808s & Heartbreak

808s & Heartbreak
Studio album by Kanye West
Publication (s)	2008
Label (s)	Roc-A-Fella , Mercury ( Island Def Jam / Universal )
Format (s)	CD , download
Genre (s)	Alternative hip-hop , contemporary R&B , synth-pop , electronica
Title (number)	15th
running time	65 min 26 sec
production	Kanye West , No ID
chronology Graduation (2007) 808s & Heartbreak My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)

808s & Heartbreak is the fourth studio album by Kanye West . It was published on November 21, 2008 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

backgrounds

The first single, Love Lockdown , was released in the US on September 18th and in Germany on November 14th. The song was presented at the MTV Video Music Awards 2008 . Like the band Radiohead , West put the individual tracks of the song on the Internet for download, so that remix versions can be created. The second single, Heartless, was released on November 4th in the US.

The album was recorded over three weeks in Hawaii and produced by Mike Dean among others. Was presented 808s & Heartbreak on 14 October in an art gallery in Los Angeles . Before the release, West repeatedly presented versions of songs like Love Lockdown , Heartless and Amazing on his blog and published Coldest Winter on the radio station Power 106 , but had to "upset" to find that Robocop and Anyway appeared in working versions on the Internet.

Most of the album is edited with the help of automatic pitch correction . West also refers to 808s & Heartbreak as a pop album. It is also noticeable that every song uses the Roland TR-808 . According to West, however, the name of the album did not come about through the drum machine : "When I was recording in Hawaii, I had to call my hotel and the area code was 808".

West dedicated the song Coldest Winter to his late mother, Donda West. In general, he processes many of his feelings in songs and claims that his pain is the listener's pleasure.

For a long time there has been a discussion among many of West's supporters that the song Alles Neu by Berlin singer Peter Fox inspired West to write his first single Love Lockdown . Signs of this are the similar music videos, the distinctive singing style and the similarly used drums in both songs. West also published this video a few months ago on a blog on his Myspace page and called the song "dope", an English slang expression for "great".

tour

From April 16, 2008 to December 7, 2008, Kanye West's Glow In The Dark tour took place. With him were, among others, Lupe Fiasco , Rihanna , NERD and Nas on. In addition to the standard cast , Girls Aloud , Gnarls Barkley , Jay-Z and Chris Brown could also be seen at some concerts . Of the performances worldwide, 34 played in North America , 15 in Europe , three in Australia and two each in Mexico , Brazil , Asia and New Zealand . In Germany the tour could be seen in Oberhausen and Hamburg .

Track list

All songs were produced by Kanye West.

1. Say You Will - 6:17
2. Welcome to Heartbreak ( feat.Kid Cudi ) - 4:22
   • Co-produced by Jeff Bhasker and Plain Pat
3. Heartless - 3:31
   • Co-produced by No ID
4. Amazing (feat. Young Jeezy ) - 3:58
   • Co-produced by Jeff Bhasker
5. Love Lockdown - 4:30
   • Co-produced by Jeff Bhasker
6. Paranoid ( feat.Mr Hudson ) - 4:37
   • Co-produced by Jeff Bhasker and Plain Pat
7. RoboCop - 4:34
8. Street Lights - 3:09
   • Co-produced by Mr Hudson
9. Bad News - 3:58
10. See You In My Nightmares ( feat.Lil Wayne ) - 4:18
    • Co-produced by No ID
11. Coldest Winter - 2:44
    • Co-produced by No ID and Jeff Bhasker
12. Pinocchio Story (Freestyle Live from Singapore ) - 6:01

reception

success

The first single from 808s & Heartbreak, Love Lockdown, made it to number 3 on the US charts within a week and number 1 on the US iTunes charts within a few hours . He also set a new record: more than 215,000 downloads sold within four days. The second single, Heartless, was released and marked West's second top 5 hit in the US charts in a row. In the USA the song was certified platinum. Heartless came in at number 37 in the German charts.

Reviews

Shortly after its release, the album found it difficult to collect consistent responses. The novel production method surprised critics and fans alike. The British Guardian mainly criticized the monotony of the album and hoped that Kanye West would not enjoy it too much for his next album. All in all, the record received four stars out of five.

Andreas Borcholte from Spiegel Online described 808s & Heartbreak as "a lot of sappy-sentimental heartache and dreary retro botch" . Kanye West remains "one of the most important and creative musicians there is at the moment" .

Years later, however, the album's influence on pop and hip-hop culture seems undisputed. The American magazine Rolling Stone named it in 2014 in the list of the "40 most groundbreaking albums of all time". The rapper Drake , who later landed at number one in the American charts with several albums, named Kanye West "the most influential person" for his own sound. Singer The Weeknd calls 808s & Heartbreak one of the "most important works of art" of his generation.

Aria Nejati writes for Hiphop.de that without this album there would never have been "Tastemakers and critics favorites like Drake, A $ AP Rocky, The Weeknd, Frank Ocean, Future, Travi $ Scott and Young Thug years later" . For him, 808s & Heartbreak is “the door opener for a whole generation of pop and rap stars who are brave enough to say goodbye to traditional themes, textures, voices, intonations, melodies and arrangements” . With this, Kanye West cemented himself "as the most important musician of the millennium so far" . It is the album that "has shaped most of the successful, innovative and quality musicians since the turn of the millennium" .

Chart placements

album

Charts	Top ranking	Weeks
Chart placements
Germany (GfK)	30th (14 weeks)	14th
Austria (Ö3)	50 (2 weeks)	2
Switzerland (IFPI)	13 (14 weeks)	14th
United Kingdom (OCC)	11 (29 weeks)	29
United States (Billboard)	1 (39 weeks)	39

Singles

year	Title album	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes)						Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US	R&B
2008	Love Lockdown 808s & Heartbreak	DE8 (17 weeks) DE	AT18 (18 weeks) AT	CH18 (26 weeks) CH	UK8 (26 weeks) UK	US3 (23 weeks) US	R&B26 (19 weeks) R&B	First published: September 18, 2008 Sales: + 3,457,500
	Heartless 808s & Heartbreak	DE37 (9 weeks) DE	AT57 (3 weeks) AT	CH46 (11 weeks) CH	UK10 (20 weeks) UK	US2 (30 weeks) US	R&B4 (27 weeks) R&B	First published: November 4th, 2008 Sales: + 6,472,500
2009	Amazing 808s & Heartbreak	-	-	-	-	US81 (5 weeks) US	R&B65 (7 weeks) R&B	First published: March 10, 2009 feat. Young Jeezy ; Sales: + 1,000.0000
The following songs did not appear as single, but were made available for download and streaming through the album and were thus able to achieve a placement:
2009	See You in My Nightmares 808s & Heartbreak	-	-	-	-	US21 (4 weeks) US	-	feat. Lil Wayne

Web links

• Structure of Love Lockdown in the New York Times

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Copycat: Kanye West allows fans to remix his new single
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak Album Preview: More Drums, More Singing, 'No Typical Hip-Hop Beats'
3. ↑ "AMAZING" ... ME & JEEZY !!! - kanyeuniversecity ( Memento from March 26, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ I DID NOT LEAK ROBOCOP !!! THAT'S NOT EVEN THE FINISHED VERSION… I'M PRETTY UPSET ABOUT IT BUT THAT'S THE WAY LIFE IS SOMETIMES! In: www.kanyeuniversecity.com. Archived from the original on October 28, 2008 ; accessed on July 5, 2013 . 
5. ↑ ^{a b} Kanye West Bares All at Album Listening
6. ↑ mtv.de: Kanyes Heartbreakhotel ( Memento from October 25, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
7. ↑ MTV.de ( memento from October 25, 2008 in the Internet Archive ): "Kanye West is Peter Fox Fan"
8. ↑ Tour dates in Germany ( Memento from July 9, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
9. ↑ Kanye West: New Single "Love Lockdown" & New Album "808s & Heartbreak"
10. ↑ Urban review: Kanye West, 808s and Heartbreak
11. ↑ The most important CDs of the week
12. ↑ [1]
13. ↑ Jayson Rodriguez: Drake Says Kanye West Is 'The Most Influential Person' On His Sound. MTV , May 27, 2009, accessed July 2, 2016 . 
14. ↑ [2]
15. ↑ Hiphop.de (Aria Nejati) - No, “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” is not Kanye West's best album
16. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Chart sources: DE AT CH UK US