Despite only coming so soon after "Graduation", "808s & Heartbreak" is a huge switch-up for Kanye.
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I feel as though this album is a standout from all the other Kanye albums I've heard. It basically sounded nothing like "The College Dropout" and nothing like "Graduation" even though "Graduation" came out only one year before.
As the title suggests, the beats contained fairly big 808's. Powerful drums were placed throughout the album. There was less focus on samples or piano melodies (except a couple songs like "Amazing").
As well as the instrumentals, there was a severe lack of rapping on this album. Instead we mainly got auto-tuned singing that was very 'hit and miss'.
For me this was kanye trying to make a more "poppy" album, and if I'm being honest, there were more misses than hits. "Heartless" is probably the one where he does hit the mark. It didn't surprise me to see that that song was the most popular on Spotify and was one of the singles from the album.
On the track "Welcome to Heartbreak" he tried to utilise Kid Cudi, but mainly failed. The auto-tune and weird effect that he puts on his voice kind of neutralized any of the catchy cadences that we all know and love Kid Cudi for. I feel as though this was Kanye's first attempt at making a song like "Gorgeous" and then a few years later on "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" he was successful at it.
Of course, contrasting much with "Graduation", this album was a very sad one. But for me the song that was much more happier in aesthetic "RoboCop", was the best.
Lyrically there wasn't many highlights, maybe apart from Jeezy's feature on "Amazing", his delivery and voice absolutely cut through that instrumental.
"Pinocchio Story" was pretty interesting and I did really enjoy listening to that, it was cool to hear a live performance on an album.
It's a weird one because this is the first Kanye album that I haven't enjoyed listening to. I feel as though with this one, Kanye and the listener is just trying to get through the songs as quick as possible. Even though there was lots of instrumental space where there was no lyrics, that will obviously have been intentional and done for a purpose, but to me it sounded more like he was like "fuck it I don't have any singing for this part, let's just leave it".
On 808's I think Kanye was just trying to display exactly how he feels, but for me it wasn't necessarily in a way that suits him best, or at least in a way that's as good as "Graduation" or "The College Dropout".
Even though they weren't quite up my street, some of the instrumentals were still impressive, empowering and emotional. Holding this album up to some extent.
5.5/10
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