You can find the rest of the Yeezy Season series here.Ĩ08s & Heartbreaks – Hypothesis: Kanye West took the Biggest Risk of his Career on 808s & Heartbreak To put it lightly, 808s & Heartbreak was a risk. In this fourth installment, the data tells us a fascinating story of Kanye’s massive gamble ditching his samples and rapping for original production and autotune. A hypothesis is presented, which is the general and most common narrative surrounding an album, and then the statistics from Ye’s output during the recording cycle are used to find out whether the hypothesis is true or not. This series of articles looks back on the numbers from Kanye’s output as a rapper and producer 60 weeks prior to each of his solo albums, and uses these statistics to prove or disprove the legacy or accepted narrative of each record. With Yeezy Season 8 in full effect, Ben Carter is taking a closer look at the rollout for every single one of Kanye’s albums thus far. One year later Yeezy decided completely abandon both on his next album, instead opting for a risky, totally new sound that would change hip hop forever.

By the end of 2007, Kanye West’s sample-based production and conscious rapping had made him a full-on international rockstar.

Ye 808s and heartbreak release date