Each track on the album has immediacy with little reflection, which is a strength and a weakness. Like Kanye, I have used music as my outlet for the pain, hoping for some sort of catharsis. Personally, it is something I can relate to myself having lost the girl I was living with at the time to a pregnancy by her ex and my father to a suicide in the same year.
It is Kanye trying to excise the pain of losing a fiancee and a mother in the same year. 808s & Heartbreak is a perfect illustration of an individual using music to cope with the losses in his life. It lays the groundwork for the intimacy that follows throughout the album. It is an album aimed at asking questions within one’s self. It is this track that establishes the mindset of 808s & Heartbreak. It’s as though Kanye is hearing back the lyrics in which he just said in a song that was aimed at discovering a profound sadness within himself for the first time. The lyrics “I can’t stop having these visions/ I gotta get with it” refrain just after the four minute mark. The effects of his vocals are aimed at vocally portraying the sound of pain that Kanye is trying to have illustrated. The haunting vocals that Kid Cudi provides add smoke to an already foggy track. Kanye is able to succeed in a way that is both poignant and palpable. In hip-hop, a genre reserved for brevity and self-righteousness, that is hard to do and ever harder to do well. By breaking down his thoughts and feelings to their simplest and unpretentious form, he’s allowing the listeners to feel them. It is so straight-forwarded, it’s innovative. There is no fancy metaphors, no wordplay, and no lines with double meanings. The lyrics “My friend showed me pictures of his kids/ And all I could show him was pictures of my cribs/ He said his daughter got a brand new report card/ And all I got was a brand new sports car”, illustrates the power of simplicity.
It appeals to the emotions of the listeners, which is the building blocks to a brand. It’s a time when one’s self-doubt is at its most intense, as well as a time when the statement “Look at everything I haven’t done” floats around in one’s mind far more than the notion of “Look at everything I have done.” In simpler context, the track humanizes Kanye in a way that rappers aren’t supposed to be humanized. The first track on the album “Welcome to Heartbreak” is the epitome of any individual between the ages of 20 and 30. Every track on the album is rife with anguish, and the lyrics, illustrating the shards of broken relationships, can carry a fresh sting. Flaunting pain requires a sort of arrogance, something that comes naturally to Kanye. “808s & Heartbreak” sounds like none of his other albums, nor at the time any rap album of note. There is no YSL that they could sell, to get my heart out of this hell and my mind out of this jail,” exhibits the pain in which Kanye was dealing with at the time. Lyrics like those found on the track “Pinocchio Story” in which he states “There is no Gucci I can buy, there is no Louis Vuitton to put on. These by any measures are seismic changes, yet the artist in him persisted with recording. Afterwards, a few months later Kanye split from his fiancee, Alexis Philfer. His mother, Donda West, died following complications from plastic surgery. As a result of a tumultuous year in his personal life, the album operates solely on the level of catharsis, no commentary, no self-consciousness, no concern for anything but feeling. West was done letting himself off the hook. This is evident on the track “Breathe In, Breathe Out,” which was featured on his debut album, “The College Dropout.” He distilled the essential struggle that has defined his career into one sharp joke, stating “Always said if I rapped, I’d say something significant/But now I’m rapping about money, ho’s and rims again.” On the industry changing “808s & Heartbreak,” Mr. Usually, he never aims his differs at others there is enough in the mirror for him to clown on. On previous albums before “808s & Heartbreak” Kanye had hilariously taken himself to task for his foibles of style and narcissism. Something which he very rarely gets credit for. He is also a once in a generation talent, with a sense of humor. Kanye West is a mouthy, impertinent, flamboyant, bellicose, provocative, greedy, and needy individual.
0 kommentar(er)
