808’s and Heartbreak
Don’t tell me about it please, especially if you’ve heard it. I haven’t listened to the leaks or anything—on purpose. My only idea of where this album’s gonna be is from a lo-fi recording of Love Lockdown and the Kanye blog leaked Heartless (I first heard it driving through Sacramento at 4am after a 7 hour driving stint that included a rain soaked, big rig infested, and absolutely treacherous Mt. Shasta. After hearing it, despite the efforts of what I’m sure is Sacramento’s most annoying ‘overtly FUBU’ dj, I nearly broke down and cried. Maybe it was my passenger’s B.O., maybe it was my B.O., or maybe it was the drive; however, the music I had just heard almost served as the catalyst for a tear fest that could’ve rivaled the rain currently pummeling the windshield). I will say this, from what I’ve heard, I wouldn’t be surprised if this album becomes a landmark in hip hop music.
Granted, any album becoming a landmark these days is quite difficult because the contemporary music listener can’t mythologize something they’ve downloaded, no album art necessary, off of piratebay.org or hiphopsfinest.blogspot.com (I only insult because I’m quite a frequent visitor of said or related sites). The magic of the money spent, the vinyl or cd sleeve, and the physical manifestation of the disc or record are gone and, in my honest opinion, so is the ability of the record– as in the music– to really get to the canonized status of many works from the past. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not impossible; however, I think the record has fallen behind personal appearances, sartorialism, gossip columns, and live shows, thus, making the artist, as an image, capable of achieving something significant without necessarily relying on the music.
That said; the music on this album should be able to stand on its own.
It should.
I really hope it does.
Everybody’s doing their thing, but they’re not exciting. Everybody is doing the same thing. That’s terrible. Do I love the music that’s out right now? I love it with a passion. Does it motivate me? Not one bit. That’s because 808′s & Heartbreak isn’t out yet.
-Lil’ Wayne (from http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1598384/20081031/ross__rick__rap_.jhtml)
Look folks, we’re gonna have to look beyond the auto-tune here and really break down what we’ve heard so far. Again, many of you might’ve already heard more of this album than me but that’s irrelevant. What matters here is the potential impact, on a less tangible; more philosophical level I suppose, that this album’s going to have on, not just hip hop music, but music in general.
When I first heard Love Lockdown in its entirety (I did hear about 10 seconds of it at the Nike Human Race in LA) it was on the MTV Video Music Awards. Suffice to say, the first thing that came to mind was Robert Palmer singing a blues song (Yes, Robert Palmer. I shouldn’t have to explain that to anyone). What I heard was something truly emotional coming from Mr. West. It wasn’t, I must note, sloppy, tear fest emotional. Instead, it was emotional with style.
The problem with a lot of hip hop–or rap or whatever–these days is that people are expecting shallow club bangers at all opportunities. Kanye redefined the whole concept with his last album, most notably on Stronger, however, the results of his efforts were leveraged by the fact that even something slow and dramatic, like Flashing Lights, could still light up a dance floor. With Love Lockdown, suddenly a major rap star dropped something absolutely minimal. And I’m not talking about Neptunes minimal because that has enough bass to shake Godzilla’s ass. This is frightening; empty minimal. This is Delta blues, Robert Johnson, strychnine, and Satan.
And a few people appear to have a problem with this, however, that problem primarily stems from a lot of these people’s apathy, ignorance, and reliance upon bubble gum rappers to make them something they can have clothed sexual intercourse with their sluts to at Club Vagina while they sip a glass of cocaine vodka.
I proffer a question: What happened to the sheer, unfiltered emotion in hip hop? Hip hop, like rock’n’roll before it, was created in the face of social inequality and rebellion. It’s from this that songs like The Message from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five grew from. I mean, watch any film from any scene in hip hop of the same period, from Wild Style to Style Wars to Krush Groove and, even in the campy; almost exploitative cheese of some of the latter films, you see a conviction and belief in the battles, the graffiti, the dancing and even in the partying that, again like rock’n’roll before it, will soon be decimated by commercial success.
And that’s why 808’s and Heartbreak is going to change things. It polarizes and challenges us. Despite his popularity, Kanye West doesn’t forget that he’s an artist. And, ultimately, it’s an artist’s duty to aesthetically present human emotion. Kanye just lost his mother and fiancé and, with this in mind, there’s no way that any of us could—or should—expect someone as legitimate as him to release something for us to simply snort and hump to. What I didn’t expect, however, is the devastating levels of emotional minimalism that I’ve heard so far.
This is a hip hop album indeed. The auto-tuning and bass will not let us forget that. But this is also blues music. Imagine Love Lockdown played on a battered acoustic guitar in Mississippi over a bottle of whiskey and under a dirty suit and fedora. Someone lost their wife. You don’t know if it’s the guy playing the guitar or the guy who’s going to murder the guy playing the guitar but someone’s not coming out of this night the same. Someone lost their wife. Someone lost their reason. Someone’s going to die tonight and the soundtrack is Love Lockdown and the slow, pitiful sound of flowing whiskey.
It fuckin’ works.
And there hasn’t been a hip hop album, in my memory, that can muster an image like that.
I don’t know if Heartless is the reason I broke down that night, on that desolate strip of I-5 passing through the vacuous space of a foggy; wet Sacramento. There were just too many variables to really make a call. I wish the stupid dj didn’t open his mouth because it might’ve made an educated guess more possible. All I know is that Got Money before it didn’t muster any emotion and the ‘DJ Khaled Megamix’ after completely eradicated any emotion (making me apathetic like it should because all that matters is getting down at this point). But in those three minutes during Heartless, my time driving never felt so depressing.
//J. Jonah Jameson
