West is not a gifted singer, but in 2008 he discovered something new with this tactic: In modern pop, a “vocalist” can sound like anything. It was a cycle of studio tricks and primal fear West fixed his mistakes in a way that sounded even more (purposefully) false than before. West’s presence on the album sounds like depression: a songwriter digitizing himself to distraction, nipping off too-big feelings before they render him catatonic. Most famously, West barely rapped on the album, instead singing through a slathering of Auto-Tune meant not to disguise his off-key singing but to underline it. The year before, he released the multiplatinum smash “Graduation,” which sported some of his most effusive, optimistic singles like “Stronger” and “Good Life.” He’d demolished 50 Cent in a same-release-day sales war (coming just a hair short of a million copies in America its first week) and eclipsed his mentor Jay Z at the center of popular American hip-hop. “808s” was a hard left turn for West in 2008. As his stark album cover implies, he’s a songwriter of incredible heart, even when the air’s sucked out of him. 25 and 26, it will be a reminder that the rapper isn’t just the leather-jogging-pants-wearing, free-associative pop culture villain that so many mistake him for. When West plays it in its entirety on Sept. “808s” helped carve out space for wounded, sincere and avant-garde sounds that Drake, the Weeknd, Frank Ocean and a whole generation of artists would take up the charts and into the marrow of modern music.
West’s 2008 LP “808s & Heartbreak,” with its mix of emotional devastation and frosty minimal electronics, has turned out to be one of the most influential albums of contemporary pop music.
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