Sorrow fills the soul as he admits an inability to stop. This isn’t the good life he once proclaimed, his life appears to be more a fortress that he's trapped within. One encompasses a man juxtaposing his famous, lavish lifestyle against the conventional lives of acquaintances. “ Welcome To Heartbreak” and “ Pinocchio Story” are my favorite portraits of Kanye West the man-he is an open vein bleeding in both cases. The man who made a name for himself through soul samples removed all the soul from his beats, the man who was determined to be acknowledged as a rapper decided to sing of his pain, and the man whose name is synonymous with confidence and egotism created a project where both traits are almost completely vacant- 808s & Heartbreak is a selfie of Kanye at his most fragile, vulnerable, and creatively daring. I don’t care about Complex's ranking of Kanye's album, but Brendan Klinkenberg nailed what lies underneath 808s: It never stops being dark and heavy, the tone is black as midnight. The album never wavers from its central themes-this dedicated focus to pouring out his soul is why the entire project flows like a descending elevator into the depths of his soul. Without a light at the end of his tunnel, Kanye envelops listeners in his therapeutic release disguised as a pop album.
Not everyone will understand how it feels to drop out of college or graduate with a degree, but we all will be haunted by a former lover, the passing of a parent, and the despair of trying to keep it together while the world slowly crumbles all around. From front to back the music West was able to produce is enchanted by an execution of emotions you are likely to relive countless times throughout this lifetime. Its subject matter, heartbreak, has kept it from aging-an album that is relevant each time a former dream girl arrives in your nightmares, when dealing with a paranoid lover, or eclipsed in a game of cat and mouse by a heartless heroine. Over the years, Kanye’s fourth album has continued to hold a special place in my music library. He couldn’t sing-the Achilles' heel of 808s-a flawed man with an imperfect technique is fitting of such a vulnerable album, but it adds a flavor that even a master singer isn’t able to reproduce. I couldn’t truly be welcomed into heartbreak before it felt foreign, weird, but the once strange place had suddenly felt like home. The very songs that I once wished to be filled with buoyant boasts, slick brags and inspirational lyricism sounded perfect as Auto-Tune drenched life anecdotes from a man unafraid to wear the shattered heart on his microphone.
A year can change a lot, especially when a woman enters and exits your life like some beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy. This was the coldest winter of my adolescence, an age of love and heartache, conflict and pain, guilt and longing-emotional scars that can be relieved by the ointment of music. It was a little over a year after the release of 808s & Heartbreak, the winter of my graduation year, when I tried the album once again. This was a completely new Kanye, a singing Kanye, a tragic Kanye-the darkness of his 808s, the bleakness of his heartbreak didn’t resonate with my 17-year-old desire for the old Kanye.
My heart sunk into the sole of my shoe when he redirected and renamed Good Ass Job, but I wasn’t prepared for him to completely revamp his artistry.
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