First, I must share a story of how I know I’ve waited too long to post.  First, I don’t even remember what the last post was (which means I’ll probably do three tonight).  But I did a remote at a Jersey Mike’s in Raleigh the other day, and a woman said I needed to post on my blog again.  Now, I do really modest numbers on this bad boy, so it’s always surprising when someone knows something about the blog.  Irregular posting after about a year of being like clockwork will chase the folks off.
Well, I’m back.  What have I been up to?  Listening to that damn Kanye record.
Look, I’ve heard every single reason someone has not to like 808’s and Heartbreaks, and I don’t begrudge a single one of them.  This record won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, largely because it’s so fuckin depressing.  There’s really no other way to put it.  This is a bad mood on wax.
Had I been feeling lovely about life the first time I heard this album, I might not have dug it.  I’ve had more than a few people tell me they just couldn’t get past how gloomy the record is, and i can dig that.  I just happen to be one of those people that can’t do super happy albums.  That’s false.  Shit ain’t that sweet.
This Kanye record is real.  The backstories are pretty well known, so well known that I can summarize this record in a few words.  Goes something like this…
“My mama died.  Me and my girl broke up.  I’m in real bad shape.  That’s it.”
I had my best friend die, my old man have a health scare, and me and my girl break up in about a six month period when I was 20.  That kind of stuff just makes you go numb.  Also makes you drink, largely because numb can get boring after a while.  It’s just the kind of monotony that’s hard to shake without some “help.”
This Kanye record is numb.  Except it’s chilling and heartbreaking.  It’s heartbreaking because that numbness comes through so clearly.  Now where does it come from?  Partially lyrically, but then there’s the other thing that holds people up from loving this album…The AutoTune.  The new school Vocoder, if you will.  It’s helped T-Pain make Nate Dogg incredibly jealous, for he’s actually got a career where Nate couldn’t get beyond hooks and frighteningly misogynistic (and, yeah, kinda dope) singles.  It’s the only vocal tone on 808’s and Heartbreaks.
I’ve got a lot of friends that contend Kanye’s only using the AutoTune because he wants to sing and can’t.  I don’t doubt that’s part of why Yeezy used it.  One thing about Kanye is that he’s a perfectionist, and I don’t think he’d have wack singing on his record, even if it was him doing the wack singing.  If nothing else, Kanye’s showed us that he really does give a damn about what he puts out.
But then there’s the other thing.  This is my theory, and it was later backed up by something I saw in the Wiki entry on the album.  I say that as tenuous sourcing because I was too lazy to check the citation on the entry…
When you hit that numb, you get to the point where you can speak on your condition matter-of-factly, trying to resign yourself to what’s what and act like everything’s okay because…well, it’s gonna be like this forever, so this is the new okay.  You sound miserable and pitiful, but you almost convince yourself that everything’s normal.
Well, what does AutoTune do?  It makes your non-singing ass sound like everything’s OK.  There’s a certain measure of symbolism in it, and the Wiki says that Kanye has acknowledged that the AutoTune is largely used to convey the emotion of heartbreak.  Is it my definition of heartbreak?  Maybe not, but I can’t begin to think this album would be any more sincere were it sung by Otis Redding.  The AutoTune is a tool, not a crutch.
The AutoTune doesn’t drone or anything.  It’s used for the occasional flourish — things Kanye couldn’t dream of, even if he was at that level of drunk that makes us all think we’re Pavarotti — and it never becomes a distraction.  The emotion in this record is in the background, in the simple and sparse soundtrack.  There’s not a lot going on, often just enough to do the job.  Then, from nowhere, there will be some outburst that comes through loud and clear…before you get back to the same ol’ shit again.
I’m sorry.  Maybe I’m just too much of a music geek, but it works.
It works because it’s a rainy-afternoon record.  I was reading a review of Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks a few years ago, and it talked about how one reason that record has endured for nearly 40 years is that so many people have a weekend or moment of misery they can associate with that album.  They can remember putting it on and playing it over and over again because it resonated with what they were dealing with at that very moment, and that’s something that has made it a universally recognized classic.
It may take having one of those weekends to dig the Kanye like that.  I could have said more and more about the sound and everything, but I think doing that really misses the point.  Like this record or not, Kanye created a vivid emotional portrait by saying very, very little.  That right there is genius.
Which brings us back to that insufferable little bastard. I’ve never been so fascinated by a rapper that I absolutely could not see myself hanging out with ever, not even one single time.  He’ll go somewhere and make a fool of you and maybe, just maybe, say something to scare the girls away.  He’s just that dude.  Plus, he’s always asking for his pub.  Wait for your pub, man.  If you wait, we’ll give you more than you can stand.  I understand the demons that he fights that make him unable to do so, but I still wouldn’t wanna put up with it.  We could be great friends after he got that shit straight.
But here’s one thing — while I’d hate to hear him constantly tell me what a genius he is, I would NEVER EVER EVER doubt him.  Kanye West is the most brilliant musician of his generation.  There, I said it.
He constantly reinvents himself, changing styles while maintaining a bridge from album to album like no one since Prince in the mid-’80s.  He has defied industry’s trend of putting out albums with no theme, just tracks in hopes that one of them will compel someone to buy the album.  Instead, Kanye’s put out four distinct concept records in four years, all of which have their own pop accessibility.  And whether you think Kanye can rap or sing or whatever, you can’t deny that he’s utterly sincere in every track…except the ones where he tries to make it seem like he’s the biggest pimp out there.  Those songs reek of insecurity.  Of course, Kanye is insecure, so even that comes through pitch perfect.
A great vocalist conveys emotion.  That’s what Kanye West does…and that’s before we get into his uncanny gift for interpreting samples and turning them into entirely new songs.
This scattered post ends with this thought — Kanye’s told us from jump he was the baddest man on the planet.  Right now, it’s hard to say he’s not.  Did he really know that?  Or is it coincidental that his gigantic ego is actually in line with his talents?
I ask that because Kanye couldn’t have begun to do these things if he didn’t believe he could.  As someone that’s been accused a time or two of being too confident — I tend to think they just don’t know any better — it’s fascinating to see someone that even I think is an arrogant twit consistently build on a body of work that shows that, like it or not, he’s absolutely right.  A broken clock’s right twice a day, but Kanye sure looks like he’s right on time.
I salute his ambition.  I salute his comfort with his emotions.  I salute this record.
I still wouldn’t hang out with him, though.