Kanye’s 808s & Heartbreak, The Aftermath

Prior to the release of 808s and Heartbreak, Kanye West told the world that he doesn’t find making hip-hop challenging anymore. Critics, unsurprisingly, gave the album 808s and Heartbreak a pretty mixed review.

I can understand why people hate it, if you open it up expecting another polished, perfect hip-hop album, with Graduation style productions and big dance floor filling tracks like Stronger you’re probably going to be disappointed. Kanye barely raps a word for a start, and the heavy use of autotune might not be for everybody. The bottom line though, is that people “expect” a certain sound from a certain artist.

If Dre put out an album full of acoustic guitar ballads, people would wonder what the man was thinking! Wouldn’t even matter how good they were musically, it’d just be too weird for everyone that bought and loved Chronic. I think a lot of the haters are the people that were expecting something like The College Dropout. Change is scary after all, but then again, without change we’d all be listening to Disco or funk.

There are a lot of people that just plain don’t like Kanye’s attitude, and claiming that he is to music what Jordan was to basketball was always going to push people one way or the other. Add in the hissy fit over the MTV awards, and well, it’s understandable that people want to put him down.

I always thought, personally, that he was good at what he did, but wasn’t ever going to do anything that would be remembered ten years later, even though he did add a few interesting twists to the hip-hop sound. The new album though, isn’t your standard offering of hook laden processed beats with witty lyrics. It feels personal and introspective, and I can’t help but think it’s much better than a lot of egocentric albums out there because of it.

Pages: 1 2