In 808s and Heartbreak,Kanye West filters his grief with the help of Auto-Tune.
Kanye's Pity Party
By Mark Anthony Neal | TheRoot.com
Dec. 16, 2008--For those who like to draw a line in the sand to distinguish between "real" hip-hop and that which is not-so-real, Kanye West has shown a consistent ability to blur the line. Since his 2004 breakthrough album, The College Dropout, there have been many rap artists as prolific and visible. But where so many of his peers simply have collections of songs, West has amassed a body of work—and there are few who could claim that since "Rapper's Delight." It is this body of work and the devoted fan base that comes with it that allows West to take risks; and this partially explains the oddity that 808s and Heartbreak represents.
808s and Heartbreak is the artistic culmination of a year of tumult in West's life, beginning with the tragic death of his mother, Dr. Donda West, after botched plastic surgery, and his breakup with longtime girlfriend and fiancé Alexis Phifer. What is quite clear, even after a quick listen, is that West would like to publicly mourn the death of his mother, but his bitterness toward Phifer becomes the default emotion. If there were an artist within hip-hop who would have license to mourn, especially for his mother, it would be West, but he chooses not to take us there—or so it seems.
One of the marked differences between 808s and Heartbreak and West's previous efforts is his reliance on Auto-Tune, the audio processor, which corrects the pitch in singing performances. As described by the New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, "Auto-Tunes locates the pitch of a recorded vocal and moves that recorded information to the nearest 'correct' note in a scale, which is selected by the user." Though Auto-Tune has been used by many mainstream performers, the technology found a new purpose among a young generation of hip-hop and R&B performers, notably T-Pain, who has translated his marginal skills as a vocalist and creation of memorable hooks, into a career of some distinction. And Kanye West is just the latest of several high-profile rap and R&B acts to experiment with the new technology.
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