digitaldreamdoor.com forum

Tim wrote: Fri Mar 06, 2026 10:03 pm Eminem not being #1 for the 2000s looks off but I don't know if I disagree with your breakdown. I say if we credit Eminem with popularizing hip-hop beyond the east and west coasts and sorta legitimizing white people in rap he does well enough in influence to stay atop here.

wiki wrote:The College Dropout sparked a resurgence of socially conscious rap in the mid-2000s,[128] arriving at a time when pop rap was saturated with songs featuring product placement and intensely violent lyrics, epitomized by rappers like 50 Cent, Nelly, Ja Rule, Ludacris, and P. Diddy.[127] West instead created a space in the mainstream for rappers to express themselves and black identity without resorting to hip-hop's prevalent theme of gang culture.[129] Raul Verma of The Independent said "West is charged with proving mainstream hip hop has a conscience with his nourishing messages of substance flying in the face of the amoral majority perpetuating clichés of guns, girls and bling",[130] while Vibe senior editor Noah Callahan-Bever argued that West's infusion of "pop sensibility" into his otherwise progressive hip-hop had "bridged the gap" and encouraged rappers to gravitate more towards the center between mainstream and alternative forms.[131] Today commented that The College Dropout "stood out in the rap landscape because of its atypical prose. It avoided the usual plotlines about sex, money and violence and touched on everything from his faith to his fears of failure and other crises from his life."[132]

According to DJBooth journalist Brad Callas, the album also "helped solidify chipmunk soul as not only the defining sound of the Roc-A-Fella era but also the most popular sub-genre in hip-hop".[133] "It feels like that album birthed an entire sub-genre", Max Weinstein wrote in retrospect for Vibe, going on to say, "The palette of emotions was so broad, the depth of topics so searingly relevant, that it was bound to make an impression on any artist that heard it. RZA might have birthed chipmunk soul, and Black Star perfected smart lyricism for the JanSport bunch, but 'Ye brought all that to the masses in one single, digestible product, breaking down the divisions between mainstream rap and Rawkus-grade consciousness." Weinstein also credited The College Dropout with directly influencing 10 albums: Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor (2006) by Lupe Fiasco, School Was My Hustle (2006) by Kidz in the Hall, Don't Quit Your Day Job! (2007) by Consequence, A Kid Named Cudi (2008) by Kid Cudi, Asleep in the Bread Aisle (2009) by Asher Roth, Kendrick Lamar's self-titled first EP (2009), Camp (2011) by Childish Gambino, Cole World: The Sideline Story (2011) by J. Cole, When Fish Ride Bicycles (2011) by The Cool Kids, and Acid Rap (2013) by Chance the Rapper.[134]

With the album, West began to develop a following of listeners who could not relate to lyrics glorifying gangster lifestyle but still enjoyed rap music and connected more with his musings on family and love.[129] In 2005, comedian Chris Rock attested to listening to The College Dropout while writing his stand-up material.[135] Music journalists such as Meaghan Garvey, Andrew Barber, and Erika Ramirez also connected to the album during their formative years, with Barber saying in a roundtable discussion for Noisey, "I could identify with this project the most because I was in college at the time, and I felt like an underdog in my own life. I was uncertain of my future. [West's] words on 'Last Call' inspired me to follow my dreams, and motivated me to graduate despite the album title." In the same discussion, music journalist Eric Sundermann cited The College Dropout as the first in West's pop rap album trilogy that would be followed by Late Registration in 2005 and Graduation in 2007, while Craig Jenkins called it "a watershed moment in 2000s rap history where the nerds stormed the school to seize control from the jocks, a shift memorialized two albums later when Graduation trounced 50 Cent's Curtis album in their 2007 sales showdown."[136]

wiki wrote:With the album's commercial success, West established himself as a recording artist in his own right outside of his earlier success with hip-hop productions for other rappers.[167] By surpassing the sales and acclaim of The College Dropout, Late Registration proved that "the Kanye West experiment was no longer an experiment, it was a business model", according to author Shea Serrano.[168] He explained, "It helped revitalize sampling soul music, it stitched together pop music themes generally attributable to the easily ignorable 'conscious rap' quadrant ('Gold Digger' is secretly a clever examination of the effects money has on relationships), and it created a precedent for the larger-scale gazing he'd go on to do. Rap followed along right behind him."[168] As The Ringer's Logan Murdock chronicles, Late Registration proved his unprecedented artistry and relentless ambition with "a story to tell, an underdog tale that the masses related to", particularly the black community.[167] The journalist relates his own experience connecting with the music, recalling having been a fan of West at 12 years old in Oakland, California, recognizing "the same struggles [he] spoke about plaguing my own environment. Like West, I had educated parents and a stable home life, but was aware of the world around me. Like West, I struggled to get acceptance, living a double life."[167]

wiki wrote:The critical reception and commercial success of Graduation left a profound influence on both hip-hop culture and popular music.[215][216] West has earned praise for his ability to appeal to diverse music audiences such as indie-rock listeners and rave enthusiasts without alienating his core hip-hop audiences.[217] Collaborative tracks such as "Homecoming" signaled the diversification of mainstream hip-hop and its intertwining with the genres of alternative and indie-rock in subsequent years.[218][219] In addition, songs such as "Everything I Am" have been cited as "the best example of the soulful and introspective atmosphere that came to dominate the rap world, from Drake to The Weeknd".[220] Irish rock band U2 has imparted that touring with West on their Vertigo Tour in turn had a significant effect on their own music as well in regards to the band's twelfth studio album No Line on the Horizon (2009).[15] Lead singer Bono elaborated that West's rapping inspired him to utilize more percussive consonants for his songwriting and vocal performance.[15]

West's third studio album, particularly with its two hit singles "Stronger" and "Flashing Lights", has been attributed to not only encouraging other hip-hop artists to incorporate house and electronica elements into their music, but also for playing a role in the revival of disco and electro-infused club music in the late-2000s.[216][14] "Flashing Lights" was a leading part of a wave of synthesizer-driven music which combined danceable electro beats with an accessible pop format.[216] It was succeeded by the high chart placings and multi-platinum sales of singles by artists and bands ranging from "Just Dance" (2008) by singer Lady Gaga to "Right Round" (2009) by rapper Flo Rida.[221][14]

Graduation marked a musical progression towards synth-based production in regards to the art of crafting hip-hop beats.[219] The studio album demonstrated West's shift from sample-orientated hip-hop production and more towards digital synths and drum machines generated by digital audio workstations (DAW).[219] While samples are present throughout the album, they were fewer in number and not nearly as prominent.[219] As hip-hop producer Anthony Kilhoffer recalled to Billboard in 2017 for Graduation's 10th anniversary, "I think it was the first time having a heavy hand in the use of electronic music in hip-hop. Previous to that it was very R&B influenced, tracks like 'Stronger' and 'Flashing Lights' contained very electronic type of elements. This was way before EDM became mainstream, and marked the end of the jersey-wearing era in hip-hop".[222] Since Graduation's release, countless other record producers have followed suit in blurring the lines of conventional hip-hop with the incorporation of electronic production.[223] This synth-driven production approach has since been adopted by artists including Future, Young Chop, and Metro Boomin.[219]

The outcome of the highly publicized sales competition between 50 Cent's Curtis and West's Graduation has been accredited to the commercial decline of the gangsta rap that once dominated mainstream hip-hop.[215] Ben Detrick of XXL cites West beating 50 cent in sales as being responsible for altering the direction of hip-hop and paving the way for new rappers who did not follow the hardcore-gangster mold, writing, "If there was ever a watershed moment to indicate hip-hop's changing direction, it may have come when 50 Cent competed with Kanye in 2007 to see whose album would claim superior sales. Kanye led a wave of new artists— Kid Cudi, Wale, Lupe Fiasco, Kidz in the Hall, Drake—who lacked the interest or ability to create narratives about any past gunplay or drug-dealing".[224] The Michigan Daily columnist Adam Theisen asserts that West's win once and for all "prove[d] that rap music didn't have to conform to gangsta-rap conventions to be commercially successful".[225] Rolling Stone remarked that "While Kanye West's decisive triumph over 50 seems inevitable in retrospect, it's easy to forget how much of an underdog he was at the time. The College Dropout and Late Registration sold a combined 7 million copies in the U.., but 50 Cent's own first two albums, Get Rich or Die Trying and The Massacre, sold nearly 14 million, almost exactly twice as much. West had the last laugh: Graduation sold nearly 1 million copies in one week, and rap became the playground of emotional heroes like Kid Cudi, Lupe Fiasco, Drake, and J. Cole".[226] In retrospect, Highsnobiety writer Shahzaib Hussain recognizes Graduation in West's opening trilogy of highly successful, education-themed albums that "cemented his role as a progressive rap progenitor".[227]

Going further, Noah Callahan-Bever, chief content officer and editor-in-chief for Complex Media, marked September 11, 2007: "The Day Kanye West Killed Gangsta Rap".[228] In a retrospective, Lawrence Burney of Noisey expands on this notion by asserting that the event caused the more aggressive forms of rap music to undergo an evolution. He continued writing, "Gangsta rap, street music, and the like have yet to recover from that showdown, as only two albums of the sort have gone platinum in the 2010s—Kevin Gates' Islah and Meek Mill's Dreams Worth More Than Money—If anything, street music has also made a shift since Kanye began to peal back more layers of himself on Graduation; 50's whole get up was about being an indestructible, emotionless robot. Now, what connects fans to artists like Gates and Meek is that they aren't afraid to rhythmically cry about lost loves ones and the price of fame".[215] Likewise, Billboard wrote, "In 2007, Kanye West trumped 50 Cent in an epic sales battle, in which his opus Graduation trounced Curtis by several hundred thousand copies. Ye's emotive raps on Graduation, intertwined with his evolution on the production side, inspired a new wave of MCs to take notes. .. While gangsta rap still has a seat in the ever-expanding classroom of hip-hop, vulnerability and experimentation now serve as the leading candidates in creating your prototypical MC. Because of songs like 'I Wonder', 'Flashing Lights', and 'Stronger'", the hip-hop artists of today "cling on to Kanye's indomitable body of work like a go-to study guide".[229] The competition between 50 Cent and West, when the two released their studio albums on the same day, was penultimate in a series of articles that lists fifty key events in the history of R&B and hip-hop music, written by Rosie Swash of The Guardian. Swash wrote that it "highlighted the diverging facets of hip-hop in the last decade; the former was gangsta rap for the noughties, while West was the thinking man's alternative".[230]

wiki wrote:Although West conceived 808s & Heartbreak as a melancholic pop album, it proved to have a significant effect on hip-hop music.[144] While his decision to sing about love, loneliness, and heartache for the entirety of the album was at first heavily criticized by music audiences and the album predicted to be a flop, its subsequent critical acclaim and commercial success encouraged other mainstream rappers to take greater creative risks with their music.[71][74] During the marketing of The Blueprint 3, Jay-Z said that his next studio album would be an experimental effort, stating, "... it's not gonna be a #1 album. That's where I'm at right now. I wanna make the most experimental album I ever made."[145] Jay-Z elaborated that like West, he was unsatisfied with contemporary hip-hop, was being inspired by indie-rockers like Grizzly Bear and asserted his belief that the indie rock movement would play an important role in the continued evolution of hip-hop.[146] The album impacted hip-hop stylistically and laid the groundwork for a new wave of hip-hop artists who generally eschewed typical rap braggadocio for intimate subject matter and introspection,[147] including B.o.B, Kid Cudi, Childish Gambino,[148] Frank Ocean,[149] and Drake.[150][151]

While not considered among West's best, 808s & Heartbreak is arguably his most influential album, according to Complex.[152] In 2011, Jake Paine of HipHopDX dubbed the album as "our Chronic," noting West's effect on hip-hop with 808s & Heartbreak as "a sound, no different than the way Dr. Dre's synthesizer challenged the boom-bap of the early '90s."[150] Fact described the record as an "art-pop masterpiece [which] broke the shackles of generations of one-upmanship [in hip-hop]."[153] In Rolling Stone, journalist Matthew Trammell asserted that the record was ahead of its time and wrote in a 2012 article, "Now that popular music has finally caught up to it, 808s & Heartbreak has revealed itself to be Kanye's most vulnerable work, and perhaps his most brilliant."[154] Drake's 2009 mixtape So Far Gone received comparisons from critics to 808s & Heartbreak.[155] Todd Martens of the Los Angeles Times cited 808s & Heartbreak as "the template [...] for essentially the entirety of Drake's young career," and that he "shares West's love for mood and never-ending existential analysis."[156] In a 2009 interview, Drake cited West as "the most influential person" in shaping his own sound.[155] Similarly to So Far Gone, Drake's 2010 debut album Thank Me Later was compared to 808s & Heartbreak by critics.[151][157][158]

808s & Heartbreak is credited with giving rise to the emo rap subgenre.[159] According to Greg Kot, 808s & Heartbreak initiated the "wave of inward-looking sensitivity" and "emo"-inspired rappers during the late 2000s: "[It] presaged everything from the introspective hip-hop of Kid Cudi's Man on the Moon: The End of Day (2009) to the wispy crooning, plush keyboards and light mechanical beats of Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and British dub-step balladeer James Blake."[160] For Pitchfork, Jayson Greene wrote: "The only thing more influential than the album's sound might be its tone: bitter, confused, self-pitying, defensive, and accusatory."[161] Consequence credited it with shaping subsequent developments in "indie R&B or electropop or whatever you want to call it": "808s' is flooded with R&B and it digitizes the raw emotion and isolated feelings that [James Blake and the Weeknd] have carved their brands out of today."[162] Craig D. Linsey from The Village Voice wrote that the album's "naked humanity ... practically set off the emo-rap/r&b boom that everyone from Drake to Frank Ocean to The Weeknd now traffic in."[163] Marcus Scott of Giant said rappers such as B.o.B, Drake, and Kid Cudi followed West's album with similarly minded works, citing West's introspective, emotional themes and synthpop/"Vangelis-inspired" music as influences.[164] Billboard writer Michael Saponara credits its influence on the late-2010s music of Juice Wrld,[165] who himself admitted, "I was singing 'Street Lights' like I had shit to be sad about. Kanye is a time traveler. ... went to damn near 2015 and came back with some sauce."[165] Lil Uzi Vert, another emo rapper, said that the album changed his life.[166] The Pet Shop Boys hired 808s & Heartbreak recorder and mixer Andrew Dawson to produce their album Elysium (2012), based on their admiration for the "luxurious" sound of West's album.[167]

In the opinion of Billboard senior editor Alex Gale in 2016, the album was "the equivalent of (Bob) Dylan going electric, and you still hear that all the time, in hip-hop and outside of hip-hop."[168] In 2014, Rolling Stone named the album as one of the 40 most groundbreaking albums of all time, noting that it "served as a new template for up-and-comers in hip-hop and R&B."[130] Speaking with Pitchfork's Ryan Dombal that year, Tom Krell said his music project How to Dress Well "would not be possible" without West's album, which Dombal described as an "emo&B opus".[169] On the album's 10th anniversary in 2018, The Boombox writer Bobby Olivier found its continued influence evident in the works of Post Malone and Travis Scott, as well as the commercial dominance of hip-hop in the US in general, although he said it remains West's least valued album. Olivier contended that, by "morph[ing] his shattered soul into a piece of wondrous millennial art-pop", West had "played anti-hero to his acclaimed collegiate trilogy" and begun "the demolition between rap, pop and EDM genre lines in earnest", drawing "a blueprint for hip-hop in the 2010s, where minimalism and melancholy could prove just as propulsive as boom-bap and classic gangster bravado, and where oft-maligned auto-tune could weaponize a voice and reshape it as a compelling new instrument".[170] In a March 2024 interview, West credited "the autotune album" as having invented a style of music used by the likes of the Weeknd, Travis Scott and Drake, as well as rappers Future and Young Thug.[171] Lil Boosie reacted to West's statement via Instagram Stories by writing that West is not influential nor relatable to him, while Kid Cudi responded by posting a screenshot of the Wikipedia page showing his influence on 808s & Heartbreak.[171]

wiki wrote:West is among the most critically acclaimed popular music artists of the 21st century, earning praise from music critics, industry peers, and cultural figures.[519][520] In 2014, NME named him the third most influential artist in music.[521] Billboard senior editor Alex Gale declared West "absolutely one of the best, and you could make the argument for the best artist of the 21st century."[241] Sharing similar sentiments, Dave Bry of Complex Magazine called West the twenty-first century's "most important artist of any art form, of any genre."[522] The Atlantic writer David Samuels commented, "Kanye's power resides in his wild creativity and expressiveness, his mastery of form, and his deep and uncompromising attachment to a self-made aesthetic that he expresses through means that are entirely of the moment: rap music, digital downloads, fashion, Twitter, blogs, live streaming video."[523] Joe Muggs of The Guardian argued that "there is nobody else who can sell as many records as West does [...] while remaining so resolutely experimental and capable of stirring things up culturally and politically."[524]

Rolling Stone credited West with transforming hip-hop's mainstream, "establishing a style of introspective yet glossy rap" while deeming him "a producer who created a signature sound and then abandoned it to his imitators, a flashy, free-spending sybarite with insightful things to say about college, culture, and economics, an egomaniac with more than enough artistic firepower to back it up."[525] Writing for Highsnobiety, Shahzaib Hussain stated that West's first three albums "cemented his role as a progressive rap progenitor".[526] AllMusic editor Jason Birchmeier described West as "[shattering] certain stereotypes about rappers, becoming a superstar on his own terms without adapting his appearance, his rhetoric, or his music to fit any one musical mold".[2] Lawrence Burney of Noisey has credited West with the commercial decline of the gangsta rap genre that once dominated mainstream hip-hop.[527] The release of his third studio album Graduation has been described as a turning point in the music industry,[528] and is considered to have helped pave the way for new rappers who did not follow the hardcore-gangster mold to find wider mainstream acceptance.[529][530][531]

Hip-hop artists like Drake,[532] Nicki Minaj,[533] Travis Scott,[534] Playboi Carti,[535] Lil Uzi Vert,[536] and Chance the Rapper[537] have acknowledged being influenced by West. Several other artists and music groups of various genres have named West as an influence on their work.[f]