He would later win the Grammy for Best Producer and work for fun, Lana Del Rey, Beyoncé, Harry Styles and Lykke Li. Jeff Bashker, in his breakthrough release, has 6 writing credits and 5 producing credits. Lil Mama)… in this scenario, and considering how maximalistic Kanye’s previous output was (with its soul samples, anthemic arena-ready choruses and intricate production values), the idea of Kanye not only ditching samples and going minimalistic, but also pop was a hard pill to swallow in the hip-hop world.Ĩ08s & Heartbreak was, interestingly, recorded in a three weeks period in September and October of 2008, contrasting with the 2 years it took Graduation to materialize (and unintentionally starting Ye’s tendency of erratic album producing schedules that still continues up to this day), in California and Hawaii with a surprisingly limited palette of collaborators: Today is not that hard to visualize it but, in the perspective of the 2007-08 music era, it was considered career suicide and a brave experiment: As mentioned above, Graduation was, mostly, responsible for the decay of the gangsta rap genre and Kanye’s production techniques and combinations of genres were seen as a watershed that helped diversify the genre, in other words Kanye was the closest thing hip-hop had to a savant innovator at the time also, the kind of pop music that was leaving its mark in the Hot 100 included bubblegum (by the era standards) music from Katy Perry and Natasha Begingfield, Disney icons like Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers, mellow balladers like Jason Mraz and Leona Lewis and crossover acts like Coldplay and Finger Eleven, with the biggest representation of urban music coming from pure R&B or pop/R&B acts (Mariah Carey, Jordin Sparks, Chris Brown) or relatively unambitious rap acts (Lil Wayne, T.I. West, and as such, the hip-hop genre was way too small to describe what was going on with him and the melodies he had inside of him needed a new way to be translated to the real world… ironically this would lead to the creation of a minimalistic pop album. On November 10 of 2007, Kanye’s mother, Donda West, passed away after a heart attack product of a failed plastic surgery (from which Kanye blamed himself) this was followed by the end of his on-and-off relationship with designer Alexis Phifer which started in 2002 and officially ended in early 2008 and, of course, it was the issue of fame: with Graduation seemingly kick-starting a new era of hip-hop above the ashes of gangsta rap ( Graduation outsold 50 Cent’s Curtis by more than one third in their coinciding debut week), Kanye should have been, theoretically speaking, happy of having archived everything he ever wanted, however he was alone at the top, subject of constant public and media scrutiny and surrounded by the kind of unwanted attention most overnight superstars struggle to accept. Kanye West started as a producer wanting to become a rapper… after touring as the opening act of U2 in their Vertigo Tour he wanted to become a rock star… after the release of his third studio album, Graduation, Kanye didn’t know exactly what to do next: Although another education-themed follow up (known as Good Ass Job) was planned to complement the trilogy of albums that started with The College Dropout and continued with Late Registration, destiny will change those plans for the Chicago rapper.