Stay Up! (Viagra)

Why did they purposefully make it so that 88-Keyes sounds like he’s rapping from a telephone? It’s like that on his entire album! Is this like the new Auto Tune?

Welcome To Heartbreak

At this point in his career Kanye can do whatever he wants and it will be automatically validated. He’s gone far enough from the typical formula without any sort of real negative reaction that now the rules don’t apply to him anymore. C’mon, dude has been rocking a black mullet. A black mullet!(Black mullets are the new corn rows, I’m calling this shit right now.)

Kanye, Cudi, Welcome To Heartbreak. Here you go:

Paranoid

Okay, I’m officially on board now. This happens all the time with me. I truly believe Kanye releases the weak songs as lead singles and saves the gems for the people that buy the album. Purposefully making me doubt him, then making me kick myself for doing so when it finally comes out. Besides “Through The Wire”, every lead single from a Kanye album has been my most hated. “Love Lockdown” from 808′s & Heartbreak being no exception, even though I think I hate the song “Heartless” even more. But after hearing “Coldest Winter”, “Robocop” and now “Anyway”, I’ve gone from complete disgust and skepticism to utter joy and anxiousness.

“Paranoid” has a total 80′s feel to it which further supports my theory of Hip Hop/R&B is in a sort of 80′s renaissance whereas the 90′s heavily sampled the 70′s, now it’s the decade of hair bands, auto tuning and Aquanet to which contemporary urban music owes its sound to. It’s all one big cycle, but I digress. Despite all the shit I’ve talked concerning 808′s, from what I’ve heard of it so far, this one really seems to stick to the intended theme. My guess is this album will have it’s serious moments but not take itself too seriously with a kind of a tounge-in-cheek undertone throughout. It is a highly successful rapper singing his heart out after all.

I can feel the leak coming soon. Keep an eye out.

“Paranoid” by Kanye West:

808′s & Heatbreak Tracklisting

Tracklisting may change, you know how it goes.

1. “Welcome to Heartbreak”
2. “Heartless”
3. “Love Lockdown”
4. “Robocop”
5. “Anyway”
6. “Streetlights”
7. “Say You Will”
8. “Real Bad News”
9. “Amazing” (featuring Young Jeezy)
10. “Tell Everybody That You Know” (featuring Lil Wayne)
11. “Coldest Winter”

Oh yeah, here’s the song “Robocop”.

“Robocop” by Kanye West:

See in this case, it makes perfect sense to use auto tune. The best song I’ve heard off of 808′s & Heartbreak so far. Hilarious.

Coldest Winter

Yeah, I like this. I like this alot. The beat is interesting, it’s sung decently by Kanye I really dig the chorus especially when the drums kick in,. I actually heard this a week ago but didn’t post it cause it was a shitty radio rip and I thought that crackling that happens throughout the song was some sort of anti piracy measure. I thought it was as if they were saying “if you download this you’ll have to deal with this horrible annoying machine gun sound throughout the song as you listen to it, enjoy.” Turns out it was actually apart of the song and ironically, I like that part of the song now. No, I’m not drinking the Kool Aid just yet, 808′s & Heartbreak still has quite an uphill battle to win me over but this is a nice start.

Best thing about this song? No auto tune.

“Coldest Winter” by Kanye West:

Heartless by Kanye West

Okay, I’m getting scared. If these first two songs are any indication of what 808′s & Heartbreak will sound like, it will be, to me the end of Ye’s streak of classic albums. I don’t like the beat, I definitely don’t like the singing. I feel I’m gonna meet this album with complete indifference. If it’s as bad as I imagine, I’ll just pretend it never even existed. I hope Kanye proves me wrong, but after these first two singles it’s gonna be quite a task.

I can already see it now. A world wide tour with T-Pain, Lil Wayne and Kanye headlining. It will be called “We Have No Business Singing, Yet We Are” Tour. It will be different in that each artist will only perform one song from their respective albums and then spend the rest of the night doing Zapp covers. T-Pain will perform “Do Wa Ditty”, Weezy can do “So Ruff, So Tuff” and Kanye can do “Computer Love”. It will be great and by “great” I mean completely horrible.

“Heartless” by Kanye West:

Love Lockdown by Kanye West(Video)

Uh! What son?! Ellen Degeneres exclusive for that ass!!! Man, she always breaks the hot new shit. I don’t know how I feel about this video. I respect it, the vision and the artistry behind it, I just don’t care for it. It’s Kanye in a house dreaming of tribal Africans. Yeah, I don’t quite get it either. Maybe it’s an analogy of his intense feelings of love and/or obsession for a girl…or maybe it’s just Ye dreaming of tribal Africans. I’ll go with the latter, it’s more fun.

Kanye says that the movie American Psycho was an inspiration for the video. Hmmm, I kinda see it in the muted cream colored set design and cleanliness of everything but not the part where the natives have bright neon glow in the dark paint all over their bodies. I do like the part of the video where Ye is sitting in the corner and as the camera pans out, there’s this 8ft African tribal warrior just standing there. A dude that looks like he could probably rip me or you in half without breaking a sweat if he wanted to. Man, if I ever needed a body guard, I’m hiring that guy.

World’s Colliding: Daryl Hall & Chromeo

Try to think of two musical artists who have absolutely no business performing together. Go ahead, I’ll give you a second to think…

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…

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Okay what did you come up with? Daryl Hall of Hall & Oates and Chromeo right?! You too?! I know right?! Weird huh? How odd is it that we both came up with the same fucking answer?! Unbelieveable. Anyways, this collabo did happen and the result is amazing. Respect goes to Daryl Hall for even considering such an obscure group like Chromeo to be on his Live From Daryl’s House show. And a huge shout out to Chromeo for being as big a Hall & Oates fan as I am.

I would’ve rather seen them perform “You Make My Dreams Come True” but that’s just me.

Love Lockdown

Wow Ye, another new album already? It seems Kanye is not resting on his laurels and is hard at work on his next opus entitled 808‘s & Heartbreak. Surprisingly Ye will be doing a lot more singing on this and I think I speak for the majority of people out there by saying that if there’s one thing the world needs more of, is rappers singing. Yup. Rappers not rapping, but singing. Vocoding and Auto Tuning with no sense of shame.

In his first single, “Love Lockdown” Kanye belts and croons his heart out and not once did I hear one rap line uttered. This scares me tremendously. Now I’ve doubted the Louis Vuitton Don before. Once on Late Registration when he released two horrible singles in “Gold Digger” and “Diamonds From Sierra Leone”. Also on Graduation when he came with “You Can’t Tell Me Nothing”. In the end both albums turned out amazing. I don’t know, I guess I just don’t like Ye’s choice in first singles. It’s kinda like he chooses the worst song on the album and releases it as a single so that the rest of the album shines. Whenever Kanye releases a first single it’s like he’s saying to me, “Hey check this song out, I bet you don’t like it. You hate it right? Well you’ll be glad to know the rest of the album is better than this! So go and cop that!” And I do and I end up loving it.

I was horribly wrong both times and it feels like deja vu all over again with him coming completely from left field with his latest single taking a cue from Andre 3000 singing his ass off Love Movement style. Will Ye go 4 for 4 with 808′s & Heartbreak? Or will he finally drop the ball? This time I’m gonna have complete faith in the man. After three classic albums, how can I not trust him? So I’m gonna be excited for the new album, *sigh* despite the singing.

“Love Lockdown” by Kanye West:

Man, listen to that auto tune during the chorus. It’s kinda like fingernails on a chalk board.

Oh and this is just for fun. I just crack up when I listen to this.

“Love Lockdown Pt. 2″ by J. Silkk:

Sick And Tired

You know what i’m sick and tired of?

Talk Boxes and Auto Tune.

Shout outs to Zapp. Rest in peace Roger Troutman.