"People like to compare to 808s & Heartbreak," Drake’s primary producer Noah “40” Shebib told XXL back in 2014. Just go ahead and listen to that Drake remix of “Say You Will” from his first mixtape. It very well would shape the music that’s most popular today. For many, it felt like… goddamnit, where is our “Good Life?” But what we all didn’t realize was-and this has been written about extensively both on this website and others-that 808s & Heartbreak’s sound and punk attitude would go on to be one of the most defining records of the last decade. Until this moment Kanye’s music had been perfected to the point where he could rap about social issues-“All Falls Down” or “Family Business,” for example-yet if you put it on a party people would dance. The mask of Auto-Tune allowed him to feel comfortable enough to dig up and deal with his darkest demons in front of whoever would listen.Īs the story goes, 808s & Heartbreak was not received as well as his previous music critically. You maybe didn't understand what he was saying, and at times it didn’t even sound “good,” but the emotion he was trying to display was clear. But in this strange space that brought together the pureness of a traditional singing voice and the perceived stiffness of the digital world, West created something incredibly human and honest. He wasn’t always in tune, and god knows his shamelessly earnest lyrics-just look at the opening to “Welcome to Heartbreak”: “My friend showed me pictures of his kids / and all I could show him was pictures of my cribs”-lacked, uh, any sort of subtlety. This style would allow him to use his voice as an instrument-the lane he invented was neither rapping nor singing, but instead, a form of yelping through twisted augmented vocal manipulation. 808s & Heartbreak took his questionable singing voice and manipulated it with Auto-Tune. It sounds hyperbolic, but West would go on to create something we’d never heard before. He didn’t know where to turn, and could seemingly on do only one thing: create. The world he’d built around himself with his first three records of pure pop rap perfection was crumbling. To complicate matters further, the most devastating thing that could occur happened: His mother, who he’d always been especially close with, passed away after getting plastic surgery. After coming off the most commercially successful album of his career in Graduation, West’s long-term relationship with his high school sweetheart turned fiancée ended. On top of it being a weird time in America’s history-the bottom had just dropped out of our nation’s economy and thousands of people lost their homes, the youth of the nation had been tricked into thinking they could Change things with a whole ‘lotta Hope, and dudes were really into wearing sweatshirts under blazers-the man who’d eventually rise as Yeezus faced the most difficult time of his life. What we won’t witness tonight is what made this record come to be. Because 808s & Heartbreak is a record about the struggle to understand imperfection-one of its best qualities is that it’s willingly bad. West will be frustrated on stage-dealing with mic issues and then, at one point, yelling at the orchestra and calling the show a “dress rehearsal,” but regardless, he will succeed with his mission to make us feel. The whole ordeal will become the definition of an ordeal-a bold attempt to make each person in the crowd understand just what the hell it means to have your heart fucking broken-and why we, as humans, care about that so much. Pallbearers will roll out a woman’s body on a slanted bed and perform a funeral. An army of shirtless men will march to “Love Lockdown.” Snow will fall and melt in the LA heat during “Coldest Winter.” Gunshots will go off multiple times. Three giant staircases will rotate around the stage before us, and West will climb up, sit on, and jump off of them. A massive bulb hanging above the stage will pulse various shades of red and white.
Kanye will be dressed in clothes better suited the city of Zion in The Matrix than a live performance. What we will witness will be a strange and bizarre theatrical spectacle of a 60-person orchestra, a live band, and roughly 40 dancers that will last just over an hour.
#PINOCCHIO STORY KANYE GENIUS FULL#
It’s a Friday night and I’m here with 17,000 other people from all over the world to see West perform his 2008 record 808s & Heartbreak for the first time ever in full at the Hollywood Bowl. Kanye West will appear to be shot on stage later tonight, but for now all I can do is sweat.
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