So when Ye says “My friend showed me pictures of his kids/and all I could show him is pictures of my cribs” on “Welcome to Heartbreak,” he sounds like a bank owner begging for a buyout while drinking Cristal on his private jet. Now, I’m not taking the man’s pain lightly, but these artists need to realize that when you use auto-tune, it produces a shrill effect that makes lyrics like those above sound like they’re coming from a whiny baby. You wait a couple months then you gon’ see They say that they don’t see what you see in me You run and tell your friends that you’re leaving me Most of the lyrics just sound like bad, nerdy poetry. Kanye has never been a master lyricist, but what he lacks in depth is usually covered by his wit. And 808s & Heartbreak might be the biggest offender of the auto-tune craze.Īll the tracks are built around two things – life without his mother and resentment over his ex. The vocoder has been passed around more than dutch at a Method Man and Redman concert. I don’t know understand hip hop’s obsession with auto-tune.

Well, it’s not the message I mind here, it’s the method.

I knew he’d have a lot on his mind, which usually makes for good music. The man has experienced a lot of pain in the last year after losing his mother and breaking up with his fiance. When I heard that Kanye was ditching his long-running college themed albums for his new release, I had no problem with it. “It’s our responsibility as musicians to keep pushing each other….We will be the new Beatles, the new (Jimi) Hendrix. “It’s me settling into that position of just really accepting that it’s one thing to say you want to do it and it’s another thing to really end up being like Michael Jordan.” “I realize that my place and position in history is that I will go down as the voice of this generation, of this decade, I will be the loudest voice,” he said in an interview. “You know how n***** have bumper stickers that say ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ Our s*** is like, ‘What Would Jeezy Do?’ What would he say on this record?” “(Young) Jeezy came down to Hawaii with us because every time I’d write a chorus or write any type of hook, I’d be like man, ‘What Would Jeezy Do?'” Ye admitted during a conference call. It’s always sad to see people we once loved slip into mental illness:

808s & Heartbreak (released November 24, 2008)

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