:: Kanye West - 808s & Heartbreak

Kanye West

When an artist reinvents themselves it can be a dangerous move. Especially for someone that has had the commercial success of someone like Kanye West. The dramatic move heard on his fourth studio album ‘808s & Heartbreak’ will lose him a lot of his commercial fans but could earn him the respect of the whole music industry. The Kanye West found on ‘808s & Heartbreak’ is a more mature musician, one that has leant some valuable lessons in his life and it reflects in his music. During the recording of this album West’s engagement was called off and his mother died due to complications during cosmetic surgery. These two events are directly responsible for the dark, foreboding sound found on this album.

Opening track, ‘Say You Will’ reveals straight away West’s new sound. Gone is the full on rap and instead you are met with crooning almost soul vocals with a funky slow electronica beat, the kind you would expect to hear on an Endorphin album. ‘Welcome To Heartbreak’ sees West return to rap, but nowhere as full on as he has been in the past, and again that foreboding dark electronica beat is present. West again experiments with some interesting samples on ‘Amazing’ which sees him use an altered voice and some tribal screams sample that bring an eerie feeling to the track. Then there is one of the tracks of the year, ‘Love Lockdown’, a brilliant song that shows a true genius at work. I fell in love with this track when I saw West perform it on ‘The David Letterman Show’ and the version on the album is even better. Perhaps the surprise of the album is ‘Paranoid’ a track that sees West do 70s disco, he then turns a little cheesy with ‘Robocop’ that only remains listenable because of it’s dark mood. West lets out all his sadness and pain with ‘Bad News’ and ‘Coldest Winter’; not surprisingly these are the tracks that show just how much he has matured. An absolutely brilliant album that is more than electronica than rap, certainly one of the albums of the year and one that reveals that Kanye West may be one of the best musicians of our time.