808's & Heartbreaks, Kanye's Foray Into "Pop Art"

Heartless from kwest on Vimeo.

So I just finished listening to the new Kanye West album on Myspace and I must say that this man is beyond his time. At a time when nearly every rapper is putting out the same canned crap (I'm looking at you everyone on the radio except Lil Wayne) here comes Kanye with his self described "Pop Art" record. Firstly I must say that it's full of sadness. On a year where he lost his mom and saw his engagement come to a premature end, the man has tons of pain to share and he does so through the use of the Roland 808 drum machine, Auto-Tune, and Vocodors. It's all very skeletal feeling, I'm guessing to accentuate the bare bones raw emotion of it all. The 808 pounds out with these great tribal beats, he uses the Auto-Tune as an instrument to purposely throw notes as if he's playing keys on a synthisizer, and the Vocoder gives it all a very detatched feeling to it. If you strip out the vocals at times it sounds like a late era Joy Division record or early era New Order. But with all that said this seems like one of those records that you're either going to love it or hate it, either way though the man deserves credit for doing something that very few in the mainstream do anymore, Take a Chance. And not only is the music great but the artwork surrounding the music and the videos themselves are of top notch value. The video for "Love Lockdown" features African tribesmen dancing with two very tall female figures with drawings like the Nazca Lines on them while spaceships linger in the background, all ending with Kanye curled up in the fetal position in a white room in a direct reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey. And the video for "Heartless" which I posted above has some of the best Rotoscoping I've ever seen, right on par with the wonderful Waking Life. So love 'em or hate 'em just be thankful for him, because he's opening the doors to what's possible with pop music.