(Death Of Autotune).” Even though Jay was ultimately unsuccessful, there remained as a sizable contingent of traditionalists growing fed up with how many artists were using Auto-Tune as a crutch, not a tool.
#808s and heartbreak poster software#
Less than a year after 808s’ release, Kanye’s Roc-A-Fella big brother Jay-Z would attempt to send the pitch-polishing software to an early grave with “D.O.A. Auto-Tune was ubiquitous by 2008 thanks to T-Pain and Lil Wayne dominating the charts with monster hits like “Buy U A Drank” and “Lollipop,” but the wave was beginning to crest and was heading toward a crash. In addition to the TR-808, the vocal plug-in Auto-Tune played a huge role in the album’s innovative sound. The sounds, especially that unreasonably loud bass, became staples in hip-hop, electronic, R&B, and house in the ensuing decades. Soon, 808s would start to flood the second hand market with prices as low as $100, which would allow underground producers and novices with a creative streak to start to unlock the possibilities. Many serious musicians didn’t respect the machine because of its artificial sounds, and the aforementioned transistors made an already unpopular machine impossible to produce after advances in semiconductor technology. However, in the early 1980s, the 808 was a commercial failure. But all of those quirks helped bring about the 808’s future ubiquity in hip-hop music. It led to the unrealistic percussion that came out of it-kicks that reverberated too loudly and too long, cymbals that sounded like laser blasts from sci-fi films, tinny snares. The relatively low price and faulty transistors contributed to the machine’s unique sound. While other contemporary machines like the Linn LM-1 or the Oberheim DMX typically retailed for about $5,000, the TR-808 came in at a little over $1,000.Īnother big difference between the 808 and other machines was that it was analog, which means it produced artificial sounds with hardware as opposed to digital, pre-recorded, realistic drum sounds. Released in 1980, the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer was one of the first programmable drum machines, allowing users to create their own drum patterns as opposed to using presets. To talk about 808s & Heartbreak, you have to first talk about the aforementioned TR-808. In a 2013 interview with the New York Times, Kanye claimed the album was “super-polarizing and redefined the sound of radio.”īoth wildly popular and misunderstood in the moment, 808s inspired a legion of artists that grew up in its wake. Trading in the warmth of soul samples for the azoic thump of the TR-808 drum machine and traditional hip-hop lyricism for dour pop singing filtered through the artful pitch destruction of Auto-Tune, 808s & Heartbreak would go on to create a new template for hip-hop and pop music that endures a decade later. While on his meandering search for a new heart, he began to carry a different kind of baggage, even managing to find his own personal Wizard of Oz in Donald Trump years later-a feckless imposter with nothing to offer but bluster and theatrics. In the decade since the album’s release, there have been very few traces of the smiling, Louis-Vuitton-backpack-clad kid from the Chi who reminded the world that you don’t always need to have street cred to have an authentic hip-hop career. While he would later find love again in his wife Kim Kardashian, his mother’s death marked the loss of his heart. It was these losses that would inspire the icy, electronic, pop of 808s, which served as an artistic and personal turning point in West’s life. Similarly, at a 2008 press conference to promote his then-new album 808s & Heartbreak, Kanye West described the inspiration for the album as “suffering multitude losses at the same time-it’s like losing an arm and a leg and having to find a way to keep walking through it.” In the months leading up to 808s, Kanye experienced the dissolution of a six-year relationship with his then fiancée Alexis Phifer and, most tragic of all, the death of his mother Donda West following a cosmetic surgery procedure. The axe cut off his limbs, forced him to trade in flesh and blood for cold, hard, metal, and eventually caused him to lose his heart. The Wicked Witch of the West put a spell on his axe to keep him from marrying his true love. Though the 1939 film adaptation is better known, in the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz we learn that the Tin Man character was once a human lumberjack.