Pranav – Week 1: Inspirational Heartbreak

808s and Heartbreak vinyl from Def Jam Shop.

Pranav – Week 1: Inspirational Heartbreak

Kanye West’s hit album "808s and Heartbreaks" was one of, if not the most, influential hip-hop albums ever created, yet few seem to understand the true meaning behind the album. To fully grasp the album's true meaning, we must understand what shaped Kanye West's identity during its production. In 2007, Kanye West’s mother tragically passed away, leaving him shattered mentally and emotionally. The death of his mother contributed to his heartbreaking breakup with his fiancée, Alexis Phifer, which deeply influenced him to create this album based on his emotions.


The 808s & Heartbreaks album has 12 songs. Each song helps the listener visualize West's emotions leading up to the album's production. The number one song on the album, “Heartless,” conveys feelings of intense sorrow and confusion, with lyrics such as “how could you be so heartless” and “you’re bringing out a side of me that I don’t know,” to enhance the listener's understanding of what he’s feeling. Another hit song on the album, “Paranoid,” dwells on the toxicity of his relationship with Phifer rather than the heartbreak. This song comprises lyrics such as "They don’t know you as I do” and "So now you're here with me; show gratitude.” These lyrics highlight the controlling and mentally draining dynamic of his and Phifer’s relationship and expand on his rationale for crafting this album. Each of the songs in 808’s and Heartbreaks has the same drum sample in the background, and if you listen closely, the drums sound like an irregular heartbeat. By layering an irregular heartbeat behind each track, West conveys the sorrow and loneliness that shaped the album.


West’s sheer creativity in expressing his identity through music is remarkable and shows how he made such an inspirational album about his identity after the loss of his mother and the end of his relationship with his fiancée.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tejesh Week 1 - More Than Just a Language

Image
One of my biggest fears in life is never being able to sit down and have a deep conversation with my grandparents.  For some context, my parents met and got married in India and moved here to the U.S. in 2000, later giving birth to me and my older brother. Meanwhile, my grandparents decided to stay in India, as the rest of our extended family is still living there.  Growing up in Fremont, I never felt a dire need for me to learn my native language, Telugu , as both of my parents were well versed in English. In kindergarten, though, my parents enrolled me in a Telugu class for the first time, and I hated it. Almost everyone else in that class was easily able to learn the concepts and perform well on the tests. I, on the other hand, barely understood anything. I often cried in front of the class when I was put on the spot by my teacher, not because they were being mean to me, but because I felt ashamed of being the only kid who struggled to answer the questions.  At home, m...
Read more

Riley Week 1: The Chinese I was Supposed to Speak

Image
I was eight years old when my father took me, my eleven-year-old sister, and our Caucasian mother to his hometown in Hong Kong , China. By that point, I had been admitted to a Mandarin Immersion Program for three years, speaking broken Chinese because unlike my classmates, I did not have family at home that could help me learn Mandarin . For context, Mandarin is the primary language spoken in China, but coastal communities such as Hong Kong and Guangdong mainly speak Cantonese , a different variant of Chinese. The entirety of my Asian family is from Hong Kong, so none of them were capable of helping me learn Mandarin. When my family arrived at the airport on mainland China for our connecting flight, my father got down on his knees, looked me and my sister in the eyes, and warned us that people in China “liked to kidnap mixed children”.  He continued to inform us that we would be our family's only method of communication until we arrived in Hong Kong, because my father did not under...
Read more