An uninvited Kanye West gets escorted out of Skechers HQ in Manhattan Beach. (Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/WireImage)
If you’re one of the fortunate few to be invited onto Radiohead’s The King Of Limbs tour, you can relax. You won’t have to worry about Kanye West sneaking into your hotel room, or wondering whether your girlfriend-of-the-week, who just finished reading Gone With The Wind, will let you read the book on her iPad after her shows.
West’s show in Huntington Beach on Friday was one of the most anticipated tour stops on the lineup ever. The tour is one of the most expensive ever for a musician, but it’s one I’m sure will live up to its billing.
So what am I going to say about West’s most recent offering, 808s & Heartbreak? Like so many of his albums, it’s a mix of hip-hop, rock, and electronic dance music. No matter what you think of rap music, the genre is always about something, and The King Of Limbs, from London-based producer Max Martin, is definitely about something.
I’ll be telling you my thoughts on 808s & Heartbreak and why I thought it was worth the price of admission.
“So what am I going to say about 808s & Heartbreak and why I thought it was worth the price of admission?”
One of the biggest complaints about West’s recent albums is their lack of focus on one particular genre. While his debut album, The College Dropout, contained one of the most notable hip-hop tracks of the early aughts, The Art Of Storytellin’, it was also one of many tots in the back catalog of one of the most prolific, yet not necessarily talented, producers of the genre.
West has, over the years, attempted to make up for lost time by pushing new artists into the role of producer on albums, but he hasn’t quite been able to come up with a breakthrough act. While The Black Album made West a star and proved he was in fact a hip-hop artist, 808s & Heartbreak