Recommended for 3/22/10 - Kanye West - 808s and Heartbreak (2008)
Yeah, yeah yeah. I know. What the hell am I doing recommending a Kanye West CD? I know, I know. The guy is an egomaniac who can't carry a tune in a bucket. Thankfully, he uses auto-tune to sing (you read that right: sing, not rap) for all of this disk. If you do not know what auto-tune is, it's basically hip-hop's favorite toy. It's a tool used to computerize (and unfortunately, in most cases, monotonize) the singer's vocal, leaving it wholly inhuman, but leaving it with a perfect pitch. The album is pretty much consistent throughout, with only a couple filler tracks to fill out the disk, but the good tracks more than make up for it. While it shocked all of Kanye's audience in late '08, mainly because it featured no rap and a bare-bones sound, consisting of nothing more than some 808s (tribal drums), keyboards, Kanye's vocals, and perhaps a few embellishments on the musical side of things. It leaves the listener feeling overcome with emotion, which is more than any other rapper's album is doing in the current music biz.
Yeah, yeah yeah. I know. What the hell am I doing recommending a Kanye West CD? I know, I know. The guy is an egomaniac who can't carry a tune in a bucket. Thankfully, he uses auto-tune to sing (you read that right: sing, not rap) for all of this disk. If you do not know what auto-tune is, it's basically hip-hop's favorite toy. It's a tool used to computerize (and unfortunately, in most cases, monotonize) the singer's vocal, leaving it wholly inhuman, but leaving it with a perfect pitch. The album is pretty much consistent throughout, with only a couple filler tracks to fill out the disk, but the good tracks more than make up for it. While it shocked all of Kanye's audience in late '08, mainly because it featured no rap and a bare-bones sound, consisting of nothing more than some 808s (tribal drums), keyboards, Kanye's vocals, and perhaps a few embellishments on the musical side of things. It leaves the listener feeling overcome with emotion, which is more than any other rapper's album is doing in the current music biz.
Song Highlights: Love Lockdown, Heartless, Welcome to Heartbreak, Street Lights, Say You Will
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