I'm just gonna clear the air.
No bones about it - I'm a huge fan of Kanye West.
There. I feel so much better.
I am well aware of the reputation he's fostered. His behavior is, at times, bizarre, manic or plain self destructive. Either in spite of (or because of) said behavior I find both him and his music absolutely fascinating. With his genius come some demons - he's not the first to endure this and he won't be the last. Sometimes brightly talented individuals have minds that work a little...differently...than the masses. This would be one of those cases. So after perfecting his craft in the hip hop community during the turn of the millennium, releasing some unparalleled solo albums and having success go (deservedly) to his head, when he was dealt a particularly hard year, give or take, he went and little nuts and the world watched and waited as he retreated to the studio. He lost his mother, who was a corner stone in West's life. His engagement ended prematurely. The media began to focus on him with gleeful scrutiny and scorn. It's only natural he was feeling shaken and hurt. What we got when he emerged from the studio was almost completely unexpected, the confounding yet amazing 808s & Heartbreak.
Primarily known for being West's departure from rapping in favor of heavily auto-tuned vocals, 808s & Heartbreak is a notoriously divisive album. If you haven't guessed already, I find the album to be a phenomenal work by a tortured artist. The agony of the loss of his mother, who was known as a center point of West's life, plus the isolating effect of fame and media notoriety, pushed him to a lonely and cold place from which he crafted this strange album. Full of robotic vocals and synthesizers strait of out of The Jetsons, this album was quite unlike anything else at the time, right when auto-tune was ascendant but before it was ubiquitous. Even the title is inspired - the mixture of West's agony and his love of old school drum machines is at the heart of the music here.
Some people were completely put off by the genre shift, and can understand that - West was (and still is) a master-craftsman when it comes to making hip hop albums. So a whole record full of electro-pop songs about being lonely and paranoid no doubt pushed away some of his hardcore fans. A lot of people were expecting and hoping for another in his education themed albums, not a pop-art, futuristic piece of minimalism. I think the concept of the album works just as well for me as the music itself. I love the ideas West put down on tape here, not just the songs (though they are, in my opinion, fantastic). That West sought to marry the natural and artificial so intricately and without hiding behind a cluttered mix excites my inner nerd brain as much as my white-boy hipster bad-dancing self.
There's this larger-than-life archetypal sense of self awareness on 808s that I find fascinating. The opening track is absolutely in my ideal vein of music, all haunting and evocative moods, sparse synthesizers and beeps over low and slow beats. That it sits so easily along side the mammoth pop song 'Robocop' with it's over-sized strings and grinding robo-sounds just goes to show how much thought and craft went into constructing a cohesive work. Sure, West's vocals aren't terribly strong but the auto-tune elements not only shape them well but further illustrate how he was aiming to mix the machine and the organic.
I really can't say enough great things about this album. It's only been three years but it already feels like people have moved past it, particularly in light of last year's pseudo-return to form with the even more deranged My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. I was glad to see some of the experiments here have stuck with him on that album, but this one will always be a secret favorite of mine. If you dismissed it when it came out, give it another spin and see why so many others hailed it as a profound step in the artist's creative growth. It's uncanny and genius.
