Why Kanye, Why?
I hate when I listen to a song for the first few minutes and then realized that I just wasted those minutes thinking I would like the song.
And that gets us into the meat of today’s music-related post: why and how Kanye West ruined his best collection of beats yet. I feel like I just spent the past forty minutes wishing Kanye never had his mouth fixed, because at least then, he wouldn’t have sung over the brilliant sounds of 808s and Heartbreak, effectively sullying each and every track.
The first and most obvious problem with the artist’s fourth studio album is the fact that Kanye does not rap on it. Now, Kanye West is best known to the world as a rapper; and if he expects to release a well-received album it’s my personal opinion that he had better do a little rapping. His strongest suit is beatmaking, but most of the time his beats would be better suited to Lil Wayne or Jay-Z or even somebody like Michael Jackson. And sometimes the second-rate beats do make it out of his own grasp and into theirs. But most of the time, the man sees himself as the end-all-be-all of rapping and beatmaking, so he puts his own (mildly annoying) voice over the best of his beats and they fall short of their full potential.
You see, Kanye West has a bigger ego than Donald Trump and half as much sense. That’s saying a lot, see, because Kanye’s voice is a lot louder and high-pitched. So when he starts singing people are kind of forced to listen, no matter how poorly he actually sings. The vocoder absolutely dominates the record; I don’t remember a track without it (but I’ll make sure). When the vocoder dominates your record it doesn’t matter what the beats sound like—you’ve absolutely diluted the integrity of those ingredients underneath. It’s like baking a really good cake and then dumping salt all over it.
The real problem here isn’t Kanye’s self-important singing or the misconception that he can perform any way he wants. The real problem is that he really is one of the best beatmakers alive, and there are artists out there who are better singers. Could you imagine T.I. or Jay-Z rocking “Golddigger?” More importantly, could you imagine Chris Brown or Michael Jackson crooning over “Love Lockdown?” You can, because the tracks on 808s and Heartbreak are the perfect amalgamation of pop and R&B. Made for these people. Vocal-free, they’re pretty amazing. They’ll just never be realized.
