He has always been one of the most ambitious acts in mainstream hip hop and has very often been a trend setter.
Like, if you look at his very early productions for Jay-Z and then his first records, you can see the blueprints for the "slightly-sped up soul sample with heavy drums" type of production that would define the early 2000s. Then, there was 808s and Heartaches, which flopped on release but ended up defining mainstream rap for another couple of years (heavily-autotuned sing-song rapping with synth heavy beats). After that, there was My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy which is amongst the best progressive rap albums out there with its grandiose, over-the-top production.
After that, he kind of falls behind trends, with Yeezus being a rough attempt at industrial rap à la Death Grips or clipping. Life of Pablo and Kids See Ghosts are the two last projects where Kanye seemed to be on top of things...
In any case, like him or not (musically), dude was extremely influential and it sucks to see him go from the narcissistic asshole who said that George Bush doesn't care about black people and who sang "New Slaves" to a narcissistic asshole who's using his immense platform to give exposure to the very worst people and ideologies possible.
He has always been one of the most ambitious acts in mainstream hip hop and has very often been a trend setter.
Like, if you look at his very early productions for Jay-Z and then his first records, you can see the blueprints for the "slightly-sped up soul sample with heavy drums" type of production that would define the early 2000s. Then, there was 808s and Heartaches, which flopped on release but ended up defining mainstream rap for another couple of years (heavily-autotuned sing-song rapping with synth heavy beats). After that, there was My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy which is amongst the best progressive rap albums out there with its grandiose, over-the-top production.
After that, he kind of falls behind trends, with Yeezus being a rough attempt at industrial rap à la Death Grips or clipping. Life of Pablo and Kids See Ghosts are the two last projects where Kanye seemed to be on top of things...
In any case, like him or not (musically), dude was extremely influential and it sucks to see him go from the narcissistic asshole who said that George Bush doesn't care about black people and who sang "New Slaves" to a narcissistic asshole who's using his immense platform to give exposure to the very worst people and ideologies possible.