#49 - 808s and Heartbreak
From the time I first started formulating this list, I knew I wanted at least one Hip-Hop album in here; I felt it needed representation as a genre, a genre that I listen to a surprising amount (surprising to myself, at least). Plenty of albums crossed my mind: from Paid in Full, to Good Kid Mad City, to Bizzare Ride II the Pharcyde, to The Cold Vein.
But the truth is, I cheated, because 808s and Heartbreak isn’t really Hip-Hop at all. What it is, is an Electro-R&B odyssey into the man behind the ego.
This album was criminally underrated when it was first released, with critics finding West’s new direction unpalatable and unsatisfying. In truth, they were probably just shocked and challenged by the sparse and dark soundscapes and subject matters, the coldness and melancholy that was wrapped up so tightly and profoundly within the pop melodies. But this bold and wintry approach to pop song-writing has undeniably had a hugely resounding impact on the Hip-Hop and R&B genres, and it’s now difficult to find any pop Hip-Hop album that doesn’t draw from the production aspects laid down here.
The emotional sincerity is emphasised and complimented by the stripped back production, with the Roland TR-808 laying down heavy, laborious beats that drive down the atmosphere into a place far removed from usually highly ego driven and high-spirited tracks that colour West’s earlier work. He pairs this with the use of auto-tune, at first a practice that was a source of derision in the music press, but one that West uses here to increase the detached and chilling atmosphere, distancing himself from his humanity with an artificial, ghostly echo.
But this paradoxically makes the album more personal than ever, and as West tells us how “a Dad cracked a joke, all the kids laughed, but I couldn't hear him all the way in first class” on ‘Welcome to Heartbreak’, we really feel his pain and frustration in how he has traded emotional wealth for the material.
This is an album forged in the fires of pain and helplessness, West having endured a break-up and the death of his Mother before the album’s recording, and as he subsequently proved on Yeezus, it is in this dark place that his music really comes alive.
The critics that derided it originally probably didn’t imagine it would become the most influential album made by a Hip-Hop artist in its decade, but their opinions are irrelevant; the fact that it resonated with so many
artists, so many creators of music, tells you all you need to know.
As fashionable as it is to dislike Kanye, and popular Hip-Hop music in general, there is genuine, confronting emotion here; a perfect suiting of music and theme, and for that reason, it’s on this list. Sorry, Eric B. and Rakim!