"Amazing" - Historical Background

Kanye West has had a pretty rough life, and he doesn't try to hide that. From early on in his career, he has been fighting what he thought were uphill battles one after the other. Much of this can easily be discerned in his writing, especially his freestyles. But before these were even popular, West was a producer first and a rapper in his imagination.

Once he made it through the stigma of being a producer and labeled as someone unable to bring across the flow of a proper hip hop song through anything other than the beat, West got signed himself. Shortly thereafter, however, he was in a serious car accident that nearly took his life and required him to have his jaw wired shut for several weeks. It was during this time that he recorded his first hit single, "Through the Wire," rapped - quite literally - by West through the wire that was keeping his mouth shut.

From here, his drive had never been stronger and his will to succeed stuck out early on in his music. His first album, College Dropout, was unexpectedly successful, but still left some doubt with serious critics and hip hop fans about whether West truly embodied the essence of a rapper and belonged inside the booth instead of behind the board. Much, if not all, of this doubt was put to rest with the release of his second full-length album "Late Registration." In "Late Registration," Kanye brought to the table some very noticeably sharpened rapping skills as well as the always-expected samples that he had become infamous for by this time.

It was during the age of "Late Registration" that most people would say West's superiority complex began to surface, especially with his episode of slight temper upon not winning any grammy's for the album that he felt extremely entitled to. From this time on, West's acts became increasingly off-the-wall, at one point including an extremely unexpected and off-color remark during a live syndicast of a fundraising event shortly following Hurrican Katrina where West proclaimed, "George Bush hates black people." If he hadn't been noticed for his antics before, he was surely recieving that attention now.

West released his third full-length album in 2007 entitled "Graduation." This album contained a notable change from his past albums to a more pop-like genre, straying away from the stronger hip hop ties his previous albums embodied.

In November, 2008, West released his fourth and most recent full-length album titled "808's and Heartbreak." This has been his biggest musical change yet, seeing as he has more or less collided several aspects from several different genres into one new genre that he refers to as "pop art." With the strong contrast from his previously recorded albums, West brought about a concept that few of his fans saw coming: an album not recorded to generate revenue, publicity, and album sales (as his past 3 had, in droves) but rather one as an artistic outlet from the MC himself. This album has many quirks to it that have been hinted at in todays pop music but not exploited, like the use of auto-tune on every track of the album. Kanye does not rap on this record, choosing instead to sing to his heart's content in order that he can express his "true emotion" and convey to his fans what is at the essence of his lyrical content musically. This technique, while somewhat popular as of lately, has never been used in such an explicit way for the entirety of an album.

Also notable about 808's and Heartbreak is the use of the Roland TR-808 beat synthesizer. This was a common rhythmic synthesizer that was in production from 1980-1984 and provided an extremely practical alternative to the LM-1 (the 808 was $1,000 and the LM-1 was $5,000). On this record, West uses the TR-808 on every track as well - just like the auto-tune - but to add the effect of very tribal-sounding drums. The other "coincidence" of the album that West points out is that it was recorded in two weeks in Hawaii, where the island happened to have the area code "808."

The length of the recording process for 808's is odd as well, because West, a noted perfectionist, saw a change in his philosophy of writing and production. He "realized" that creating something in "5 minutes" could be just as good as something that took 2 weeks elsewhere, and that, on this album, his vision did not necessarily include all of the perfection of his earlier works. His themes were no longer the immature, flashy hip hop cliche's but rather a matured, vulnerable emotion that had been shaped by the loss of the two women most important to him within the same 6 months: his mother (who raised him on her own), and his fiance.