How 808s and Heartbreak shaped todays Rap music
Kanye West is one of the most talented and controversial figures in the rap world since the beginning of the genre. He has been able to stay relevant throughout his 20 year career through his questionable acts and his cutting edge music. One of these albums that shifted the course of rap music was his 4th official release “808s and Heartbreak.”
Kanye West was coming off his first three solo albums “The College Dropout,” “Late Registration” and “Graduation” that all followed a common college theme and sound, who also all had great success. These albums featured classic Kanye West songs that involved heavy sampling, layers of mostly acoustic sounding drums, and the charismatic West lyrics. These albums helped create the sound that Kanye soon became known for and took the rap world by storm. However “808s and Heartbreak” completely strayed away from this sound and made a new identity for Kanye.
As seen by the New York Times article above written by Jon Caramanica on November 25, 2008 just after the release of the album, the difference in tone was apparent from the beginning as Caramanica writes “‘808s and Heartbreaks’ sounds like none of his other albums, nor any rap album of note”. In this article several stylistic characteristics are mentioned that contrasted the previous works from Kanye. One of the biggest change is the subject of the lyrics and the overall tone of the songs on “808s and Heartbreak.” Kanye West was going through some tough life events prior to the release of this album including and split with his then fiancé and his mother passing away after complication with a plastic surgery that he provided the funds for. Due to this the music that he made was filled with emotional vulnerability, something that was not shown in much rap music at the time. Kanye replaced his iconic of the quick paced witty rapping with a more sentimental melodic singing/rapping that used a heavy amount of autotune, an effect that was just starting to being used at the time. The production also was different with more minimalistic beats that involved lots of electronic drums and use of a sub bass sound called an 808, hence the name of the album (808 is reference to the iconic drum machine Roland TR-808). This was like nothing that was out at the time and many people of the time did not know how to react to such a different sound, so by default the album got a lot of ridicule.
As an example below I will compare a mega rap hit from 2008 “Low” by Flo Rida to one of the more popular songs from “808s and Hearthbreaks” “Love Lockdown.”
As you can hear with “Low” the song is a fast paced rap song with lots of dense “boom-bap” type drums that were layered on top of other sounds. The lyrical content also is mostly just about being at the club and bragging about women and money. Rap music at the time mostly parallel to this.
With “Love Lockdown” the song is much more simple with most of the song being just a 808 bass driving the song with Kanye singing melodies with a lots of auto tune and vocal effects. The content of the lyrics are also much more emotional and introspective, with Kanye talking about leaving a woman because he wasn’t treating right and having to live with that decision.
This song went on to become one of the leading singles on the album and became Kanye’s highest charting song. At the time of the release a lot of the more traditional rap listeners did not like these stylistic choices, but little did they know years later this style was going to be the main inspiration for a large percentage of the top rap artists.
The past few years there has been an uprising in a rap sub-genre called “emo rap” which consists of these more emotional themes about love, drug use and the fast life of a rapper. The lyrics are usually artist “rapping” in melodic phrases that is drench in auto-tune to express such emotional themes in through their voice. This style of rap has dominated the genre with many artists like Future, Lil Uzi Vert, and Juice World topping the chart using this style. Many of these artists have credited Kanye West, specifically the “808s and Heartbreak” album for being one of the first people they saw express such melancholy themes and iconic style. For example this interview with juice world where he says “I think I kind of live with that record [808s and Heartbreaks] on my shoulder.” Or also the interview below where Lil Uzi Vert goes into discussion at around the 3:10 mark about how he felt when the album first dropped and what it made him feel. “It made me want to feel.. I wasn’t sad because I was young but I felt sad” he states along with how it changed his life.
Today’s rap scene has also strayed away from production style that was seen in “Low” and much more closely represent the sound from “808s and Heartbreak.” You cannot listen to a rap song from today that is not driven by the 808 sub bass, and most of them now have electronic drums apposed to more acoustic sounding drums, and do not follow the classic “Boom-bap” kick on the 1 clap on the 3 pattern, that was so prevalent in older hip hop.
I will leave you off with the song “XO Tour LIf3” by Lil Uzi Vert a song that has over a billion streams on Spotify alone. See how many characteristics you can relate to the album “808s and Heartbreak.”
