There are currently tons of younger artists out here trying to get that old feeling back, and plenty of veterans stayed the course. Now flash forward to 2018 and XXXtempertantrum-whatever wins the Billboard award for best R&B/soul album without ONE real R&B song on it. It’s no coincidence that R&B started to decline creatively circa 2010, right when 808s was hitting big (and producing dozens of clones). Remember when R&B stalwarts like Ne-Yo and Usher suddenly started doing those annoying EDM and pop tracks they still play in your spin class? That’s why. In order for traditional R&B singers to keep up, they had two options: THEY TOO had to start sounding like rapping robots to maintain sales OR give up on soul and start doing pop stuff to pay the bills. And with this new blend of hip-hop masquerading as soul, the lines were blurred and the legacy of soul slowly began being erased. While hip-hop began to be celebrated as a cultural force, R&B was downplayed. R&B has always been the stepchild of mainstream music. Anyone with a computer program could now celebrated as a “soul singer.” And that was bad news for the real crooners. 808s normalized autotune to the point where fans started to believe that dudes talking like a robot = soulful vocals. Kanye legitimized autotune with 808s.Īnd herein lies the problem. While T-Pain was definitely popular, Kanye was nearing his mainstream peak by 2008. News flash, you can’t convey genuine feelings with a computer, y’all – all that “emotion” in 808s came off as hollow and whiny. Kanye decided to swipe the concept for his 808s album, an LP that was supposed to exude emotion and pain. Obviously, dude did not invent autotune – it was used liberally for vocal effects throughout R&B for decades – but he was the first person of his era to use it to create entire songs.Īnd once one person finds success, HERE COME THE COPYCATS. But he really hit big with “Buy You a Drank,” which pushed his sophomore set to the top of the charts. T-Pain, who went from mediocre rapper to Voltron Luther Vandross when he found his vocoder, had already achieved some notoriety with his first album. Let’s go back to 2008, where the “snap” era of ringtone rap was on its last legs and fans were ready for something new. But I said what I said: 808s & Heartbreak is Patient Zero for the illness that crippled modern R&B.
Yeah, I’m bout to go on one of my old man rants. Unfortunately, that tonal shift kicked off a decade of events that all but erased soul music from mainstream airwaves. I wasn’t moved.Ĩ08s represented a turning point for musical culture, no doubt. Last weekend, Twitter celebrated the 10-year anniversary of Kanye West’s landmark 808s & Heartbreak album.
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