808's and Heartbreaks

So, about a month ago Kanye debuted the first single, Love Lockdown, off of his upcoming album, 808's and Heartbreaks and set a release date for December 16.

After hearing Love Lockdown I thought this album would be garbage. The track sounded unfinished and from a technical and production point of view, the song definitely had its holes. It sounded like an unmastered rough cut. Apparently other people (including himself?) thought the same thing, and he redid the song.

This second version had new drums, slight changes here and there in the beat, and he re-sang the whole thing. This new version came out cleaner, crisp and much more complete sounding. People were able to shift their focus from 'this sounds unfinished and bad' to recognizing that Kanye yet again was able to switch up his style and bring something new and unique to the table.

When Love Lockdown first came out, and I heard autotune would be heavily featured on the album, i was disappointed. Kanye is definitely out there having fun right now, which is nice when hes a feature on a track, but I don't I want a full album of that style. Although he will appeal to a wider audience by going the more mainstream sounding route like he did intentionally with Graduation, I would still prefer something more lyrical and creative like his first two albums. I think hes also much more limited on song content if hes not serious and/or using autotune frequently. This has already been proven by the release of Graduation. There were no Two Words', Spaceship's, 'Get Em High's, Gone's or Diamonds from Seirra Leone's on that album. Nonetheless, I'm still confident that he will come out strong with a fairly solid album. After that little rant, you might ask why do I feel that way? He did most of his recording while in Hawaii..which is where Jockin' Jay-Z was spawned, proving that he was in a zone while there. I don't expect this album to be as thought out as College Dropout or Late Registration, but I expect a style that's straightforward and in for your face. Love Lockdown isn't the most aggressive song ever, but it's raw and straight forward like Jockin Jay-Z. I'm also still confident that he has enough gas left in his tank to continue to bring originality to the game at the very least. About a week or two ago, he announced he's pushing up his album to sometime in November, and I look forward to yet another album I can basically listen to front to back.