He said that 808s & Heartbreak “redefined the sound of radio,” while admitting that “the fact that I can’t sing that well is what makes 808s so special.” Meanwhile, he called My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy a “backhanded apology.” In more clear terms, he called his releases in the four years leading up to 2013 the “most culturally relevant albums” of the time.Īlmost immediately, his comments were absorbed into the ever-evolving conversation that regularly overtakes the timeline, about how one ranks Kanye’s albums. It wasn’t quite as tidy as JAY-Z photographing all of his music albums in an ordered stack, but it did reveal a lot about what Kanye thinks of his output. If he runs all its tracks through Auto-Tune, it isn’t just to get the notes right, but to convey the reality of what it means to try to feel everything at once: You go numb.During a 2013 interview with the New York Times, Kanye West shed some light on his feelings about his own discography. And for all its robotic austerity, 808s is a kind of kids’ album, or at least one that taps into the rush of unsorted emotions that comes with youth. Kanye says he started exploring melody because that’s how teachers taught concepts to him when he was a kid-learning through song. And no matter how alienated fame makes him feel (“Welcome to Heartbreak”), he can’t quite give it up (“Amazing”). He recognizes the transitory nature of life (“Street Lights”), but it doesn’t stop him from holding a grudge (“Heartless”). His pain is real (“Coldest Winter”), but his arrogance is, too (“RoboCop”). But in the intervening years, the album has become a blueprint for an entirely new wave of rap: introverted, melodic, melancholy, confessional-the sound of Drake and The Weeknd on down to Juice WRLD and Lil Uzi Vert.
At least, it certainly wasn’t when it came out in 2008.
It isn’t hip-hop in the conventional sense. But you’d have to have a pretty good internal compass to bet your future on where that wind’s gonna take you. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, Dylan sang-a line, incidentally, from the first electric song of his that most people would have heard (“Subterranean Homesick Blues”). Like Dylan, the new direction made him a genius to some and a traitor to others-a split that highlighted both the divisiveness of his art and the conservative streak in a scene where the imperative to keep it real can be as stifling as it is comforting.
Like Dylan, Kanye didn’t need the fame or credibility: His third (and third multiplatinum) album, 2007’s Graduation, had come out only a year earlier, and he’d already established himself as the kind of visionary who could steer the conversation while hovering somewhere above it. Perhaps the best comparison for 808s & Heartbreak is when Bob Dylan went electric in 1965.
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