Kanye West is one of the most polarizing figures in the music industry. No one truly has “no opinion” on Kanye West. Either you love his music and hang on his every tweet, or you think he’s an arrogant egomaniac. And you can aptly make a case for both sides of this argument. However, there’s one thing you can’t argue: Kanye West is, for better or worse, one of the most influential figures in hip-hop.

At an early age, Kanye West dove heavily into the rap game. From his days making beats for local Chicago rappers, to his days of his involvement in Roc-A-Fella Records, West worked tirelessly pursuing his passion and making a name for himself in a cutthroat industry. West produced for big mainstream names like Jay-Z, Cam’ron, Alicia Keys, and Ludacris and had his work featured on historic albums like The Blueprint. And yet, despite his bourgeoning success as a producer, West’s real goal was to rap.

As cited in Todd Dills’ Icons of Hip Hop: An Encyclopedia of the Movement, Music, and Culture, Kanye was rejected by multiple record companies for not portraying a “ganster image.” That lack of stereotypical rap imagery, however, is what has made Kanye West great. While the argument may have been valid 20 years ago, look at the array of characters we have topping the hip hop charts today. There’s certainly a market for the stereotypical rapper. 2 Chainz and Migos have topped the charts writing songs about their lavish lifestyles. 21 Savage has made a career for himself producing what he himself refers to as “murder music.” On the flip side, rappers nowadays have more and more frequently strayed away from the stereotypical image of a rapper. Artists like Lil Yachty and Lil Uzi Vert have based most of their music on the idea that people should be unafraid to express their true emotions. Tyler, the Creator has long advocated living a drug-free life. Young Thug appeared on his album cover Jeffrey dressed in a woman’s ballgown and has a very vocal history of embracing women’s fashion. There’s a wide array of topics of discussion in hip hop currently, and Kanye’s music is no exception. Kanye’s music, arguably, was some of the first to stray away from stereotypical rap themes and delve into more serious, yet more relatable topics.

Kanye West’s career as a solo artist, thus far, consists of seven albums over fourteen years with an eighth album on the way June 1st, 2018. While each album has a distinct sound and message, each of his seven works has made a unique impact on the musical mainstream. In fact, I make the argument below that each of Kanye’s albums has been a direct inspiration to different sounds and musical stylings throughout hip hop. We will examine each of Kanye West’s albums chronologically and define what set it apart from other hip hop albums of its time. We will then relate each album to a prominent album in the hip hop mainstream in order to show just how Kanye West has influenced hip hop over the last decade plus.

College Dropout

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Kanye’s freshman project sets the tone for how he should be known in the music industry. For most, a freshman album is an artist’s first introduction to the mainstream. They use this introductory opportunity to showcase their strengths. This can range anywhere from focusing on a specific sound to showcasing one’s lyricism. Kanye’s first undertaking showcased just how ambitious he was going to be as an artist. The College Dropout takes strong stances in criticizing the higher education system in America. More specifically, Kanye puts a magnifying glass up to the American university system and focuses specifically on how young African Americans are marginalized within the system.

The album’s criticisms are twofold. On the surface, the album focuses on how the higher education system has failed the African American community. Specifically, the ‘School Spirit’ skits discuss how the pursuit of higher education in the African American community can be futile. ‘School Spirit Part One’ hones in on how, despite one’s best efforts, pursuing higher education does not guarantee lucrative success. Regardless how many extra classes you take or how well you do, racism and nepotism will still hold the community back. To Kanye, it doesn’t make sense to waste time pursuing higher education when African Americans will still be unable to move up on the ladder socially after graduating. ‘School Spirit Part Two’ emphasizes how degrees do not directly translate to money. Money is sunk into the pursuit of higher education. The return on investment for those degrees you earn won’t come back to you if you continue to spend higher degrees and never enter the job field. These two messages culminate in the Lil Jimmy skit. Jimmy’s father dies and leaves him nothing but his degrees. No money, no inheritance, just degrees. One of the most poignant quotes from the skit comes toward the tail end, where Jimmy says, “…All the regular homeless people have newspaper, and look what I have. These are documented!”

This idea of the futility of pursuing higher education as an African American shines brightest during one of the album’s singles, ‘All Falls Down.’ ‘All Fall Down’s’ first verse depicts a college-age woman struggling to find herself in the world. Kanye says that this girl “has no idea what she’s doing in college/That major that she majored in don’t make no money/But she won’t drop out, her parents will look at her funny.” The verse continues to tell the tale of this female dropping out of college and instead pursuing a career “do[ing] hair” because this is a career that can fund her short-term materialistic goals. The verse concludes with the line “Single black female addicted to retail.” In about sixty seconds of one song, West is able to identify and critique two major conflicts plaguing lower income African American communities. West claims that many young adults are choosing to go to college just to appease their parents. These individuals don’t have an idea of what they’d like to do down the road, so their journey through higher education seems misguided. What these students do have, however, is a desire for materialistic things like cars and shoes. Their short-term desires outweigh long-term life planning.

Music he was able to inspire: KOD – J Cole

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The College Dropout is just one example of music that prides itself on being socially conscious. Hip Hop especially is no stranger to being a medium for free expression of ideas. The number of artist’s in today’s mainstream that openly express their social and political beliefs is at an all-time high for the genre. Artists like Kendrick Lamar, Logic, and Ab-Soul are most known for their socially conscious lyrics and loudly voiced opinions on politics. The College Dropout’s commercial success partly played a role in these artists’ ability to express themselves so freely. Kanye West proved with the success of his first album that expressing criticism through music is a commercially viable way to be a rapper. His thematic album opened the door for albums similar in nature to J Cole’s KOD.

Cole’s KOD carries with it a heavy criticism on drug use in American society. In an interview on April 19^th, 2018, J Cole explained that KOD has three different meanings: Kids on Drugs, King OverDose, and Kill Our Demons. The album thusly has three unique takes on drugs with relation to J Cole and society as a whole. The first title, Kids On Drugs, explains how kids now more than ever are inundated with the idea of drug culture. On TV, commercials advertise taking a pill to feel happier or alleviate pain. In music (hip hop especially),  lyrics about doing and selling drugs have become commonplace. This inundation of a drug-dependent lifestyle has left kids more open to drug usage and experimentation. The second title, King OverDose, references J Cole’s personal struggle with escapism. Cole discusses how there have been times in his life that he’s overly embraced one specific thing as a means to escape the troubles of the world. That escape comes in many different forms: from drugs and alcohol to even phone addiction. The last title, Kill Our Demons, represents the breaking of these habits and the freeing feeling one gets from doing so. Cole explains that everyone in life has some source of trauma or hardship in their life. Often times people choose to repress these things and cope with them by embracing these means of escapism. By choosing to avoid your traumas rather than embrace them, the problems linger and fester inside people. The end goal is to address the trauma in a healthy manner and move past it, learning from it as you move on.

An album so focused on mental health and drug dependence would not have existed twenty years ago. J Cole’s album does a phenomenal job of addressing a poignant social issue and using it as a running theme throughout the body of work. I believe that the commercial success of The College Dropout, coupled with an uptick in emphasis on mental health allowed for KOD to be a commercial success as an album. Kanye made a bold decision in his first album to focus on major social issues so heavily. It was certainly a risk at the time to put this out as the first project for an artist in a genre so dominated by violence, drug references, and hypermasculinity. This, however, was the first step in giving hip hop artists the option to express themselves through rap while not limiting themselves to the more popular stylings of “gangster rap.”

Late Registration

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If College Dropout is a showcase of Kanye’s lyrical ability, Late Registrationhighlights Kanye’s ability to sample and make beats. Late Registration ditches traditional hip hop beats and does its best to infuse real instruments into his songs. The instrumental for ‘Heard ‘Em Say’ consists primarily of piano and light guitar mixed with a simple drum kick. Songs like ‘Roses,’ ‘Drive Slow,’ and ‘My Way Home’ feature different keyboards as the main instrument in each of their beats. ‘Touch the Sky’ is the most ambitious of the bunch, incorporating a lot of brass and drums to create a unique sound. The entire album prides itself on sounding equal parts hip hop and jazz. West creates a perfect melding between jazzy mood music with hip hop drums. This creates a whole unique sound that draws the listener’s attention to the different layers in the music accompanying Kanye’s lyrics.

If the musical accompaniments weren’t enough to showcase Kanye’s affinity for jazz and soul on Late Registration, his choice in sampling certainly helps the cause. West calls on the help of many black music icons to help make some of his most popular songs on the album. Kanye uses the first 36 seconds of Shirley Bassey’s ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ almost verbatim to intro his song, ‘Diamonds from Sierra Leone.’ The chorus to ‘Roses’ heavily borrows from the similarly named ‘Rosie’ by Bill Withers. Even the iconic intro to the smash hit ‘Gold Digger’ samples from ‘I Got a Woman’ by Ray Charles. By borrowing from such greats as Ray Charles and Bill Withers, Kanye West helps to further create a blend of old-school jazz music and new school hip hop. This marriage is just Kanye’s first experimentation with the fusion of different musical genres. West will later try his hand at introducing different genres to hip hop with the release of his fourth album, 808s and Heartbreaks.

Despite the focus on instrumentals and sampling, Kanye West still manages to tackle social mores in the black community throughout his album. Songs like “Crack Music” and “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” tackle major social issues plaguing the African American community. Even Kanye’s most popular song from this album, “Gold Digger,” delivers a powerful message warning young stars of people looking to take advantage of their success. Kanye does not lose touch with the social issues that helped grant him this stage, and manages to still address major issues in society despite not having one concurrent theme like in College Dropout.

Music he was able to inspire: To Pimp A Butterfly – Kendrick Lamar

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Kandrick Lamar has become the face of this generation of hip hop. At this point of his career, Kandrick has established himself firmly as a voice in the mainstream. He’s been featured on the cover of Forbes as a member of their list of the 30 most influential people under the age of 30. His most recent album, DAMN., recently earned a Pulitzer Prize for its incredible display of lyricism. He was even asked to produce a soundtrack for Marvel’s Black Panther movie, the highest grossing superhero film of all time (before recently being surpassed by Avengers: Infinity War). It’s no question at this point that Kendrick Lamar is a part of the musical mainstream. He’s been able to take that platform and use it to promote his personal social message. No album is a better example of that than To Pimp a ButterflyI.

Kendrick’s third studio album, To Pimp a Butterfly, was able to recreate the premise of Late Registration and prefect it. Kendrick Lamar is able to deliver a powerful message about African American culture while fusing together the genres of hip hop and jazz. Just like Kanye was able to sample Bill Withers and Ray Charles to create his jazz-hip-hop fusion, Kendrick was able to invoke the same sounds of the 70’s-era protest soul genre. TPAB hearkens back to the days of artists like Sly and the Family Stone, Curtis Mayfield, and Marvin Gaye in order to give this jazzy sound to his dissection of modern America. These horns and brass accompany Kendrick’s bars that reference the anger of black youth within the lens of the Black Lives Matter movement. One of the bigger singles on the album, ‘Alright,’ even became somewhat of an unofficial protest anthem for the BLM movement. In an interview with the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/arts/music/kendrick-lamar-on-a-year-of-knowing-what-matters.html?_r=0), Kendrick said, “I’d go in certain parts of the world, and they were singing it in the streets…When it’s outside of the concerts, then you know it’s a little bit more deep-rooted than just a song. It’s more than just a piece of a record. It’s something that people live by — your words.” Like Late Registration before it, Kendrick is able to call back to an earlier generation of African American-dominated music and use it to speak on the current problems plaguing black American communities.

Graduation

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Graduation is the first great departure Kanye makes from his two previous works. By this point in his career, West had become a household name and a symbol of new era hip hop.  The time leading up to the release date of Graduation was marketed less like an album drop and more like a heavyweight boxing match. Kanye West’s Graduation would be going up head to head against 50 Cent’s much-anticipated Curtis. It was considered to be a very symbolic release day, with 50 Cent and Kanye representing the old and new era of hip hop respectively.

If Kanye West was going to be considered the “new era” of hip hop, Graduation was the ideal sound to define what that “new era” truly was. Kanye West’s first two albums had this inherent quality of “blackness” running throughout them. College Dropout and Late Registration both centrally focused on issues within black communities, and Kanye told the story of coming up as a black celebrity. West sampled black artists and borrowed from a lot of jazz music, an inherently black music genre. Graduation, however, was Kanye West’s first foray into the true mainstream. To make the jump from being the young face of hip hop to becoming a bona fide music icon in the mainstream, Kanye West would have to change his music for a broader audience.

‘Stronger’ is one of the best indicators of what exactly those changes were. On ‘Stronger,’ Kanye ditches his narrative-based lyrical style for a more exciting, if substance-absent, flow. West no longer discusses the African American community’s struggle with materialism; in fact, he embraces materialism in ‘Stronger,’ referring to himself as “the Christian in Christian Dior” and “the Louis Vuitton Don.” Instead of sampling some break black artist from a past generation, West’s beat borrows heavily from techno group Daft Punk’s ‘Harder Better Faster Stronger.’ What’s also noticeably absent from the lyrics to ‘Stronger’ is the use of the n-word. The n-word is incredibly divisive, yet has become a mainstay in most rap songs. In his past two albums, Kanye has been unafraid in using such a word. In fact, he made it a repetitive part of the chorus in his mega-hit off Late Registration ‘Gold Digger.’ Yet, on ‘Stronger’ and for most of Graduation, the use of such a word is noticeably absent. This seemed to be a marketing move by Kanye West more than anything. In an effort to draw in more white listeners, Kanye made his music palatable for all audiences and accessible for Top-40 radio. That came at the sacrifice of being able to liberally use a word only used within African American circles.

Saying that his music catered to a wider audience does not mean it totally lost substance. Kanye was able to simultaneously cater to his older fans while simultaneously making music for newer audiences. On the song ‘Homecoming,’ Kanye tells the story of an old love from back home who he slowly drifted away from as he became a bigger song. The song is a perfect example of West’s ability to artfully illustrate a story just using the power of song. In an effort to cater to a wider audience, Kanye called on Coldplay’s Chris Martin to sing the chorus for the song. West used features heavily to cater to wider audiences. On previous albums, West would call upon old school hip hop legends for features. College Dropout and Late Registration called upon greats such as Common, Nas, Jay-Z, Consequence, and Talib Kweli to lend their rap abilities for track. On Graduation, however, West relied on a mix of old and new stars. While Kanye still worked with artists like Mos Def and Al Be Back, he also worked with more prominent hip hop stars like Lil Wayne and T-Pain to make music with him. This blend of old and new hip hop artists combined with more single-driven song composition helped blend the line between what was hip-hop and what was pop music.

Music he was able to inspire: Thank Me Later – Drake

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For many artists, Kanye West’s Graduation was the first sign that hip hop could legitimately extend its reach beyond the realm of old-school gangster rap. When Graduation outperformed 50 Cent’s Curtis by a margin of 957,000 to 691,000 (https://uproxx.com/hiphop/kanye-graduation-vs-50-cent-curtis-changed-hip-hop-tenth-anniversary/), it marked a shift in eras and subsequently granted a career opportunity for a lot of new rappers. One such artist was Toronto-based rapper Drake. Drake is now arguably one of the biggest male pop stars in the music industry. Despite making a career in hip hop and R&B, his music has transcended genres and shattered streaming records.

Drake’s first commercially successful album, Thank Me Later, is the best example of his early mission to blend together hip hop and pop just like Graduation did before it. Drake’s style of music, like Kanye’s, avoids the traditional older hip hop tropes of drugs and violence. Instead, Drake’s hip hop relies more heavily on stereotypical pop topics of love, partying, and affluence. Even Drake’s features align more heavily with the pop-hip hop fusion, usually tapping fellow Young Money artists Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj for features on the album. While his more recent music draws inspiration from more obscure genres like Jamaican dancehall and British grime, Drake’s earlier albums exhibit the same bend of pop and rap that Graduation set out to.

808s & Heartbreaks

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Between Graduation and 808s and Heartbreaks, Kanye West went through a series of traumatic life experiences. The two most prominent losses he suffered during the time were his mother, Donda West, and longtime girlfriend Alexis Phifer. Kanye’s mother passed away unexpectedly due to a bothed plastic surgery operation, while he and Alexis Phifer went their separate ways just a short time after. The two major losses were the driving influences behind Kanye West’s fourth studio album, 808s & Heartbreaks.

808s was the most stark departure and most alienationg album Kanye had put out during the time of its release. For an artist that’s known for being cocky and narcissistic, this is the first signs of vulnerability that fans get to see from Kanye West. Kanye has made it well known just how important family is to him. Kanye showcases this closeness on songs like ‘Family Business’ from College Dropout, as well as Late Registration‘s ‘Roses’ and ‘Hey Mama.’ This is why it becomes so sad to hear songs like ‘Bad News’ and ‘Coldest Winter’ on 808s. Kanye West has channeled all of his sadness and grief from the loss of his two closest loves in life and poured it all into his music. Almost every song on the album pertains to loss, disappointment, and sadness. For a genre usually driven by excitement, affluence, and general good vibes, West being so open about his depression following the incidents is what makes the album feel so genuine and real.

With regards to musical composition, Kanye West  perfects the musical style he tried to create with ‘Stronger.’ West used the TR-808 drum machine when making the instrumentals for this project, creating a mashup of hip-hop drums with the sounds of 1980’s synthpop. Kanye West also went on to further incorporate real instruments to accompany this drum machine. ‘RoboCop’ exhibits this accompaniment nicely, where West intersperses violins within his loud, industrial beat. The end product becomes something of an electronic hip hop sounds that’s since been more adopted today.

Music he was able to inspire: Man on the Moon: The End of Day – Kid Cudi

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Kanye West’s focus on dark imagery and electronic sound directly birtheed the career of Kid Cudi. Cudi emerged onto the scene when his lead single from Man on the Moon ‘Day ‘n’ Nite’ made its way onto Top 40 radio. The song featured a much more electronic, industrialized beat than anything off of 808s, yet still borrowed the same concepts of loneliness and escapism. When the album released, it featured more of that same sound. The album prominently features imagery from nightmares and often focuses on loss, loneliness, and depression. These aren’t nuanced references, either. The chorus to ‘Soundtrack 2 My Life’ has Cudi crooning “I’ve got some issues that nobody can see, and all of these emotions are pouring out of me.” While the album has some happy moments as well, the despondent feel of 808s helped to define a lot of the sound and emotion featured on Mon on the Moon.

Kid Cudi is now known for a focus on darker imagery and emotions within his music. The kind of popularity this music receives is in no small part to the success of 808s. Cudi is even featured on one of the album during the second song, ‘Welcome to Heartbreak.’  Just as Kanye proved to Drake with Graduation that a career can be made in hip hop without relying on older rap tropes, he proved to Kid Cudi with 808s that rap fueled by negative, sadder emotion can also commercially successful. Kid Cudi went on to embrace Kanye as somewhat of a mentor, and the two have a collaborative album titled Kids See Ghost coming out June 8th, 2018.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

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The period of time following 808s was an equally tumultuous period for West, but for less sympathetic reasons. Kanye’s acting out can be most succinctly summarized with the events that transpired at the 2009 VMAs. West arrived to the award show with adult entertainer Amber Rose and a full bottle of Hennessy. West began heavily drinking and would eventually end up onstage interrupting Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech in the now infamous “Imma let you finish” moment. After all of that, Kanye West went completely dark. He flew out to Hawaii and set up shop to work on his next album. Over the next year, West would fly out countless hip hop stars to work on the album with him. The growing list of names eventually became a who’s who of the hip hop world. During studio sessions, West banned all use of cell phones and social media in order to create an environment specifically dedicated to music and music alone. What came out of this yearlong studio session would eventually be known as My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, one of West’s most universally praised albums to date.

MBDTF‘s theme was one of over-production. The album was predated by a three month long period known as the G.O.O.D. Friday series, where Kanye dropped a song (most of which weren’t featured on any album) every single Friday between August and November. When the album eventually released, it was accompanied by a 30-minute short film titled Runaway. This extravagant, over-the-top album rollout is a macrocosm of what the album would eventually be. The album was incredibly feature-heavy and ornate with regards to its beats. Each song on the album featured at least one artist, and most tracks featured a bevy of A-list hip hop artists.

The instrumentals felt less like hip hop beats and more like orchestral arrangements. West used the same TR-808 machine he used to make 808s, but focused more heavily on constructing high-quality beats with real instruments. Songs like ‘Dark Fantasy,’ ‘Blame Game,’ and ‘Runaway’ specifically incorporate a good melding of drum machine and piano, while ‘Gorgeous’ works in an electric guitar. The beat composition overall was designed to be heavily layered and more complex than the average hip hop beat. Listening to each song in high fidelity opens up a greater amount of depth to each song; each song’s instrumental accompaniment was meticulously designed down to the faintest background sounds. Each song was also longer than the average hip hop single, on average pushing 4-5 minutes. An extended version of ‘Runaway’ featured on the album is 9 minutes long and features an additional verse along with several tempo changes. This was West taking hip hop beyond popular music and turning it into a true art form.

Music he was able to inspire: Rodeo – Travis Scott

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MBDTF brought about a new appreciation for beat composition in hip hop. Artists following the release of West’s fifth studio album began to turn their attention more acutely toward the instrumentals that accompanied their music. Albums like AT.LONG.LAST.A$AP by A$AP Rocky and Mastermind by Rick Ross showcase a dramatic change in the quality of beats between these albums and their predecessors. None embody this acute attention to detail on beat-making more than Travis Scott does on his freshman album Rodeo.

In an ambitious decision for a rookie debut, most songs on the album are similar in skeletal structure to that of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s ‘Free Bird’ or Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven’ in that most songs are comprised of two dramatically different sounding halves. Songs like ‘90210’ and ‘Oh My Dis Side’ follow this pattern, linking two distinctly different beats together by theme and lyrics alone. ‘90210’ first features a sort of slow, plodding beat that trudges on behind Travis Scott’s crooning over “a pornstar girl from the valley.” At about the halfway mark, that slow beat progresses from trudging to running as a guitar comes in. Travis Scott’s flow picks up speed as well, as the topic changes to a conversation he shared with his grandmother about overworking and managing relationships. Each beat that Scott features on Rodeo has that same attention to detail and excessive layering that Kanye showcases on MBDTF.

Yeezus

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After several albums removed from making music specific for his black audience, Kanye West returns to his roots on Yeezus. On the album, Kanye goes back to addressing social issues ailing the African American community.  On ‘New Slaves,’ Kanye addresses the idea that black people are either shunned for being too poor or taken advantage of when they become rich. ‘Black Skinhead’ addresses the idea that white people are intimidated when African Americans rise to positions of power. However, West addresses these issues with a newfound aggression not seen in his previous critical works.‘Black Skinhead’ in particular is angry and high-energy, invoking a pent up aggression and resentment that exploded like a powder keg during the early months of the Black Lives Matter movement.

This anger and aggression is directly translated into the beats that accompany the equally frustrated lyrics. Every song on the album (the lone exception being the last song on the album ‘Bound 2’) sounds incredibly industrial. There’s this booming bass throughout each of the songs that’s turned up to the point of distortion. ‘I Am a God’ features a whole 30-second section that’s occupied solely by screaming and heavy breathing. The introductory beat for ‘I’m In It’ is just a booming bass backing a woman moaning “Oh!” pitched to different beats.

Even the song that incorporates the most real instruments sounds guttural and distorted. This moment comes during ‘Blood On the Leaves,’ which is based on the poem “Bitter Fruit” by Abel Meeropol (https://genius.com/Abel-meeropol-bitter-fruit-annotated). The song heavily references the poem, which depicts lynched black people as “strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.” The song begins with a simple piano accompaniment, but by the song’s beat drop becomes this mess of deep-sounding trumpets and blasting bass. This kind of aggressive, distorted sound was off-putting for a lot of Kanye West fans at the time of release due to just how different it sounded from all of hip hop at the time. Revisitations and remeditations on Yeezus, however, have driven some fans in the extreme opposite direction, dubbing the album West’s best album in his discography.

Music he was able to inspire: YouWillRegret – Ski Mask the Slump God

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Yeezus helped to heavily influence a new era of rap known as SoundCloud rap. Several artists have risen to prominence on the music streaming platform SoundCloud by creating a sound that can only be described as hip hop’s version of death metal. The subgenre relies heavily on the heavy use of bass to the point of distortion. Songs like ‘Look At Me!’ by XXXTentacion and ‘Movin” by SmokePurpp and Lil Pump are good examples of this sound. The best implementation of this in the form of an album, however, is YouWillRegret by Ski Mask the Slump God.

‘Rambo’ and ‘H2o’ showcase the same guttural, distorted bass featured on Yeezus‘ ‘Black Skinhead’ and ‘I’m In It.’ The album as a whole is able to create a very similar sound to when Yeezus is at its grimiest. However, unlike most SoundCloud rappers that rose to prominence off this specific sound, Ski Mask isn’t limited to just the one subgenre. ‘Catch Me Outside’ is much more funky and rhythmic than some of the other booming sounds that the other songs on this album feature rely on. ‘JustLikeMyPiss’ is also a much more traditional example of a modern hip hop beat and is void of any distorting bass. The only thing that really separates YouWillRegret from Yeezus is the intent behind it. While Yeezus has deeper lyrics and raises poignant point about the African American community, Ski Mask never makes any songs of substance on YouWillRegret. For the most part, his music is designed to be simple and high-energy; it never really surpasses anything more than existing for entertainment value.

The Life of Pablo

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The Life of Pablo as seen as a sort of culmination to Kanye West’s career. With his first three albums and next three albums sounding drastically different from each other, there was a division between two different types of Kanye West fans. The first camp, those who are partial to Kanye’s pre-808s work, wish they had the old Kanye back. This idea of “old Kanye” is a Kanye West that relied more heavily on witty lyricism and music sampling to make his music. The second party, those who prefer the latter three albums in Kanye West’s career, love this new Kanye that focuses more heavily on musical experimentation and innovation. In a way, The Life of Pablo is designed as an attempt to cater to both parties.

Kanye’s return to a bygone era takes the form of a reemphasis on faith and family in Kanye’s life. The College Dropout and Late Registration featured songs that were designed specifically to talk about love for family and God. While songs like ‘Family Business,’ ‘Roses,’ and ‘Hey Mama’ show listeners just how important family is in Kanye’s life, ‘Jesus Walks’ is Kanye’s way of attempting to write a song about his love of God while criticizing the mainstream for not accepting religiously influenced music. A

ll these years later, Kanye West has a family of his own. He and his wife, social media juggernaut and reality star Kim Kardashian, had two children at the time of this album. Thus, The Life of Pablo implicitly becomes a return to the values established in his first two albums. In a direct response to what he argued about in ‘Jesus Walks,’ Kanye sprinkles elements of Christian gospel music throughout the album. Songs like ‘Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 1’ and ‘Highlight’ incorporate vocals from gospel choirs. ‘Ultralight Beam’ particularly features the most religious imagery. The song begins with a child professing her love for the Lord, while Kanye sings about needing love on the world. The song also features Kelly Price singing a gospel-esqe solo and American gospel musician Kirk Franklin delivering a short sermon at the end of the album. With regards to family, Kanye addresses how much his family has helped him through his recent years battling mental health issues on the songs ‘Saint Pablo,’ ‘Real Friends,’ and ’30 Hours.’

To appease his fans seeking musical innovation, Kanye has songs that stray away from these older themes. At this point in West’s career, he has already spent several years working on his Yeezy clothing line. It only seemed fitting, then, to begin incorporating that same fashion runway music into his repertoire. The song ‘Fade’ is West’s attempt at creating “fashion rap,” where he and Post Malone utilize a beat you would find playing in the background at a fashion show as the instrumental to their rapping. Kanye experiments with a whole bunch of different sounds throughout TLOP. ‘Father Stretch My Hands Pt. 2’ is, in essence, Kanye’s interpretation of the viral hit ‘Panda’ by Desiigner. ‘No More Parties in LA’ featuring Kendrick Lamar is a modernized version of the jazzy sound featured on Late Registration and To Pimp a Butterfly. ‘Wolves’ and ‘Frank’s Track’ are departures from the rest of the album, comprising of a simple beat and ehterial-sounding howling. ‘Freestyle 4’ and ‘Facts (Charlie Heat Version)’ sound like songs that was left off of Yeezus. Kanye even playfully addresses those clamoring for the old Kanye on the a capella rap track ‘I Love Kanye.’ In total, The Life of Pablo seems like a difficult balance between two different eras of Kanye West’s music modernized for the current era.

Music he was able to inspire: Coloring Book – Chance the Rapper

https://open.spotify.com/embed/album/71QyofYesSsRMwFOTafnhB%3Fsi%3DaC66_KipQVeX-LiEsPbiaA

Chance the Rapper, a fellow Chicago native, is Kanye’s latest rap disciple. Chance rose to prominence through his two mixtapes 10 Day and Acid Rap. Acid Rap in particular was considered an underground classic for its overall sound and various drug references. Just a few months after Kanye put out TLOP, Chance released his first studio album Coloring Book. Chance, like Kanye, is forced to balance the appeal of his older albums while also incorporating a new, Christian-driven sound. With songs like ‘Smoke Break’ and ‘Mixtape,’ Chance is in classic form. He returns to his Acid Rap roots, embracing both his traditional rap skills and his R&B abilities. ‘Smoke Break’ in particular is reminiscent of Acid Rap‘s ‘Cocoa Butter Kisses.’

When Chance departs from his older mixtape sound, he begins embracing a new gospel sound like Kanye does on TLOP. ‘How Great’ and ‘All We Got’ both feature gospel choirs prominently accompanying Chance on the song, while ‘Finish Line’ and ‘Blessings’ feature lyrics with heavy allusions to Jesus, God, prayer, and Heaven. There are points on this album where old Chance and new Chance find a perfect marriage. ‘No Problem,’ the best performing single off the album, features both the backing of a gospel choir and rap A-listers in Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz. This incorporation of gospel music and the struggle between two identities ties Chance’s Coloring Book very closely to Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo. No wonder it seems so fitting for Kanye to be the featured on the album’s first song ‘All We Got.’