He was a successful producer figuring out a way to rap, so he could make music on his own terms start to finish.
It seems cobbled-together, adapted to suit a specific purpose, which is how his rapping was at first, too. West sings on all of the songs, but his singing isn’t as distant from rapping as you might expect. It’s about the heartbreak and the 808s becoming entwined as one sound. It’s about building an aura of heartbreak from a simple machine, by today’s standards: the TR-808 drum machine that was the foundation of so much rap music in the ‘80s. But as the title makes clear, the concept is not just heartbreak, but 808s. West is a multi-million-album-selling artist worried about public image and the paparazzi, after all, and that’s part of the subject here too. The lyrics are generally run-of-the-mill, not that far removed from your average emo band, even if they came from his real-life pains and have a different starting place. The album projects all of these actions and emotions, but it’s the stark yet intricate music that does it best. The songs tell no cohesive story arc, lyrically, though there’s plenty of bitterness, sadness, confusion, betrayal, and the like. It’s a confessional concept album, but one where the mood communicates the concept even better than the lyrics. Across the album, it’s as if he has a compulsion to sing about heartbreak, as if he couldn’t get himself to stop writing one more song about how cold his ex was towards him and how cold he feels now. “I can’t stop having these visions,” a line goes on the second song, “Welcome to Heartbreak”. It’s mostly the latter that these songs cover, though the former no doubt influenced the sad demeanor of the album. The move seems instinctive, from the gut and based on the specific circumstances of his life: his mother passed away and his relationship with his girlfriend dissolved. Kanye West’s first three albums, all with education-themed titles, have been cemented as a true trilogy, not just a nominal one, by the release of his fourth album, 808s and Heartbreak, which moves in a different direction.
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