blackastronaut: 2008

Last night, Kanye
West publicly debuted his new album, 808s & Heartbreak, at the Ace Gallery in Los Angeles
via a collaboration with Italian artist Vanessa Beecroft. After
waiting in a loading area with an open bar and a DJ, we walked up a driveway
illuminated by florescent lights to a darkened room where approximately forty
nude women, most of them wearing face-obscuring masks seemingly made of faux
lamb's wool, stood in the middle—black girls in the front, white girls in the
back. Then the entire album played without introduction or explanation. The
women were backlit by glowing lights—mostly red and purple, sometimes strobing,
often pulsing and sporadically illuminating. When "Love Lockdown" played three
songs in, some of the models started sitting down on the floor, others going so
far as to fully recline by the end of the album. Mos Def sat down
front-and-center, Michael Rapaport talked excitedly to the security guards,
Will.i.am watched from one end of the U the audience formed around the women,
Rick Ross watched from the other end (even singing along to some songs after an
apparent even sneakier sneak preview). As for album: yes, it's almost entirely
sung by West, aside from one verse by Young Jeezy on "Amazing" and a duet with
Lil Wayne; yes, it is sung almost entirely through Auto-Tune; yes, some people
are not going to be sure what to make of it, but we applaud West's decision to
step off a creative ledge wearing a jetpack that no one else is sure will
actually work. Considering the conditions 808s & Heartbreak was played under
(we're referring to the vast concrete room, not the presence of forty naked
women), we don't feel right giving a full appraisal, but we are definitely eager
to hear it again. On this blog we've compared West's recent productions to ARE Weapons, but maybe
an even more apt reference is Adult. or Thom Yorke solo, with the dispassionate
electro beats playing against the plainspoken ache of the vocals. Or maybe he's
creating a genre of his own. Call it Kanyeclash. Once the album ended with
"Coldest Winter"—the one song on the album about his mother, the rest of this
breakup album is about "someone else"—West appeared with a microphone. After
eventually silencing the chatty room, he introduced Beecroft, who revealed that
the piece was conceptualized and executed in one week, which is one third of the
time it took West to record the entire album. Then West delivered a monologue
about how this album is about the freedom to do what you want to do and that he
used Auto-Tune because it is the most fun thing ever. Then he said 808s &
Heartbreak was about emotional nakedness. Then he said he'll have another album
out next June. Then the DJ played "Good Life" and we went to get our car from
the valet parking before the line got out of hand.
SOURCE: http://www.thefader.com/articles/2008/10/15/vanessa-beecroft-kanye-west-s-808s-hearbreak-listening-event

I CAN'T WAIT FOR BOTH OF THE NEW ALBUMS!