“808s and Heartbreak” album review
Over the past few weeks, we’ve acquired “808s and Heartbreak” in pieces, a few tracks here and there, a handful of unfinished versions, a few songs mastered and re-mastered and re-re-mastered. Now, listening to the album as a cohesive whole, we almost wish we had waited. In its entirety, “808s and Heartbreak” is an epic, masterfully produced, innovative work of music.
The album opens with Say You Will and Welcome to Heartbreak; instrumentally, these tracks, and a great majority of the album, are beautifully sweeping and slightly haunting, playing with the dichotomy between sparsity and rich, rushing sound. West employs strings and percussion, lots of drumming, to great success throughout the entire album (check out one of the album’s highlights RoboCop, for instance, that’s just packed to it’s brim with orchestral explosions and tycho drums). Without the heavily auto-tuned vocals, some of these songs could easily be featured as a movie’s score, or played by a full orchestra at a concert. These auto-tuned vocals, however, do not detract from the album at all; in fact, they help the album cohere, a common theme that spans the album’s 11 tracks.
Singles Love Lockdown and Heartless follow, without a doubt two of our favorite tracks from the album. Heartless has this insane percussion running alongside it, like a train, stretching it out and pulling the song along, with some of the smoothest rapping (singing?) we’ve heard in a while. Bad News is another album highlight, equally smooth.
Young Jeezy and Lil Wayne are two big names featured on the album, in Amazing and See You In My Nightmare respectively. At first, we weren’t really into these songs; the auto-tune and constant hammering of the drums provided a monotonic flow that we didn’t entirely get. After repeated listening, though, these tracks emerge as dark pulses of anger that interact with the flourished instrumentals on some of the other tracks.
“808s and Heartbreak” is fantastic. While we’re certain not everyone will agree, West has created a completely fresh album for listeners, and it’s almost as though it comes from an artist we’re not entirely familiar with. At it’s core is the theme of heartbreak; his distorted vocals, somehow awakening an inner-robot, granting it the ability to feel, pulls his anguish to a new level, adding to the intensity of the emotion Lyrically we aren’t blown away by the album, the poetry of love and heartbreak is not as poignant here as it might have been, but there’s enough musical energy here to distract. And while we’re almost positive he can’t sing live as well as he can rap live, this album is a without a doubt a showcase for the fantastic producer in Kanye West.
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