Very well said.
Went to Kanye's listening party last night in LA. It was held at this empty space I'd been to before on La Brea. I actually went to the launch of Helio there. You remember Helo; the well-conceived but ill-executed mobile service that launched 2 years ago and is already out of business. Beck performed at the Helio launch and was awesome but from what I hear now, he's trying to get out of Scientology and his live performances have been seriously lacking. Anyway, I dunno if that was a bad look to have the listening party in that space; a vast, concrete box with horrible acoustics. I would have held it at the Disney concert hall downtown or something.
Anyway, please take my comments on this at face value. The sound was not ideal in the venue. It was also rather hot inside. The drinks were weak. As Kanye says on Love LockDown, "the vibe is wrong." However, 40 fully nude models is kind of awesome. Anyway, peep the shorthand notes I took on the album.
Track 1 is fire. Seems to be called "What Did I Do To Deserve This"…very anthemic and catchy but not a song you'd hear on the radio. Looks like this album might be amazing.
Or not…Track 2 not as awesome as Track 1. I think this is "Heartless", has a repetetive piano beat with really interesting drums
Track 3 is Love Lockdown
Track 4 has some crazy drums. Chorus sounds very 80s or maybe late 90s Europop like Venga Boys or Aqua. The chorus has like minor 7 chords played with a Prince sounding synth and goes like "okay okay, you will never stop me now"
Track 5 also sounds very 80s…like a power ballad mixed with El Debarge, Chromeo and New Edition. Chorus goes something like "I don't know you, let me know you, why you acting like a robocop"
Track 6 and 5 sound very similar
Track 7 sounds like Good Morning…similar tempo and a repeating bell type sound…chorus seems to be like "I pray you will"
Track 8 is like some double time drums and some strings
Track 9 I think is a track with Young Jeezy that I cannot believe Young Jeezy is on
Track 10 has a Lil Wayne feature…hard to tell where Kanye ends and Wayne begins
Track 11 is about his mom
Afterwards, Kanye made a great speech about how everyone is born an artist and is born creative, it's just once we start living, many of us get stripped of that. Those who don't are the ones who continue to be artists. I thought it was a very astute comment. He then started talking about this negative word that everyone has been tossing around for the past year; that word is auto-tune. He said he felt like a kid and auto tune was the most fun thing to play with. I totally got what he was saying and used this analogy to explain it to Bun B when I was talking to him on the phone today. You know when you are in elementary school, like 5th grade, and you get a new highlighter, like a neon yellow joint? And then you just wanna go highlighting everything in your history book because it's just so fun to see that neon yellow everywhere on the plain white pages? That's how the auto tune feels on Kanye's album. You forget what's really important and everything that's auto tuned (or highlighted), is weighted the same way. Hope that makes sense. I just want to go on record saying that I love Kanye. Aside from Wale, he might be my favorite contemporary artist. Graduation inspired me to go and try to help Wale make a better album. I also think Graduation made it easier for an artist like Wale to exist. I have always defended Kanye to people who say he's too cocky, etc. I think he has done more for hip hop in terms of pushing the envelope than any other artist. I could be totally wrong about this album but this is what I heard last night. I hope it's not his Medellin (Entourage reference…see below) He might change it, who knows.
I hear you...but the music he made back around CD was so good...I do want more of THAT. I didn't even listen to graduation cause at that pointhe lost me.
Originally Posted by Da R Entertainment
It's NT hyping the album up. Once it drops, it's going to be alot of people complaining about the album as with any other album. I'll save judgement for when it drops.Originally Posted by ILLIONAIRE
am i missing something? like is this album out already?
ya'll giving your reviews on how the album sounds and the joint hasn't even been pressed probably not even mastered yet.
like did this dude already just compare 808's & Heartbreak to an N.E.R.D album in terms of how it sounds?
come on man..
