With the official release of Yeezus tomorrow, in all of its cover-less glory, we decided to take a look back at his album artwork throughout the years, even in the context of his single covers. He’s mostly wallowing in his own sadness.At Kanye West's speech during Art Basel for his second Yeezus listening party last week, he said, "I just felt that I would never be one of the great visual artists of the world." However, as any fan of Kanye knows, that hasn't stopped him from being one of the most important artists of our time OR from working with top-notch visual artists for the delivery of his albums, videos, and tours. The album is more navel diving then navel gazing.
Kanye has a reputation for being self-obsessed, but 808s & Heartbreak takes almost a step past it being endearing, when it comes to his discussion of relationships and love lost. With the release of his fourth studio album “808’s and Heartbreak” West achieved a revolutionary moment in pop culture. Why is Kanye so influential?įrom production, lyrics, even the content of his songs, Kanye West has influenced contemporary rap music more than any other artist. Juice WRLD, Travis Scott, Drake and so on have all cited Kanye as a major influence for their style of music, Juice in particular, named 808s to be one of his favorite albums.
They’re referring to the physical drum machine it was sampled from, Roland liked to name their products like TR-808 and TR-909, so people just shortened it to 808/909. Drum machines may imitate drum kits or other percussion instruments, or produce unique sounds, such as synthesized electronic tones. What drum machine did Rick Rubin use?Ī drum machine is an electronic musical instrument that creates percussion sounds, drum beats, and patterns. If you have anything else playing at the same time (especially recorded tracks) and you have not EQed out the low frequencies on those tracks then they fight for space and your 808 gets squished. What drum machine does Kanye use?Īccording to Music Tools, Kanye has four main staples for sampling: an Ensoniq ASR-10 keyboard, an AKAI MPC2000 MIDI Production Center, Roland VS-1880 24-Bit Digital Studio Workstation, and a Gemini PT-1000 II turntable. Its easy to mix, and the sounds whilst not being realistic do adhere to specific frequencies that delight the ears in the same way an acoustic drum set do. It sounds good, it’s super easy to use, and it’s about as iconic as any electronic instrument out there. Most times you’re going to play the root of the chord, often times the first note of the scale. Most of trap bass sounds are called „808s” and are long, distorted sub bass notes. Once you have a melody it’s time to create a bass pattern. Rather than playing samples, the machine generates sounds using analog synthesis the TR in TR-808 stands for “Transistor Rhythm”. The 808 produces sounds in imitation of acoustic percussion: the bass drum, snare, toms, conga, rimshot, claves, handclap, maraca, cowbell, cymbal, and hi-hat (open and closed). “It was probably the easiest Kanye West record that ever got made,” he said. 808s & Heartbreak was their first collaboration, and likely the most memorable. The producer and songwriter Jeff Bhasker has worked on four albums with Kanye West.