Kanye found a hammer; now everything is a nail
I'm a Kanye West fan. Actually, I *was* until his latest album, 808's and Heartbreak. Why have a I lost interest? Because Kanye West found a new hammer and now everything looks like a nail.
I can boil it down to two words: "Auto-tune". From Wikipedia (referencing Kanye's new album):
"The album relies heavily on the voice audio processor technology of Auto-Tune. "We were working on the remixes for Lil Wayne's "Lollipop" and Young Jeezy's "Put On" and he fell in love with the Auto-Tune," Dean explained. Towards this end, West enlisted T-Pain for coaching on how to properly utilize Auto-Tune. West himself openly stated that he loves using Auto-Tune and is dismayed that the term has been commonly associated with being "wack." He considers the technology "the funnest thing to use" and compared the situation to when he was a child and thought the color pink was cool until someone told him "it was gay." He went on to state how the views of society can rob people of their confidence and self-esteem. He later went on to state that he enjoyed the electronic feel produced by Auto-Tune and sought out to juxtapose the mechanical sounds with the traditional sounds of taiko drums and choir monks."
It is sooo annoying! I'm sure you know the effect - it does that wierd techno warbling of voice. Again, from wikipedia:
"Auto-Tune is a proprietary audio processor created by Antares Audio Technologies that uses a phase vocoder to correct pitch in vocal and instrumental performances. It is used to disguise inaccuracies and mistakes and has allowed many artists to produce more precisely tuned recordings. In addition being used to subtly change pitch, with some settings it can be used as an effect to deliberately distort the human voice."
I think Cher was the first artist to really promote this effect on her song Believe. I didn't mind at that time - mainly because I don't listen to Cher. But I understand how an aging (read: senior citizen) pop star needs to reach out for that new shiny toy that might extend her career.
But Kanye? Come on... Kanye isn't using it to auto-correct a bad voice; he's just using it because some other rapper used it, who copied some other rapper, who copied Cher. It's the perfect way to turn a great song into a mediocre song. Here's an example of Kanye (over)using it:
Almost every single song on his new album is using this effect. I'm hoping this is a fad like Krispy Kreme doughnuts - maybe it will be gone within a year. Until that time, I'll pass on Kanye, Cher, Lil Wayne, and Young Jeezy. I'm starting to sound like some cranky old guy that remembers the good ol' days... But really, not everything is a nail.
