A piece of software that was more used upon by early rapper T-Pain was passed onto Kanye’s music and specifically on Heartless. Kanye West had a synth-like, auto-tuned voice with a sharp sonic kinship. The idea of creating the melody and beat to Heartless came from the early 1980s track “Intruder” that Phil Collins popularized. Through his whole album, and mainly on the song “Heartless” he used the 808s machine that was created by Ikutaro Kakehashi and Don Lewis. It is a drum machine, its unique dribbling bass drum sound is what he would use to “Turn up to the 808”. Heartless had a rap beat that would give any rapper an opportunity to rap on it, no matter them being a hard-core gangster rapper or a soft south rapper. He used a “boom” pattern, a bedrock sound of hip-hop. Kanye and the rest of the Hip-Hop world knew the art he had made and what an impact it would make. Although it made an impression that anyone would be able to hop on the track due to its simplicity, its uniqueness was something that nobody would ever be able to take away from it. At the time the song was released (2008), nobody had come out with anything like it, it sounded like Kanye. He had produced Heartless along side “No I.D.” who was known for working with Kanye. Although the song had five co-writers, those being Kanye West, Ernest Wilson, Scott …show more content…
The 808s machine was what empowered him to create the song Heartless, a machine from back in the 1980s. He created his own sound with the old machine and applied it to melody he had going on. Tracing back to Cher and T-Pain, the auto tune in Heartless is considered a sample, since artists besides Cher and Tallahassee had rarely used it. Kanye brought back the spark that music was missing with auto-tuned voices. Tracing back from older generations of music, Kanye crafted and perfected an album into being a number one hit all around the country. The auto-tuned voice and melody of Heartless along with all 808s and Heartbreak went on to inspire future artists. Any new music after the album had a pitch of a Kanye vocal, something as simple as an ad-lib, the beat, auto-tune or even the actual lyrics. Heartless along with other multiple hits on 808s and Heartbreak went on to open doors and pave a wave for artists to follow