Kanye West808s & HeartbreakRoc-a-Fella/Island Def Jam4/5
True to form, Kanye West pushes forward in his quest for creative greatness by doing what he’s done throughout his career -the unexpected. Pulling further away from the sound of contemporary hip-hop than even his euro-pop-influenced last album Graduation did, 808s & Heartbreak contains eleven songs in which Kanye laments the recent losses of his deceased mother, and his ex-fiancé. While much has been made about how drastically different 808s is from West’s previous three offerings, there are some signs of musical continuity. The LP is far from a two-headed monster (though the influence of the auto-tune technique and the use of the TR-808 drum machine dominate the sound) - unlike Graduation, the synths no longer serve as the primary element of the album’s production, but instead beep over and prod at the layers of instrumentation underneath. The sonic arrangements, most notably those of “Bad News” and “Coldest Winter,” recreate the dramatic feel of Late Registration’s more touching moments, and the overall soulful nature of the album harkens back to the sentimentality of The College Dropout.
viaRealTalkNY
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