The Floridian made waves with 2005 debut Rappa Turnt Sanga, but his 2007 chart-topper Epiphany and an endless stream of high-profile guest spots (among them R. The pitch-correcting software, which makes humans sound like highly emotive machines, was all the rage in the late aughts, largely thanks to T-Pain. One thing 808s & Heartbreak did not do was popularize Auto-Tune. As the years roll on, it only looms larger over the landscape of rap, R&B, and the whole of mainstream pop. We can debate in circles about how original 808s really was and whether it’s a work of genius, but there’s really no argument against its status as one of the most important albums in music history. Dissenters occasionally push back against that narrative, dismissing it as a byproduct of Kanye’s self-mythology, but they’re fighting a losing battle. And if you’ve followed critical discussions about rap during that time period, you’ve probably noticed the prevailing theory that 808s changed everything. If you’ve followed the development of rap music over the past decade, you’ve undoubtedly heard the influence of 808s & Heartbreak, the album Kanye released 10 years ago this Saturday. 'If spring can take the snow away / Can it melt away all of our mistakes?' he asks mournfully, answered only by an echo of the exact same question.Here it is: the pivot point in Kanye West’s career and maybe recent hip-hop history at large. 'Coldest Winter' specifically is dedicated to his late mother. Kanye's pain over these losses is palpable throughout the album. If I'd never made it in the music business, it never would have happened.' 'I feel like I moved to California, then my mom moved to California,' West told the Guardian, 'and she did stuff she wouldn't have done if we'd stayed in Chicago. West blamed himself in part for his mother's untimely end. He also split from his fiancee, Alexis Phifer, after an 18-month engagement. In the years before the album's release, Kanye lost his mother, Donda West, whom he had immortalized in his music several times before, to complications from a cosmetic surgery. 'The type of ideas that it was coming up with, the melodies that were in me - what was in me I couldn't stop.' 'It was just what was in my heart,' the rapper told MTV Europe at the time. This calculated, morose meditation was the only album that Kanye could make at this point in his life.

808&#39;s and heartbreaks

808's and heartbreaks