808’s & Heartbreak IS a classic.
I’m going to go way out on a limb right here and say that ‘808’s & Heartbreak’ is the best album of 2008. It will be the one album that we all remember from this year. I’ve already forgotten about the so-called ‘Nigger’ album and the Roots ‘Rising Down’. Are the Roots still a band? I know that ?uestlove has a sneaker, deejays all over the place and loves to fucks with Twitter. Even Lil’ Wayne, who has sold nearly three million copies of the ‘Carter III’ will be eclipsed by the latest offering from ‘Ye Tudda West.
Does anyone make real shit anymore?
I’m not going to act like I have heard the entire album. I’ve heard all the joints that most of you have heard. The intro to Heartbreak, the joint with Jeezy, the joint with Weezy, the joint with Kid Cudeezy. See now, aren’t you glad that trend hasn’t taken hold where we call everyone “eezy” at the back of their names? Everyone is pitching a bitch because the vocal pitch is altered but no one is really listening to the tone, just the autotune.
KanYe is on this album yelling and throwing figurative furniture around the studio. This album is his catharsis for losing the one chick in the world that he could trust. The one broad he ever knew that wasn’t trying to get into his pockets, that wasn’t using him to get close to Jay-Z, Dame, or even that nigga Plain Pat.
Plain Pat what up?
I wonder what kind of pain KanYe experienced when he was young and his parents split up? That shit is hardbody. Big ups to all the dead end kids who find themselves in that emotional purgatory place you go to when your parents go their separate ways. Some of y’all have never known your parents as a family unit. For some of y’all it was always a situation where you went to your father’s crib on weekends or to your father’s mother’s crib if your father was a fuck up. It’s a crazy dynamic if that shit happens when you are still in that cartoon comicbook age and wearing underoos when your dad walks out the door.
Kids blame their parents and kids blame themselves. Truth is that America hates families and America eats the young. The album ‘808’s & Heatbreak’ was being written when KanYe’s parents split up. This album is on some raw emotional shit that I wish everybody would do. D.M.X. was the only rapper that I feel like wouldn’t hold back his feelings to get his point across. That nigga wouldn’t give a fuck what anyone said about him. He would smoke his crack, cry, pray to GOD, and then bark at the moon. That nigga was crazy. Everyone is too cool for fucking school. That shit is boring to me now.
I was just reading (I know, sooooo not Hip-Hop) the Spike Lee auto-bio and he talked about losing his mom to cancer while he was still in college. After that moment he had the courage to pick up a Super 8 camera. He always knew that he wanted to make films, but after his mom died he knew he HAD to make films. He found a courage to let his vision be set free. I think KanYe experienced the same feeling when he crossed this threshold in his life. The courage to trust everything in his mind that his mom had imbued to him. Losing your mother is the most hardbody emotional shit evar. Nothing in this world can happen to you worse than that. And then when you get up off the ground after crying your eyes out you realize that you are taller, stronger, harder. No one can tell you nothing.
‘Graduation’ was the prequel to 808’s just like that victory ceremony in Episode 4 was the prequel to that battle on the planet Hoth. That was a cold fucking winter. This will be the coldest winter evar.
In a few years some of y’all will use this album to help you work out of your coldest winter. Don’t act like your big homey Billy X. Sunday didn’t tell you the fucking deal. For a nigga to make a song that would make me fuck with Wayne is an achievement. Maestro did it with ‘3-Peat’. Now KanYe does it with ‘C U In My Nightmares’.
I’m not sure which listenership is futuristic enough to embrace this album. It deals with loss on such a level that even I can’t fully understand. When my dad died I thought about all the things that he had done for me to get to the point where I could control my destiny (true story is that he hated that I wanted to be a writer instead of an architect) and how much sacrifice both my parents made for me to pursue my dreams. That’s why I fucks with ‘808’s & Heartbreaks’.
This shit is a dedication to all of those that help us get out our dreams.
