While none of us have heard Kanye West's 808's & Heartbreak, many of use have already made up our minds regarding whether his use of Auto-Tune is warranted or just plain overkill. Ruling in on the Auto-Tuning of Kanye's forthcoming album recently is Nicolay. While being interviewed with Phonte about The Foreign Exchange's sonically beautiful Leave It All Behind, Nicolay had this to say about Kanye's foray into computerized monotonous madness:
There wouldn't be a point to using [Autotune] like Kanye has done it. Kanye uses the effect because he likes the effect, but if he uses it because he can't sing, then that's a different story. I think in that particular case he could have let somebody else sing that track ["Love Lock Down."] I see that song being a massive freakin' hit for someone like Rihanna, someone that can give it a lot of aggression and power. I think it's a great song. It's an example of somebody going beyond what they can do really, really well.
Agreed, Nicolay. While Rihanna has never been a favorite of mine, I can see how her hard-edged posturing would make for a good fit if she would have sung "Love Lockdown." With Auto-Tune, even! While Auto-Tune's makers refer to it as the "holy grail of recording," there have been too many instances of artists' reliance on it just ruining songs that went from being annoying to just sucking rocks. Hopefully, Nicolay's honesty won't lead to Kanye having a bloggerrific hissy fit of epic proportions. Again.
