As with so many other songs (Heartless, Love Lockdown), this song is about a difficult relationship with a woman.
The addition of strings in the background creates an uneasy effect. Robocop: This is a high-tech song with a pounding beat and explosions and mysterious techno blips in the background. Probably the most mainstream track in sight. Paranoid: The closest thing this album has to a dance song, Paranoid contains a beat with shades of Justice (DVNO) and the most traditional rapping on the album. Love Lockdown: Although this song met with mixed reviews upon its initial release as it was like nothing anyone else had heard, the rock clichés (feedback) and the piano over the hook create a track that explores the dark side of love. Normally this awkwardness would be undesirable, but on 808s it works, fitting in to the overall uneasy scheme well. (4.5/5)Īmazing: This is an exceptional song, with an unusual percussion instrument and pianos combined creatively and a feature by Young Jeezy creatively set off from the rest of the song by an awkward pause. ‘Ye plays around with Autotune and other effects, including talking over himself and singing through feedback. Heartless: This song builds up nicely to the first verse, with an evil-circus organ setting the stage nicely for a story of heartbreak and an evil girlfriend. Alternating 80's synth-pop and “Pink-and-Blue” Outkast-style drums set up this track for success. Welcome To Heartbreak: One of my personal favorites. Although it is still well produced, we just get tired of the slowness after a while. Say You Will: Although by most standards a good ominous-R&B track, Say You Will is the low point of this album. It can at times be relaxing and at other times ominous, even strange. It is a true hip-hop concept album, pushing the Autotune effect to regions even T-Pain could never dream of. It is totally different from any other rap album, with Yeezy’s Autotuned half-singing voice turning some off while broadening his reach.
This album is admirable for much more than just its creator's chutzpah.So, I finally got a hold of Kanye’s new album, 808's & Heartbreak, and I think it’s a classic. Taut string arrangements, doomy bass and looped piano motifs add to the claustrophobia captivating as it is, the isolated moments of levity (the disco bounce of Paranoid Young Jeezy's guest spot on Amazing, on which he rhymes "podium" with "sodium") are a relief.
In his hands, Autotune is a weapon, not a gimmick: ironically for a device used to dehumanise the singer, it makes him sound more vulnerable, as though playing smoke and mirrors with his own emotions. That he ultimately pulls it off is testament to his talent: it is the stylised, minimal music that lends the album its power, and which helps West convince as a man beset by demons and femmes fatales. 808s & Heartbreak shouldn't work: West's takes on the solitude of the superstar are solipsistic and clumsy ("How could you be so Dr Evil?" he asks on Heartless). E ven by Kanye West's standards, delivering an album of meditations on loneliness and paranoia, entirely sung through Autotune, is an audacious statement.
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