Whenever I get some entertainment for myself, may that be music, movies, video games, or whatever, I eventually found myself wondering what the story is behind it. What did the creator have to go through in order to make this thing I am experiencing now? Sometimes I wonder how exactly that form of entertainment is made, and then sometimes I wonder about the personalities and people that made it all possible.
I don’t have to do much wondering when it comes to Kanye West.
Kanye West has made his personal life and thoughts a big part of his music. He is not shy about voicing his opinion in circumstances that would embarrass a normal person (on the contrary, they seem to fuel his fire). Many times I will hear discussions about how a person’s actions and beliefs can cause doubts and make people take another look at the media they have made (such as Micheal Jackson and Orson Scott Card), but Kanye West, on the other hand, uses his personality and behavior as both the context and the content of his music. It is hard to separate the Kanye West from the body of his work.
That is easiest to see in the 2008 album, 808s & Heartbreak. The story is that after both the break-up with his girlfriend and the death of his mother, he decided to throw out the album he was working on. Kanye West decides to do to Hawaii and start a whole new album that mainly uses an 808 drum machine and vocoder enhanced vocals. It was and still is an album that is not very liked by fans and non-fans alike. It is not hard to see why though. 808s & Heartbreak throws away most of the fun and dancibility of Kanye West’s earlier work, and replaces it with more dissonance and loneliness. Mr. West refrains from boasting about his wealth and rapping prowess, and tends more to feel sorry for himself.
I know that a whole album of sadness and loneliness may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it is that loneliness that I find to be compelling. Having Kanye West go over in his songs about what went wrong in his relationship and his life is so much more interesting than what most mainstream rap is about (which, as far as I can tell, is mostly about boasting). Granted, Kanye West may be doing what more independent rappers are already doing, but what makes it more interesting to me is the character of Kanye West himself. With songs that are about feeling some sort of catharsis or empathy, usually they try to paint the protagonist as either sympathetic or reprehensible. With 808s & Heartbreak, every time Kanye West tries to be reprehensible (“I’m a problem that’ll never be solved/and no matter what you’ll never take that from me”), he comes off as sympathetic, and whenever he attempts to be sympathetic (“You’re like the girl from Misery/She said, she ain’t take it to this degree/Well, let’s agree to disagree”) he comes off as a jerk. He is like a stranger you meet at a bar, telling you his whole life story; every so often you want to try and interrupt to get clarification or offer some advice, but in the end, you don’t really know him well enough to get what you want to say out. Maybe that stranger in the bar just needs someone to listen to his sad story.
It is that saddness that is why I also think that the 808 drum beats and the vocoder vocals work. I can almost imagine Kanye West, alone in that studio at 4AM in the morning, programming the beats into the 808, and then singing by himself while playing the synthesizer for the vocoder. The sort of artificial tonal effect the vocoder gives to Kanye West just makes him sound close audio-wise, but emotionally cut off from all outside interference. It is almost as if Kanye West is trying to make an album as inaccessible as possible. If there isn’t anything less relate-able than boasting about your new car, it might be about singing about how your new car might be ruining your life. But I think that is why I like this album. It is not trying to get anyone to like or hate Kanye West, it is just about a man trying to state his case and tell his story but is realizing that he is lacking something crucial, something deep in his heart that he has lost some time ago. The album may not be the most articulate or clever of Mr. West’s catalogue, but it makes it up with fantastic emotional moments. Like the part in “Robocop” where Kanye West talks about how his ex-girlfriend must be joking (“your first good one in a while”), the whole song of Street Lights (my favorite song on the album), when Kanye West declares “I WON’T EVER LOVE AGAIN” in Coldest Winter, and Pinocchio Story, a “freestyle” that sounds more at home on Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” than any rap album.
Maybe Kanye West is a big jerk that goes out of his way to ruin things, but even if that is true, that doesn’t mean he can’t make good music. In fact, I think the character Kanye West shows on TV is the same person that sings about his girlfriend cheating on him and the depression that brings (even though he admits that he isn’t completely innocent either: “I did some things but that’s the old me”). I find this sort of outspoken guy more emotionally compelling than most mainstream musical artists who try to get emotionally intimate with their songs and end up sounding fake and corny. Kanye West isn’t a role model, but as a person going through a break-up, he is still someone I can relate to. It is his willingness to see his imperfections and sing about them that make him all the more compelling. There is also something about someone who claims to be the best ever, to be unable to be topped, but then having insight into those moments of doubt, giving voice to those little voices in people’s heads that can cast doubt on a whole person’s life. For someone like Kanye West, who seems so focused on image and how people look at him, 808s & Heartbreak is a bold move that I believe everyone should at least try. It may not make Kanye West your favorite artist, but it might make you realize that he is just a human being like the rest of us.
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