Released in 1980, the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer was one of the first programmable drum machines, allowing users to create their own drum patterns as opposed to using presets.

To talk about 808s & Heartbreak, you have to first talk about the aforementioned TR-808. In a 2013 interview with the New York Times, Kanye claimed the album was “super-polarizing and redefined the sound of radio.”īoth wildly popular and misunderstood in the moment, 808s inspired a legion of artists that grew up in its wake. Trading in the warmth of soul samples for the azoic thump of the TR-808 drum machine and traditional hip-hop lyricism for dour pop singing filtered through the artful pitch destruction of Auto-Tune, 808s & Heartbreak would go on to create a new template for hip-hop and pop music that endures a decade later.

While on his meandering search for a new heart, he began to carry a different kind of baggage, even managing to find his own personal Wizard of Oz in Donald Trump years later-a feckless imposter with nothing to offer but bluster and theatrics. In the decade since the album’s release, there have been very few traces of the smiling, Louis-Vuitton-backpack-clad kid from the Chi who reminded the world that you don’t always need to have street cred to have an authentic hip-hop career.

While he would later find love again in his wife Kim Kardashian, his mother’s death marked the loss of his heart. It was these losses that would inspire the icy, electronic, pop of 808s, which served as an artistic and personal turning point in West’s life. Similarly, at a 2008 press conference to promote his then-new album 808s & Heartbreak, Kanye West described the inspiration for the album as “suffering multitude losses at the same time-it’s like losing an arm and a leg and having to find a way to keep walking through it.” In the months leading up to 808s, Kanye experienced the dissolution of a six-year relationship with his then fiancée Alexis Phifer and, most tragic of all, the death of his mother Donda West following a cosmetic surgery procedure. The axe cut off his limbs, forced him to trade in flesh and blood for cold, hard, metal, and eventually caused him to lose his heart. The Wicked Witch of the West put a spell on his axe to keep him from marrying his true love. Though the 1939 film adaptation is better known, in the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz we learn that the Tin Man character was once a human lumberjack.

808s and heartbreak album cover hd