Opening with a heart monitor, undoubtedly a reference to the passing of his mother, West’s record sets its tone and holds onto it throughout, with the poppiest tracks (‘Paranoid’, with that impossibly great techno keyboard riff, and ‘Robocop’ with its beautiful sample from the score for Alfonso Cuaron’s Great Expectations film adaptation) still succumbing to West’s moodiness in a way that services the record a great deal. Whilst it would really be Drake (and to an extent, Kid Cudi) who would put the nail in the coffin of really popularising the emotional RnB style of hip-hop, it was certainly West who pioneered it with the record which, at the time of release, was seen as a misfire in an otherwise spotless career. Image via Angel Laws.Ĩ08s ushered in a new generation for hip-hop almost single-handedly. 808s and Heartbreak remain West’s most depressive record – unless you include his unreleased 10-minute rant over a piano loop in the leaked track ‘Never See Me Again’, which was allegedly a planned suicide note that even used samples from the Japanese pop star Yukiko Okada, who also tragically committed suicide at age 18. The death of West’s mother, Donda West, after complications in plastic surgery (that she only got due to West being in the limelight, prompting insecurity from the press coverage) and, shortly afterwards, a breakup with fiancé and fashion designer Alexis Phifer evidently shook West’s emotional foundations, and suddenly his music moved to fit this emotional pain.
Jay-Z and, effectively his producing apprentice at first, Kanye West represented something of a shift from this – Jay-Z stuck to his gangster rap style (even if he rapped over samples from Annie in the late ‘90s) and West entered hip-hop with a clear vision for change, starting with his Christian links, then the orchestral edge of Late Registration, and finally the techno and disco influences that popularised Daft Punk on Graduation.Īnother shift occurred in 2007-2008.
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