As a general rule, I hate Auto-Tune but for some reason it just works on this record.

Instead, West sang through an Auto-Tune processor over sparse beats. Following the death of his mother and the breakup with his fiancée, Alexis Phifer, West released this, an album distinctly lacking in raps.

This album, marked by two major events in West’s life, saw his music take a complete change in direction. This record complicated it even further I actually quite enjoyed it. I’ve mentioned previously the “complicated relationship” that I have with Kanye. Echoes of hip-hop producers' fascination with Middle Eastern melodies in the early '00s and a recasting of Timmy “Why Can't We Live Together” Thomas' organic organ tone color some of Heartbreaks' more engaging tracks.This record surprised me majorly. Vasquez's downer-core flows come accompanied by a goodly share of musical invention, or at least reclamation, too. Instead, Vasquez perhaps most closely parallels the depressive articulation of Rod Wave, though arguably coarser and less given to repentance. The latter is more of a singer than M.C., however, though his crooning comes akin to the rap-adjacent cadences pioneered by Drake.īut Vasquez doesn't much have the humblebragging swagger of that Canadian star nor, perhaps thankfully, West's cornucopian inner conflicts. But frequent, vocal-frying use of Vocoder-or whatever other effects he's incorporating here-belie the deeper influence of one of Ye's most divisive long-players on Vasquez. Could Milwaukee R&B purveyor Vasquez be any cheekier in his appropriation from Kanye West for his latest EP? Switching around the title to West's 808s & Heartbreaks and even incorporating a facsimile of the roughly-hewn heart from that album's artwork into the graphics of Heartbreaks & 808's make for cosmetic swipes that might not necessarily indicate Vasquez's artistic debt to the controversial rapper/producer.

Kanye west 808s and heartbreak tracks