he sings, while the bitter aftermath of his break-up with Phifer is addressed on the likes of “Robocop” and “Heartless.” “Welcome To Heartbreak,” meanwhile, was a distraught missive from a man coming to terms with the shallowness of his life, his dreams of success beginning to turn into a nightmare: “My friend showed me pictures of his kids/And all I could show him was pictures of my cribs/… Look back on my life and my life gone/Where did I go wrong?”