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Music Review

04 July 2009 07:13 BST

Kanye West: 808s and Heartbreak

Mercury, out November 24th.

In a nutshell…

Detached, bleak, bold and beautiful.

What's it all about?

Now that Kanye's college days appear to be over after the 2007 release of Graduation, he looks to have gone down the 'does what it says on the tin' route with 808s and Heartbreak, his fourth effort. Its title is a literal description of the tribal drum sound created by the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer drum machine used on every track (with Kanye reportedly declaring that no "typical hip-hop beats" would be used on the album) and the anguish experienced by the 31-year-old over the last 12 months, with Kanye splitting with his fiancee Alexis Phifer, mere months after his beloved mother Donda had died due to complications in a cosmetic surgery procedure.

Mr Hudson, Young Jeezy and Lil Wayne feature on an album recorded in record time and presented by Kanye as a representative of a new genre called "pop art" - he's not a Warhol devotee, apparently.

To watch the Love Lockdown video, click here

Who's it by?

Born Kanye Omari West in Atlanta, Georgia, he moved to Chicago, Illinois with his late mother Donda at three years old and later attended the American Academy of Art in the city before dropping out, sealing the name of his debut solo release The College Dropout.

Kanye rose to prominence in hip-hop through his glossy production style, drenched with ancient soul samples, for the likes of Jay-Z, Talib Kweli and Common, before a near-fatal car crash in 2002 provided the inspiration for his first single Through the Wire, worked around a Chaka Khan sample and rapped while Kanye's broken jaw was pieced together with metal.

And the rest is history. The ornate and grandiose Late Registration followed with club jams such as Gold Digger sat alongside socioeconomic commentary in the shape of Diamonds from Sierra Leone, before 50 Cent's album Curtis was comprehensively crushed by Kanye's third album Graduation when the LPs were concurrently released (though Fiddy regrettably failed to live up to his promise to retire).

It's not all been smooth sailing, and Kanye's arrogance has landed him in hot water on numerous occasions, realised in its most ignominious fashion when he stormed the stage at the 2006 MTV Europe Music awards having lost out to Justice Vs Simian in the best video category. His infamous remark that "George Bush doesn't care about black people" while appearing on a Hurricane Katrina fundraiser might also have lost Kanye some fans, but given the outgoing president's approval ratings, it probably didn't.

As an example...

"When I grab your neck/I touch your soul/Take off your coat/Then lose control." - Say You Will

"My friend showed me pictures of his kids/And all I could show him was pictures of my cribs/He said his daughter got a brand new report card/And all I got was a brand new sports car." - Welcome to Heartbreak

Likelihood of a trip to the Grammys

He's already won ten and despite 808s and Heartbreak representing a marked stylistic change, expect it to feature in nomination lists across the globe for the next year, while the likes of Love Lockdown, Robocop and Coldest Winter could win individual awards.

What the others say

"Killing the pain by throwing himself into his work, West is promising another record soon, although it's unclear whether it will be an Amnesiac-style companion to what is essentially his equivalent of Radiohead's Kid A, a slate-cleaning exercise that allows for creative, and in this case personal, rebirth. It might seem harsh but let's hope he doesn't find too much happiness in the meantime. Loneliness is proving quite the muse." - Guardian

"With another album already in the pipeline for next year one suspects that this may be a sideline that proves to be more cathartic for him than the rest of us. But it's kind of reassuring to see that an ego so huge is as susceptible to heartache as the rest of us mere mortals. And somehow this makes 808s and Heartbreak even more affecting. It certainly won't do his reputation as one of the top figures in popular music today any harm." - Dennis O'Dell, BBC

So is it any good?

Do you love Kanye West's wry wordplay and crisp, nostalgic-yet-modern production style? Have you enjoyed his habit of discussing religious faith, bold couture and personal neuroses as opposed to the rap game's tired touchstones of guns, bling and bitches? Might you consider Kanye the clearest example of a genuine modern day pop star, capable of transcending age, race, class and sex through his fanbase?

Then there's a good chance you're going to hate 808s and Heartbreak, given just how great a departure it is from everything he's done in the past.

Your first listen may leave you bemoaning an apparent loss of lyrical dexterity and wondering why Kanye seems to want his work filed alongside the chart-friendly, forgettable output of Chris Brown and Ne-Yo. And anyone who marvelled at his having sampled everyone from Shirley Bassey to Daft Punk will shake their head at the mind-numbingly repetitive use of Autotune on every song, which seems to remove any trace of emotion from an album with lyrics so confessional that it could be classed as Kanye going emo.

But listen again. Give it a week or so, and 808s and Heartbreak reveals itself to be a dazzling, daring experiment, with one of the biggest stars in music today deserving credit for taking a risk of proportions as epic as his ego.

While Good Morning opened Graduation with a confident, salutary tone, Say You Will is its bleaker, depressed cousin, with the cowbell processed electronically and our protagonist hurt, hungover, bemoaning the past and hoping for a change, rather than proclaiming his own greatness.

It's refreshing to see one whose career has been built on hubris realising his own fall through favouring fame but sympathy's a little hard to elicit from an audience when owning "a brand new sports car" is elucidated as a problem on Welcome to Heartbreak.

While the passing of his mother has hurt him deeply, as seen on the elegiac, string-laden Coldest Winter, his breakup with his former fiancee has evidently broken his heart. But in doing so, it's inspired an honesty unparalleled in pop, let alone in hip-hop. We learn of his still fantasising about Alexis and their late night phone conversations on the embittered stomp of Heartless. The ponderous Amazing reveals the motivational morning pep talk Kanye gives himself before hoisting himself out of night-time misery. His dissatisfaction with the vacuous, vengeful "LA girls" he's encountered since becoming a singleton is showcased on the shuddering bounce of Robocop and on the brilliant Paranoid, soon to take up residence on a Radio 1 playlist near you, there's proof that even when he's lecturing his ex on his belief that she'll never find a lover to match him, Kanye can turn even the simplest coupling of a TR-808 and a keyboard loop into a hip-pop masterwork.

The magnificent, unbearably sad Street Lights is the key to it all, however. In its melding of Moroder synth, delayed drum loops and undulating strings that belong on a Warp album, it's the clearest example that both in style and significance, this is Kanye West's Kid A. It's a brave, bewildering, sometimes maddening work that will inspire adoration and anger in equal measure.

Is it a Kanye West album as we know it? By no means. Has he just taken his first step into a larger world? Without a doubt, and if you're ready to follow, you'd better hope you can keep up as Kanye kicks into hyperdrive.

9/10

Lewis Bazley