The second is his separation with his fiancée Alexis Phifer. The first is the death of his mother, Donda, as a result of plastic surgery. In fact, several events intervened in the life of the Chicago rapper. What is interesting is to understand why Kanye made this turn at this point in his career by interrupting his saga. Looking back today, this kind of 180 degree turn is not surprising from Kanye West, but at the time, it was already much less expected.

With 808s & Heartbreak, Kanye West takes a real turn and radically changes his approach with an album that is more like experimental RnB with a mixture of synth-pop and electro-pop.

His third opus, Graduation, had already taken us into more Pop and electric sounds, but the background remained more or less Hip Hop. Kanye West had become one of the references of his generation in Soul sampling, starting with his work on Blueprint in particular, before releasing his solo albums The College Dropout and Late Registration. The counterpoint is not so much in the fact that he interrupts his saga, but rather in the musicality that changes radically, moving away from the back-pack rap. He was one of the inventors and one of the greatest representatives of back-pack rap, a rap that does not come from the street but from the more privileged circles. Why you would say?Īt the time Kanye West was in his trilogy on the theme of college with his little bear, the album was to be a continuation of this theme and was called Good Ass Job, which was logically the prolongation of Graduation. Kanye West surprised, he took everyone by surprise, nobody knew what to expect, and nobody expected this kind of music.

In fact, I think every rap fan at that time remembers it very well. I remember very well the release of this album and especially the single that came out a few months before the album, Love Lockdown.

When did 808s and heartbreak come out