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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. The lyrics are usually artist “rapping” in melodic phrases that is drench in auto-tune to express such emotional themes in through their voice. 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. 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. This song went on to become one of the leading singles on the album and became Kanye’s highest charting song. 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. 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. Rap music at the time mostly parallel to this. The lyrical content also is mostly just about being at the club and bragging about women and money.
#How did 808s and heartbreak changed music how to#
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.Īs 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.”Īs 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 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).
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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. 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. 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. In this article several stylistic characteristics are mentioned that contrasted the previous works from Kanye. As seen by the New York Times article above written by Jon Caramanica on Novemjust 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”.