Kanye

A lot of people were pretty confused by 808s when it came out. The only reason people even gave it the time of day was because it was by Kanye West, and that already meant something because of the track record he'd been building. If it was the only album he ever made, I think it's equally likely that none of us would even know who he is today.
It was critically panned when it first came out, but it was an impressive feat. It has since influenced TONS of albums and artists as @gaporter said. This is also a weird way to look at it since you could say this about just any other artist. If Paul McCartney only made Ram, nobody would know who he is today.

I whole-heartedly understand why people dislike Kanye, but at this point (mostly due to his own antics) it almost feels as if he's underrated. Recency bias (and his more recent albums) has not been kind to his legacy hah.
 
Well yeah -- that's also true. I don't think @gaporter probably meant for me to take that as literally as I did. Just getting back to my original argument that I think we conflate influence with greatness, to the point where they become inseparable. Is 808s a great album? It was influential. Is that the same thing? Again, those aren't questions that are unique to Kanye at all, I just think he's an interesting prism to look at them through.
I agree. I think debating greatest and most influential are very different. Clearly one's subjective opinion of the artist's albums and the albums that their influence led to can lead to very different options of the level of greatness.
 
Well yeah -- that's also true. I don't think @gaporter probably meant for me to take that as literally as I did. Just getting back to my original argument that I think we conflate influence with greatness, to the point where they become inseparable. Is 808s a great album? It was influential. Is that the same thing? Again, those aren't questions that are unique to Kanye at all, I just think he's an interesting prism to look at them through.
I personally really love 808s hah. It weirdly got better with age for me because I think it was a bit ahead of it's time. I don't think great and influential are mutually exclusive and that's the thing about music..."great" is subjective for everyone. I don't think you really argue with influential though. I can't see any possible argument for those who say he was not influential. I also can't see much of an argument for people saying Kanye is the greatest rapper of his generation. I do think you could make the argument that he's one of the best producers of his generation though...
 
Just getting back to my original argument that I think we conflate influence with greatness, to the point where they become inseparable. Is 808s a great album? It was influential. Is that the same thing?
I made a point to say 808s was an influential album, not a great one. You don't have to like something for it to be influential. I wouldn't call 808s one of my favorite albums, or even one of my favorite Kanye albums, but I have to recognize that you can still hear its influence in a lot of today's artists. Regardless of how I feel about the album, that should be worth at least something, I think.
 
I personally really love 808s hah. It weirdly got better with age for me because I think it was a bit ahead of it's time. I don't think great and influential are mutually exclusive and that's the thing about music..."great" is subjective for everyone. I don't think you really argue with influential though. I can't see any possible argument for those who say he was not influential. I also can't see much of an argument for people saying Kanye is the greatest rapper of his generation. I do think you could make the argument that he's one of the best producers of his generation though...
I never argue for Kanye as one of the greatest rappers, but you dont have to be the most technically sound ever with your instrument to be great. Plenty of the greatest bands of all time arent the greatest at their instruments. Dylan and Young arent the best singers, The Clash and Talking Heads dont have the best guitar players, or drummers, etc.. but these are still some of the greatest acts of all time.

Kanye is the greatest artist of a generation in the hip hop world to me because no mainstream artist was pushing what hip hop can be than Kanye. There are better rappers and better producers in his era, but noone pushed the genre further than Kanye imo.
 
the argument could also be made that kanye is considered to be great simply because the genre isnt as stacked as it used to be. most of hip hop now (imo) is reduced to repetitive sampling and is almost like pop now in that its simply gobbled up and accepted. hip hop way back when was something that was challenged by the mainstream for a long time - meaning it had to fight for its place and thus its creators found so many new ways of articulation and experimentation. not that there isnt good hip hop out there now - its that theres a lot of repetition and not much in the way of the true gods of rap challenging the genre like there used to be. not saying this to rub anyone the wrong way but hip hop was different way back when - kind of like when led zeppelin and all the amazing rock acts gave way to 80s rock. not that i dont like the 80s, but the music then was more commercialized for money, and pushed out quickly and with more emphasis on earnings and flash than substance. which is kind of like hip hop now. kanye has had some dope music, and has been around for a while. granted his antics do subtract from this - but my overall opinion on him being a genius and one of the best ever is that he simplt isnt. he just operating in a time thats super commercial and again, nobody has a higher profile than him - especially with the younger more consumer driven crowd eager to spend that money.
 
808s was hugely influential. It gave a ton of artists who can’t sing a platform via auto tune. Is that a positive? Eh...but influence.

I remember Kanye taking about when he moved his producing away from being as sample heavy to more original instrumentation/drum machine/synth work.

He spent time talking about RZA and how the same thing happened - RZA was making a highly individual and new sound using slowed down soul samples. Just doing something no one had done a lot of before and producing such an idiosyncratic sound. And then it started being copied. For my $, RZA is THAT producer for the prior generation.
 
id make the case for a pioneer like de la soul being more influential and having the body of work for longevity. theyre still current - in fact their last album anonymous nobody was self financed through crowdsourcing and de la amzingly hired an orchestra and then used the live recordings to sample from. they got little to no press, love or sales compared to kanye. objectively id make the comparison that their record(s) are stronger and push more boundaries than ye's - who has alost listed de la soul as an inspiration in the past.
 
That's fair; sorry, didn't mean to put words in your mouth.
It's all good, I understand where you're coming from because I think that in some ways overzealous fans tend to exaggerate Kanye's greatness due to idol worship. Kanye definitely plays into it because of his ego, but I do think he has the right to say he changed the musical landscape.

One thing Kanye helped do in terms of lasting influence was that, at least when he started, he was a rapper who wasn't rapping about being gangsta nor did he try to pretend that he was one. Obviously it's not like Kanye was the first rapper in history to do that but I could hear an argument being made that he brought that sort of approach back into the mainstream with his first few records. I don't think an album like Camp by Childish Gambino would ever have been as popular if Kanye didn't set the stage for it a decade prior. I think that's why it was such a big deal in 2007 when Graduation debuted over Curtis, because it signified a shift in the genre and proved Kanye was changing the game, at least somewhat.
 
the argument could also be made that kanye is considered to be great simply because the genre isnt as stacked as it used to be. most of hip hop now (imo) is reduced to repetitive sampling and is almost like pop now in that its simply gobbled up and accepted. hip hop way back when was something that was challenged by the mainstream for a long time - meaning it had to fight for its place and thus its creators found so many new ways of articulation and experimentation. not that there isnt good hip hop out there now - its that theres a lot of repetition and not much in the way of the true gods of rap challenging the genre like there used to be. not saying this to rub anyone the wrong way but hip hop was different way back when - kind of like when led zeppelin and all the amazing rock acts gave way to 80s rock. not that i dont like the 80s, but the music then was more commercialized for money, and pushed out quickly and with more emphasis on earnings and flash than substance. which is kind of like hip hop now. kanye has had some dope music, and has been around for a while. granted his antics do subtract from this - but my overall opinion on him being a genius and one of the best ever is that he simplt isnt. he just operating in a time thats super commercial and again, nobody has a higher profile than him - especially with the younger more consumer driven crowd eager to spend that money.

I'm not here to discuss Kanye because everyone knows where I stand and to start sharing my ideas would be coutner productive to the effectiveness of myself of work.....

BUT to address the new age of hip hop part. Hip Hop today is way more technically savvy than in the past. Production wise, writing, rhyme schemes, flows, etc. Not to mention the incorporation of every other genre (country, edm, jazz, etc.) which was not around back then.

Yes there is a watered down sub-section of hip hop that is extremely cookie cutter and repetitive. That also seems to be the same pool mainstream tastemakers pull from. All that being said, there are more skilled lyrical rappers than ever before. Start with a rapper like Mach Hommy, Evidence, Your Old Droog, Open Mike Eagle, MIKE, Navy Blue, CRIMEAPPLE etc. and branch off from all the collaborators they work with. I don't want to get crazy cuz again counterproductive but I could make a list of 50 or more underground lyrical titans that most wont hear unless they look.

That's all i got
 
I'm not here to discuss Kanye because everyone knows where I stand and to start sharing my ideas would be coutner productive to the effectiveness of myself of work.....

BUT to address the new age of hip hop part. Hip Hop today is way more technically savvy than in the past. Production wise, writing, rhyme schemes, flows, etc. Not to mention the incorporation of every other genre (country, edm, jazz, etc.) which was not around back then.

Yes there is a watered down sub-section of hip hop that is extremely cookie cutter and repetitive. That also seems to be the same pool mainstream tastemakers pull from. All that being said, there are more skilled lyrical rappers than ever before. Start with a rapper like Mach Hommy, Evidence, Your Old Droog, Open Mike Eagle, MIKE, Navy Blue, CRIMEAPPLE etc. and branch off from all the collaborators they work with. I don't want to get crazy cuz again counterproductive but I could make a list of 50 or more underground lyrical titans that most wont hear unless they look.

That's all i got

100% on the there is so much excellent hip-hop part. Technology is certainly more of an influence, but the saavy part I might argue was waaaay more difficult in the 80's and 90's
 
Say more about this -- what is the 'push' that you see from him? Real question, not baiting for an argument. Like if you were trying to describe Kanye's influence to an alien who's only heard Earth's hip-hop up through circa 2006 because the more recent radio waves just haven't gotten that far yet, how would you talk about his impact?

Edit: and by that I mean beyond "other artists are influenced by or imitate the things he does." What are those things? (heavy use of auto tune being one, I assume)

So this is coming from a person that is a little older than say @Woob_woob and to whom Kanye wasn't particularly important and really doesn't know how to speak on this subject matter very well so forgive me if I don't describe this totally correctly and for the generalizations.

Prior to Kanye the producer which pre-dates kanye the solo artist, hip-hop whether it be mainstream, underground, abstract (whatever label) was mainly using looped samples, looped drums, and depending on the artist other DJ elements (scratching is an example). Kanye began to use more variations of drums within songs that represented both a technical advancement, but also was very mainstream sounding. Those two things rarely happen together (I think). Usually, technical advancement trickles through and gets taken someplace else by a more mainstream sound/artist. Kanye was able to do both. Kanye isn't a gifted rapper, but early on the subject matter that was brought more mainstream in his rhymes was also an advancement. Kanye was classified as backpacker, which was a sort-of tongue in cheek, dis because backpack was associated with more underground, left-leaning, conscious (i h8 that term), or abstract hip-hop. Kanye took that more difficult, non-party rap, and through his production and writing made it into something else that was much more digestible by mainstream listeners.

Once the college trilogy happened, there was another evolution, that initially seemed far-fetched and ridiculous at the time. The use of auto-tune on 808's was artistically revolutionary. The album concept maybe less so but it was delivered pretty impecably. Auto-tune was well known and music snobreity were critical of it at the time, but Kanye took that criticism and created something the snobriety almost universal acclaimed as high-art.

MBDTF was another leap forward production-wise and as a singular piece of art. The production that was already very thematic, became even more so, and the marriage of personal, private thoughts with more classic expressions of black experience and to maintain a sound and product that was still very mainstream is (I think) both an achievement and surprising even after his 4 previous albums. By this point, the beats (drums) had advanced again. They were more layered, different instruments were being used, but I think like most of KW's work the sum of the parts are greater than any individual component.

After MBDTF I fell off. I was going thru some things and I stopped paying attention. So someone else will need to take it from there - not that anyone would agree with my summary.
 
100% on the there is so much excellent hip-hop part. Technology is certainly more of an influence, but the saavy part I might argue was waaaay more difficult in the 80's and 90's

So u don't think that it has to do with over saturation? The 80s and 90s had corn ball groups and acts just like they had top tier lyricists, but it seems like for every 1 star MC there are 4 just like him today with much more complexy rhyme schemes, patterns, vocabulary, etc

Like KRS-ONE was a top tier lyricist, but compare a "woke" verse of his regarding a specific subject, and compare it to a "woke" verse from Earl today and I feel like i'd have to rewind earl more times then KRS to get the just. Just one small example meant to be metaphoric of course but to each their own! Back 2 work
 
So u don't think that it has to do with over saturation? The 80s and 90s had corn ball groups and acts just like they had top tier lyricists, but it seems like for every 1 star MC there are 4 just like him today with much more complexy rhyme schemes, patterns, vocabulary, etc

Like KRS-ONE was a top tier lyricist, but compare a "woke" verse of his regarding a specific subject, and compare it to a "woke" verse from Earl today and I feel like i'd have to rewind earl more times then KRS to get the just. Just one small example meant to be metaphoric of course but to each their own! Back 2 work

I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to with regards to over-saturation? Do you mean that you have to do more to stand out today or be interesting today? I'd have to think about that.

Hip-hop is waaay more expansive today than 30's years ago. It's a long time and the industry is very different in general. An artist like Earl may have existed in 1991 but there was no way anyone was going to hear them. At the same time, Earl exists now because he carved something new and different out of everything that came before.

Is KRS one more simplistic a rapper? Yes was the production more of a simplistic sound? Yes. Was it easier to achieve then? I don't think so.
 
I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to with regards to over-saturation? Do you mean that you have to do more to stand out today or be interesting today? I'd have to think about that.

Hip-hop is waaay more expansive today than 30's years ago. It's a long time and the industry is very different in general. An artist like Earl may have existed in 1991 but there was no way anyone was going to hear them. At the same time, Earl exists now because he carved something new and different out of everything that came before.

Is KRS one more simplistic a rapper? Yes was the production more of a simplistic sound? Yes. Was it easier to achieve then? I don't think so.

I meant over saturation as in, like there are 100,000 hip hop artists today, so from the general public (not you) it appears "it's become less fine tuned than it was back in the day", but imo that is just the new kids trying to force a new lane to stand out (like Earl and Tyler did with OF)

but all in all i agree with some points ur making too so i guess it's a mix of both. MAIN POINT:

GO STREAM MACH HOMMY !!!!. They didn't have Mach in the 90s. *miss me with the DOOM in 99 comparison too* :)
 
If the metric is how many times you have to listen to understand the point, maybe he's just a more effective communicator?
Not for every artist lol but there are artists that go for the "rewind factor" and aim to be complex and coded

I mean I had to rewind KRS to get the references when I was in middle and high-school event though (to clarify) the rhyme pattern/style was more straightforward. I listened to those public enemy albums over and over again to try to understand why My Uzi Weighs A Ton.

If everyone was still as straightforward where would the genre be at? Thankfully everyone isn't just replicating those earlier artists, which is why (in-part) the genre has persisted.

Aside: I had a really ignorant music teach in the 7th grade tell us in class that rap music was a fad and would be gone in a few years. I sometimes want to look Mr. Duran up and send him a hearty fuck you... but that would be petty right?
 
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I meant over saturation as in, like there are 100,000 hip hop artists today, so from the general public (not you) it appears "it's become less fine tuned than it was back in the day", but imo that is just the new kids trying to force a new lane to stand out (like Earl and Tyler did with OF)

but all in all i agree with some points ur making too so i guess it's a mix of both. MAIN POINT:

GO STREAM MACH HOMMY !!!!. They didn't have Mach in the 90s. *miss me with the DOOM in 99 comparison too* :)

I guess. I don't know how the general public or the mainstream perceive hip-hop. The "good-stuff" has always been a little less-known and a little harder to come by imo... that's super snobby I suppose, but I'm accepting my truth.

That's in part what is so significant about Kanye. Mainstream, general public, underground, music critic all have found whatever it is that he does interesting and valuable at some point.
 
I mean I had to rewind KRS to get the references when I was in middle and high-school event though (to clarify) the rhyme pattern/style was more straightforward. I listened to those public enemy albums over and over again to try to understand why My Uzi Weighs A Ton.

If everyone was still as straightforward where would the genre be at? Thankfully everyone isn't just replicating those earlier artists, which is why (in-part) the genre has persisted.

Aside: I had a really ignorant music teach in the 7th grade tell us in class that rap music was a fad and would be gone in a few years. I sometimes want to look Mr. Duran up and send him a hearty fuck you... but that would be petty right?

FUCK MR. DURAN

also, Tha God Fahim is the perfect example of a basic/simple 90s flow/pattern/rhyme scheme making it to 2020 lolol

When Fahim said I bring that old school feel forreal, i felt that hahaa
 
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