Heartless from kwest on Vimeo.
Post from Nilina Mason-Campbell. So… Kanye West’s new found obsession with auto-tune. Hmm… Truth be told, I don’t care for it much. When he debuted “Love Lockdown” on this year’s VMAs, my heart was immediately stolen, but upon hearing the official non-live versions, my heart sank. It all sounded too close to a sloppy Eiffel 65 cover rather than the hip-hop hits West normally assures us. For weeks I’ve deliberated that if the tunes from his forthcoming LP 808 and Heartbreak were put in the hands of Chris Brown or Usher then maybe his reinvention wouldn’t be such a thorn in my side.
And then along comes the video for his latest single “Heartless” and it turns out all it takes is a little rotoscoping in the vein of Waking Life to win me over. The striking visuals created by director Hype Williams and animator Ralph Bakshi succeed in keeping me tuned into the track long enough for me to find a few more merits in the breakup tale and come to terms with the auto-tune.
There’s flashing lights and street marquees, day-glo girls and a few curious scenes of him smoking that are sure to make the surgeon general happy.
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Dave–thanks for name-dropping Waking Life. One of my favorites and proof that there are still people with cameras trying to rub two brain cells together to start raging fires. Nice stuff.
November 10th, 2008 at 6:54 pmjoe – thanks for the props but it was Nilina who wrote this post, not me…
November 10th, 2008 at 8:04 pmI like the video but it doesn’t help the song at all for me. Auto-tuning needs to die, it’s not old enough to be retro or kitsch cool. Eiffel 65 and the rest of the awful electro-pop acts of the late 90’s are exactly what I think of when I hear it.
It was only ever used *well* a select few times when it first came into popularity and apparently Kanye is still trying to take queues from Daft Punk. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTqrNISqqmU
Sorry, it only works when you wear robot masks.
A good video does not a good song make.
November 11th, 2008 at 12:05 pmYikes, best video I’ve seen in a while. It makes the song work for me.
November 11th, 2008 at 9:02 pmREALLY COOL VIDEO KANYE!
December 8th, 2008 at 12:11 pm