His solo success came from this product “Slow Jamz” and “Gold Digger”, both number 1 records, utilised samples. There wasn’t really a Kanye West outside of sample-based production until 808s. While he had a serviceable career in the late 90s, it wasn’t until The Blueprint in 2001, with Jay-Z, Bink and Just Blaze, that he discerned himself as a top-tier producer, and he did that via the sped-up soul samples that ran conscious hip-hop from 2002-2006. Ye’s currency was sample-based production. Related Sauce: How Curren$y Rose as the King of New Orleans, In His Own WordsĨ08s & Heartbreak Era: The Data Kanye Used Fewer Samples on 808s & Heartbreak Than Any Other Album A new, more introspective and subdued side of Kanye’s persona emerged, a pole away from the maximal pop of Graduation the year before. Yet the stage of one of the least coveted award shows in mainstream music became the platform Kanye used to launch his rebranding. Not a soul would begrudge Kanye chasing the pop-star success of Graduation into the next decade, in fact, fans were fiending for it. Kanye’s performance of “Love Lockdown” at the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards gave birth to an artistic evolution that, in the nearly 10 years since, has single-handedly changed the sonic course of rap more than any other. You can find the rest of the Yeezy Season series here.Ĩ08s & Heartbreaks – Hypothesis: Kanye West took the Biggest Risk of his Career on 808s & Heartbreak To put it lightly, 808s & Heartbreak was a risk. In this fourth installment, the data tells us a fascinating story of Kanye’s massive gamble ditching his samples and rapping for original production and autotune. A hypothesis is presented, which is the general and most common narrative surrounding an album, and then the statistics from Ye’s output during the recording cycle are used to find out whether the hypothesis is true or not. This series of articles looks back on the numbers from Kanye’s output as a rapper and producer 60 weeks prior to each of his solo albums, and uses these statistics to prove or disprove the legacy or accepted narrative of each record.

With Yeezy Season 8 in full effect, Ben Carter is taking a closer look at the rollout for every single one of Kanye’s albums thus far. One year later Yeezy decided completely abandon both on his next album, instead opting for a risky, totally new sound that would change hip hop forever.

By the end of 2007, Kanye West’s sample-based production and conscious rapping had made him a full-on international rockstar.

808s and heartbreak tracklist