On “Amazing,” a click-clacking beat interlocks tensely with a lurching piano figure on the hushed “Street Lights,” the central motif is a distorted synthesizer that suggests a weeping robot mosquito. Whenever West’s singing revs up to near-rap speeds, the album gains a much-needed dynamism, and his production is frequently marvelous-it’s impressive how well he pulls off his chilly electro makeover. There are moments when we see the triumph this album could have been. Much of 808s and Heartbreak seems to operate according to similarly queasy ethics. There’s a sense that the attack is the penalty for the girl’s flighty, sheltered narcissism-the Stanley-Blanche rape scene from A Streetcar Named Desire, reimagined by a fuming frat boy. in a fancy loft, enjoys a mimosa, gets to the hard work of choosing an outfit, heads out, gets embarrassingly drunk, and-it’s strongly suggested-is sexually assaulted in a dark alley. We follow a day in the life of a pampered, beautiful party girl who worships at the altar of “shoes and cars.” She wakes up at 2:30 p.m. In the second video, the violence flips around.
The first video is a slow striptease with a gruesome climax: A voluptuous femme fatale undresses to her lingerie, struts over to a red sports car, opens the trunk to reveal a bound and gagged West, and plunges a shovel into him six times. This is a nasty streak that West first revealed in two of three videos he shot for “Flashing Lights,” a single from his last album-and, not coincidentally, a song about getting caught cheating. Here, as a narrator of pain and spite, he’s frequently imprecise, banal, and unevocative: “Life’s just not fair” “I don’t love you no more” “Will I ever love again?” The lyrics can suggest an emo kid scribbling grievances in third-period English class. On past songs such as “Drive Slow,” “Gone,” and “Roses,” West proved he was capable of wringing emotional truths from concise vignettes, telling details, and knotty wordplay. Indeed, it often seems as if West thought making a moving album would be as simple as flipping a “sad” switch. In interviews leading up to the album’s release, West said that “heartbreak” was his nickname for the Auto-Tuned burbles, cracks, and splinters in his voice- 808s and Heartbreak refers, respectively, to the beats and the bleats. It’s a spiteful breakup album in which he plays the mostly blameless victim, a nasty feast of wound-licking and backbiting, and a claustrophobic pity party that brooks hardly any self-reflection. Ironically, though, 808s and Heartbreak is the least vulnerable thing West has released. On the surface, this stripped-down, haunted album promises a paean to vulnerability-in other words, all self-doubt, no arrogance. These gestures make West’s art more complex but expose something unattractive about him, too, so that, in his bigheaded moments, we can’t help but see the little man trembling behind the curtain. Other times, in his songs, he’ll spike brags about his wealth with lyrics that reveal the feelings of inadequacy driving his materialism, or toast his commercial success while acknowledging the pangs of artistic guilt that have accompanied it. When West argues for his greatness, he often does so with a needy whine: ranting onstage and off at awards shows about perceived snubs using his blog to attack an Entertainment Weekly reviewer who gave West’s recent tour a mere B+ rating. anoints himself, simply, king, they are imperious about it. When Lil’ Wayne calls himself the best rapper alive or T.I. Part of the answer lies, it seems, in one of West’s most human-scale traits: the way he’ll undercut his arrogance with evidence of the self-doubts gnawing beneath.
#Who is 808s and heartbreak about professional
Complaining about a rapper’s outsized ego is a bit like complaining about a professional bicyclist’s outsized calves or a clown’s outsized pants: They’re part of the job description. Even West’s fans, on message boards and in comments sections, often separate his work, which they adore, from his self-regard, which they tolerate with varying degrees of amusement and irritation. What is it about Kanye West’s self-love that annoys people so deeply? No other rapper is taken to task as frequently and as fervently for crimes of the ego.
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