The new Kanye album: 808s & Heartbreak

supposedly this is the cdq version of "love lockdown"

http://www.zshare.net/audio/185463400d4d711d/

and if it is its considerably worse than the version he did at the vmas

actually the outro is really rad but it was much better @ the vmas when his voice was way more prominent

Huh, I kinda saw him going in that direction after "Put On", but not that far along. I'll prob get shit for this comparison, but it reminds of old creepy, minimalist Nina Simone joints. It's not a hit, but I'm sure he'll have the massive pop joint to follow it up. On the balance, I definitely feel this tho.

(this doesn't sound anywhere cdq btw)

"creepy" isn't really the word I'm looking for..."harrowing" maybe?

in terms of the rock music he's always big upping in interviews, it doesn't sound like the killers, maybe like coldplay but i haven't heard their new album at all, def reminds me of ballads on the last tv on the radio album esp in the outro. dunno. i think its a good look and i won't be mad if the new album sucks since he put out an honest and good rap album only a year ago, but he definitely thinks out his albums well enough that this one could end up being really good.

I don't really hear any of that stuff. I need to mention how glad I am he's not calling this A Good-Ass Job. That would have been one of the worst album titles ever.

this makes me think of phil collins

^

this is weird.

BE KANYE FOR A DAY TAKE THIS BILL YOU SHURNKEN PRUNE FACE IMPOTENT MIDDLE MANAGER. YOU'RE NOW A VIRLE BLACK MAN WITH A CHIN THE SIZE OF MONT RUSHMORE

Yeah...I wrote a Kanye think piece back in May after I saw the Glow in the Dark Tour that jumped off of my impression that he really REALLY wants to transcend rap and just be a balls out insane pop star/icon. This is interesting, but not unexpected.

I wouldn't expect the whole album to be like this...remember, Can't Tell Me Nothing was the lead single off Graduation and that was initially received with a collective "huh?"

I'm still kinda amazed he's putting out an album SO SOON after his mother died.

ruh-roh:

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/145449-kanye-west-arrested-for-assaulting-photog-cameraman

Kanye Guðmundsdóttir

aint no police man

also, there's no way thats the final version of that song you gotta be kidding me

yeah idk how kanye feels about free music or whatever but i find it dubious that he'd put the first single off his new album up on his blog, not to mention that the vocals just sound demoed

yeah, it sounds like he recorded the song, then changed/improved the vocal by the VMA performance, but kept the inferior old scratch vocal.

you just know when this underwritten T-Pain knockoff flops, he's gonna crow that it was too "creative" or "original" for radio.

many kanye hulked the fuck out on that photog

man**

before i read the story i thought it was gonna be drugs or something which wouldve sucked since he's obviously a really depressed dude

the chorus has the same melody as the main synth line from "pac jam"

i get the piano line stuck in my head and then it morphs into the loop from "homecoming" which i kind of hate

i think this song is pretty great though

I don't really know how you can call this a t-pain knockoff. other than the autotuner, it doesn't sound like t-pain (or really any modern r&b) at all. Sounds more like a spiritual or something

sorry "any modern r&b" is a stretch, make that "any modern r&b that gets played on mainstream radio"

granted, i mean mainly the use of autotune, which i don't think he's really progressed using in a trendy/novelty way yet. and i totally wouldn't have been surprised if T-Pain came out with this song, at least as an album track.

my main point was his idea of "being different" still usually involves biting another popular artist's style.

"still usually"??

anyway, since he is a rapper this song is still "different" and he's not ripping off those drums or the outro from any other rap/r&b artist

he shouldn't have leaked this. so un-kanye. the live version was incredible, I thought.

i'm in love with it, but the vibe is wrong

why? he's been putting out basically depressing shit like this all year. even his verse on "swagger like us" is kind of like a dirge

no. i mean it's un-kanye to let out something that's not PERFECT.

oh

"diamonds" and "can't tell me nothing" aren't perfect, esp as far as first songs from highly anticipated albums go

he should have let the live version exist for a little while as the sole entity of "love lockdown" to let the excitement build up. people were loving just the live version and it sounded great. I think you're on the right track and he's depressed b/c the these two things are troubling coming from a guy who should know way better than to get in a paparazzi throwdown and who is normally meticulous with his music. I mean, when has he ever been this hasty? dude released a fuckin snippet of "Can't Tell Me Nothing" and a preview of his pre-album mixtape!!!! and trailers for all his videos, etc...this is just another trailer but people are treating it like it's a real song hopefully it isn't

right, but he deemed them perfect enough. I don't mean it as a critical judgment

maybe you're right

the fact that he wrote and released this within 2 1/2 weeks is kind of troubling since his last three albums seem to have so much thought behind them, but i also doubt that this thing is actually gonna come out on dec 16

as for hastily putting this out, maybe he's just copycatting a trend that's running through the biz now? he did say it was his favorite song that he's ever written and maybe he just wants to capitalize on "put on" and "swagger like us" though he wouldn't even need to. not sure what his motivation is for putting it out so hastily. maybe there isn't anything more than he just really loves the song and wants people to hear it.

then again maybe he is in a fragile mind state~~

so un-kanye.

not really at all. the melancholy auto-tune singing from his verse from "put on" + his long-standing love of gospel piano = ??

: ( I still haven't heard the live version

what's the deal with this place looking all different????

http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/kanye%2Bwest/video/x6oujo_vma08-kanye-west-live-at-the-2008-v_shortfilms

u can change it back to old stylee in prefs

xp: This is ILX 3.0, homeboy.

i'm rolling old school

also the studio version totally takes away the arena-scale epic style that the live version had. i've still listened to it on loop for the past 30 mins though

I'd like to point out that zero of the first singles from Kanye's albums have been obvious pop hits.

http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tmz.com/media/2008/09/0911_kjanye_tmz_video.jpg

I wouldn't expect the whole album to be like this...remember, Can't Tell Me Nothing was the lead single off Graduation and that was initially received with a collective "huh?"

I definitely remember this....the weird thing is that

• it's now one of my favorite songs on an album I love
• I can't figure out how I would have thought it was out of left-field AT ALL

Why hyphenate left field?

Anyway I definitely hear the 'demo vocals' thing, especially on the chorus--it's somehow out of tune through the autotune.

I wouldn't expect the whole album to be like this...remember, Can't Tell Me Nothing was the lead single off Graduation and that was initially received with a collective "huh?"

I definitely remember this....the weird thing is that
it's now one of my favorite songs on an album I love
I can't figure out how I would have thought it was out of left-field AT ALL

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― Doghouse O RLY (G00blar), Thursday, September 11, 2008 2:07 PM Bookmark

^^that otm shit

it reminds of old creepy, minimalist Nina Simone joints

omg this is actually right. this...this has no business being right! but it is. i was trying to imagine a "proper" singer doing 'love lockdown' and i couldn't actually think of anyone who'd be as mesmerising as kanye was at the VMAs (lloyd too wispy, ne-yo too understated...maybe usher, i was thinking, he could get that hysteria) but i would pay real money to bring nina back to life and hear her sing this.

'studio' version, or whatever it is, sucks. totally flat, no intensity. i wonder how many singing lessons kanye's been having?

BE KANYE FOR A DAY TAKE THIS BILL YOU SHURNKEN PRUNE FACE IMPOTENT MIDDLE MANAGER. YOU'RE NOW A VIRLE BLACK MAN WITH A CHIN THE SIZE OF MONT RUSHMORE

― bart_stanberg (burt_stanton), Wednesday, September 10, 2008 11:26 PM (7 months ago)

r.i.p.

i lold at "....which swims?"

When I was researching you guys a came across a few posts about the video for “Evident Utensil” ie. In regards to the data moshing processing technique used in it. Kanye was saying that they had to release his video early (using the same technique) so that it didn't seem like it was biting you guys. What was up with that?

Yeah, funny story the guy who directed our music video, Ray Tintory, who we met through MGMT. Ray had directed a bunch of videos for MGMT that I helped work on, that’s how I met Ray. He had this idea in his back pocket about this new way of data processing. That his producer Bob White was experimenting with. They were like 'hey lets use it for the MGMT Time To Pretend video,' but in the end they had a really full treatment for the video and decided not to use it because it was just going overboard, way too much. Then I talked to Ray, about doing a Chairlift video and he was like “Yeah perfect we’ll use data moshing on it!!!”

But Kanye’s team was also working on the MGMT video and while they thought they were going to do data moshing, Ray taught Kanye’s team in order to prepare them to do it on the MGMT video. So as soon as they learnt it they started working on a Kanye video. “They were like ha we’re going to use it first!” It kind of became a race to put the flag on so to speak. You know; ‘who’s going to use it first.’

So who actually did use it first?

We did we put our video up about a week before. But the weird part is that we shot the video in July and the footage sat around untouched for months, and then when our team heard Kanye was using the technique we were like “No way it’s ours!” So they cranked the video out and in about 2 weeks editing wise.

Is there any bad blood between you guys and Kanye’s team?

I don't think people have actually reacted, but I did actually bump into Kanye at a fashion show, introduced myself to him and he was very friendly and then I told him who I was and I was like “ yeah we did the other data mosh video.”

He then took his sunglasses off, looked me up and down very slowly and then just turned around and walked away.

Noooo!!! What happened then did you say anything to him or was that it?

No his body guards enclosed around him and he was gone. It was a really funny moment because he was you know… He didn’t like us at all. I was kind hoping that he would find the humour in our teams competing for the video, but he was actually quite sensitive about it and got pissed.

hahahahaha wow

just noticed that kanye wears the same jumper in Heartless And W2Heartbreak videos

i love how even with all the weird distorted visuals in "Welcome" you can still really clearly see him doing goofy dances in a Cosby sweater

i've been jaming w2h so hard lately - keyboard riff is so massive

high concept video for paranoid

6 months later, I am fully on board with the idea that "Amazing" and "Paranoid" are the best songs on the album.

worst and best, respectively

So much for that "in the round" tour/stage design that Kanye was hyping...

http://www.kanyeuniversecity.com/client_images/kanyewest/3106_6380cc00b338b493e2db7dc7b2beaa25.jpg

Shit looks like a geode.

what on

what's up with the audio mix used in the Paranoid video? That crunchy keyboard riff is like turned up higher than anything else and IMO it ruins a song I loved on the record.

This album benefits a lot from some time on the backburner; "Welcome To Heartbreak" is suddenly once again my favorite song ever, at least until "Heartless" starts.

balls

those two songs, really?

'welcome to heartbreak' YES, 'heartless' NO (tho i do remember liking it at first...and then it just palled completely)

"welcome to heartbreak" is a huge huge song

every song on that album is win

except pinnochio theory or whatever its called

a great album with a great mood. I still listen to it regularly.
my favorites are "say you will" and "bad idea". "heartless" not far.

I agree with Whiney; my point was not so much that those were the best songs on the album as it was that whatever song I am currently listening to is my favorite.

Still my favorite album of 2008 and one of the decade's best.

(er, whatever song besides the Pinocchio one, which is Massive-Attack's-"Light My Fire"-level bad)

Still one of my least favorite albums of 2008 and one of the fragile young decade's worst signifiers

The evening became tense and uncomfortable when notorious (and buck-naked) performance artist Ann Liv Young confronted Kanye personally, shouting that she didn't think 808s was his best work, all the while grinding barbeque pork into her naked crotch (and then eating it). We all know Kanye is no stranger to confrontation and controversy, so perhaps Liv Young was paying tribute to that? In any case, the audience reacted with absolute horror during her "interpretation" of "Love Lockdown." To Kanye's credit, he barely flinched. (Liv Young rather shrewdly ended her performance by shouting, "I love your work with Common" before gathering her clothes — and pork products — and scurrying offstage.)

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1617366/20090731/west_kanye.jhtml

see, Kanye's all about being Warholian right up until the ketchup bottle gets in his face and tells him his last album sucked

Kanye totally got the number of the place that made homegirl's BBQ

this story has had me giggling at my desk all afternoon, which for now makes up for the fact that i kind of never want to eat bbq pork again

"I love your work with Common."

Neal Medlyn is fucking awesome; i actually mean to see this.

After adoring this album from December to February and forgetting about it for the rest of '09, it suddenly sounds really fucking great again.

Proposition: Like Burial, The xx, and a handful of other people, 808s is best suited for 2 AM and/or Winter-time.

I mean, shit. Street Lights is destroying me...the repetition and the slightly fuzzy vocal processing and those HUGE DRUMS.

Yep, this album is fantastic. May honestly be my #1 of the decade. I spun it again yesterday and it was flat out incredible all the way through.

yeah, great album. his best work yet, as far as I'm concerned. and it's perfect for the winter !

I'm a monster
I'm a maven

I know this world is changin'.

i've had that song in my head a lot recently cuz there's some commercial that totally rips off the beat

that song has the most pathetic clomp clomp i've ever heard, why would anyone bite it.

word

wonder if this sounds good on vinyl

on vinyl played three rooms away.

you did not just

It's that he persists in the bizarre
adolescent idea that getting to have sex with whomever one wants
whenever one wants is a cure for ontological despair. And so, it
appears, does Mr. Updike -- he makes it plain that he views the narrator's
impotence as catastrophic, as the ultimate symbol of death itself, and
he clearly wants us to mourn it as much as Turnbull does. I'm not
especially offended by this attitude; I mostly just don't get it. Erect
or flaccid, Ben Turnbull's unhappiness is obvious right from the book's
first page. But it never once occurs to him that the reason he's so
unhappy is that he's an asshole.

lolzy revive

Love this album (as it was originally sequenced and minus Pinnochio Story). What he accomplished, tried to accomplish, etc. Also have a beautiful, dark, twisted and secret fantasy that this album might be approximately 100,000 x better as sung by Phil Collins.

maybe there were yelling booo-urns

https://soundcloud.com/kanyewest/say-you-will