Kanye’s 808s & Heartbreak, The Aftermath

Lyrically and musically it’s a much darker album than anything he’s done before. Since 2008 has been a pretty dark year for Kanye, after breaking up with his girlfriend and a handful of arrests for assaulting photographers, it probably will not put you in the mood for a party at the end of the day. I think 808s and Heartbreak seems to reflect some of that, seeing how it’s a bit of a “break up” love-gone-sour kind of album. In hip-hop, it’s actually “almost taboo in hip-hop for you to make a love record” according to 50 Cent.

To be brutally honest, what he’s doing now takes guts. A lot of guts in fact. It’s been written off as an experimental artsy project, and people have said that he’ll go back to his hip-hop roots with his next album, but you have to respect that he got up and said “Hey, this is the album I wanted to make, and here it is. Like it or don’t, I think it’s damn good!”

It probably would have been less effort to rework some older material that didn’t make it on Graduation, bring in a couple of flavor of the month “guest” singers or rappers, and put out a radio friendly, safe album that would sell well, but what would that prove? The man wants to be the face of a generation, and he wants to be the one that people follow and try to emulate. To be that you have to do something different and you have to be ahead of the game. In five years people may well be saying “I heard this album and it changed my view on what a hip-hop record should be!”

At the end of the day, whether you love the record or hate it, people are talking about it. If it causes controversy and discussion, it’s got a decent shot at being remembered.

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