Let’s face it, where was Kanye going to go after Graduation? Doctorate would be a terrible album title. So instead, he has wiped the slate clean and started from scratch. There’s no pitched soul samples, no multitude of guests, and almost no lines about money, hoes, and rims.
And right now, I don’t miss any of it.
808′s and Heartbreak is something entirely new for Kanye, and, really, something entirely new for pop. And that’s the key to enjoying this album. Don’t judge it as a Kanye record, or even as a hip-hop record, because that’s not where this thing is aimed. This is stark, hard-edged electronic pop, and it should be evaluated as such.
When I heard the first single, “Love Lockdown”, I wondered what Kanye was getting into. No rapping? Auto-tune? Crazy talk! But after awhile, the song’s sound started to make sense. The fat, pulsing 808, the light, nimble piano, and those glorious, pounding drums in the chorus. This vibe basically extends throughout the entire album. The whole thing has this great stripped down, electronic, synthetic feeling, with just enough of the organic laid on top that human interaction becomes evident. Within this aesthetic, the auto-tune makes perfect sense. Something as natural and unpredictable as the human voice, forced into rigidity and near-perfection. Man and machine, as one. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it.
This is a different style for Kanye, but when it comes together, it is a thing to behold. There’s “Street Lights”, with it’s pulsating synth sitting atop a deep, simple piano, building into something grand and lush. Then there’s ”Paranoid”, dripping in 80′s glameur, and one of the few spots where Kanye falls back into a rap-style flow. Perhaps my favorite song is “Robocop”. The beat is almost almost industrial in nature, especially when the drill-like sounds come up as Kanye croons, “When did you become a Robocop?” The strings that are used with subtlety elsewhere on the album are let loose, and the only way to describe it is “glorious”.
If I was forced to find some fault with the album, however, it would have to be the lyrics. Kanye has never been all that lyrically tallented, even when he rapped, but in that context he could come up with some catchy and clever shit (e.g. “I’m like the fly Malcolm X, buy any jeans necessary”). But here, nothing is really all that memorable, and every once in a while, it’s cringe-worthy. But most of the time, the melody is good enough that any lyrical faults can be ignored.
Overall, this is Kanye’s response to hard times. His mother’s death, his fiancé leaving him, and this is what comes out. The canon of Kanye West’s career will probably view it as an oddity in his discography, and after this it’s likely that the “Louie Vuitton Don” will return. But even if it’s not the Kanye we’ve always loved, and even if it’s uneven in places, it’s an artist trying something new, and this time, it works.