Hip-hop artist Kanye West changes direction, finds the ’80s
It came from the ’80s. And apparently, it came to stay.
A brief scan of the upper echelons of the pop charts supports the thesis that, at the moment, all roads lead back to the era of bad clothes, worse hair, even worse synthesizer sounds and nearly unforgivable drum machine-powered grooves.
The first Guns N’ Roses album in 14 years is a celebration of all that was overblown and deceptively grandiose about the era of eye shadow and nose candy. On the other side of the coolness divide, the Killers cashed in a hipster-chic check to purchase some straight-up ’80s alternative/ synth-pop goods, to the point where the band now sounds like some sort of unholy hybridization of Morrissey and that well-coiffed dude from a-ha. (“Take on meeee... I’ll be gooone...,” etc.)
Now, Kanye West — the self-proclaimed King of Pop, 2008-style — has forsaken his chamber-group approach to hip-hop to fully embrace late- ’80s club jams. His new “808s and Heartbreak” is mired in nostalgia for an era that, for most of us who already lived through it once, suggests itself as one better left in the past.
The arrival of ’80sfriendly Kanye signifies a number of changes in the man’s music. Paramount among them is the fact that West now spends far more time singing than he does rap-speaking, or relying on the work of others for the chorus hooks to his songs.
(This was once known as stealing, plain and simple. Then hip-hop cloaked it in the all-forgiving atmosphere of “the artistic process,” and renamed it “sampling.” To be fair, rock musicians did this to little-known blues artists, too, though most of them made it plain that they were doing so.)
West, as it turns out, is not a particularly wonderful singer. Come to think of it, he’s not that great a songwriter, either. And as a producer, he has been vastly overrated. The real reason that West arrived to take the pop music world by surprise and was widely hailed as some sort of Renaissance man is that his talent so obviously dwarfed that of nearly all his peers. That made him great-by-comparison. But it didn’t, and still doesn’t, make him great.
Admitting all of this, however, does not necessitate dismissing West. “808s and Heartbreak” is a good record, an always interesting, sometimes creatively compelling, only occasionally ridiculous collection of dance-pop songs with some hip-hop flourishes.
Fans of West’s previous albums might find much of the material collected here a bit of a bummer, though. Not only has West decided to emphasize his singing abilities, such as they are, he’s also concentrated his writing on matters of the heart consistently throughout the record. The “heartbreak” referred to in the title would seem to be West’s own; almost every song on the record refers to a busted relationship.
“Bad News” serves as a useful case in point. Here, West sounds downright lovelorn, making (or trying to, anyway) like Babyface with his face in his glass of Cristal, moaning about the fact that his baby don’t love him no more. As far as ridiculously un-subtle broken heart songs go, this one is pretty good. Some nifty distorted drum programming suggests West has at least heard the work being done by TV On the Radio and Radiohead, and the washes of synthesizer strings supporting West’s vocal are kinda nice.
“See You In My Nightmares” follows a similar song line, front-and-center synths pushing the needles into the red, as West moans about his lady’s peccadillos. Lil Wayne shows up here to do his Lil Wayne thing, but even when he isn’t in the studio, his influence sticks around. West, for reasons that must make sense to only him, has chosen to follow the Lil Wayne model by remorselessly bathing his vocals in the Auto-Tune effect, to the point that he sounds like a self-pitying robot for the duration of “808s and Heartbreak.” Someone should’ve stopped him; this was a huge mistake, and it comes dangerously close to making the album unlistenable.
Minus the bells and whistles that helped him become a massively successful and influential pop star — meaning, the samples he employed, or in some instances, the hooks he simply appropriated wholesale — West turns out to be a minimalist with a melodic sense that is monochromatic most of the time. This becomes obvious upon the realization that the most musically, emotionally and melodically compelling song on the album is an only slightly rewritten version of Tears For Fears’ dramatic ’80s nugget “Memories Fade,” which West retitles “Coldest Winter,” and dedicates to his mother, who died last year.
The song provides the album’s most convincing moments.
Will his legion of fans buy West as purveyor of a darker, more reflective art? Self-examination usually makes pop more interesting, but that’s not really the case here. Certainly, pulling away a few layers of glitz and at least partly laying his soul bare was a brave move on West’s part. However, Oz appears much less magical and mystical a place once you’ve seen some dude’s Nike’s sticking out from below the curtain.
CD Review
Kanye West 808s and Heartbreak
[Roc-A-Fella/ Def Jam]
★★½
(Out of four)
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