Back to Blog
808s and heartbreak review6/18/2023 ![]() Otherwise, no matter its commendable fearlessness, the album is a listless, bleary trudge along West's permafrost. Kanye West announced long ago that mere hip-hop superstardom was not enough for him he wanted to be the number one artist in the world. ("Coldest Winter," where West longs for his departed mother, samples the most desolate song from the first Tears for Fears album.) For anyone sifting through a broken relationship and self-letdown, this could all be therapeutic. Several tracks have almost as much in common with irrefutably bleak post-punk albums, such as New Order's Movement and the Cure's Pornography, as contemporary rap and R&B. All the blocky drums, dragging strings, droning synths, and joyless pianos lead to a bleak set of productions - even the synthetic calliope in "Heartless" is unnerved, and the relative pep of "Paranoid" provides no respite, its bitter lyrics subverting a boisterous beat. ![]() girl." Earlier in the album, the number she did on him is called "the coldest story ever told," yet he admits he still fantasizes about her. The majority of the lyrics, however, are directed at an ex who evidently did some damage in "RoboCop" alone, she gets compared to the antagonist in Misery and is called a "spoiled little L.A. When, in "Welcome to Heartbreak," he dispassionately recounts sitting alone on a flight, ahead of a laughing family, he makes first class sound like Siberia he'd swap lives with the father in an instant. ![]() In various spots across 808s & Heartbreak, the constant flutter of West's processed voice, along with a seldom interrupted sluggish march of aching sounds, is enlivened by the disarming manner in which despair and dejection are conveyed.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |