But, as you can imagine, most rappers don't do a concept album all about the girl who broke his heart.
If you listen to music outside of the mainstream (yes, even rap), 808s and Heartbreak doesn't seem like that original or impressive of an album, and there are works by other artists that are far less appreciated or noticed but could make bigger impacts both musically and socially. I do, however, really enjoy a few of the songs on that album, and I think Kanye is an inspiring person even if he can be a total douche.
He could have made another album like Graduation and sold 10 times the records 808 did. If you want to gain some respect for Kanye, go download the Graduation album and listen to it start to finish. Not only is it great, but it is very introspective and self-critical.
How could you be so Dr. Evil
You're bringing out a side of me that I don't know
I decided we weren't gonna speak so why we up 3 a.m. on the phone
Why does she be so mad at me for, homie I don't know she's hot and cold
I won't stop, won't mess my groove up cause I already know how this thing goes,
You run and tell your friends that you're leavin' me
They say that they don't see what you see in me
You wait a couple months then you gon' see,
You'll never find nobody better than me
It's pure poetry. Never matched or surpassed. He's truly the Bob Dylan of our times.
Kayne, as a producer, does great work. His lyrics are usually good. (I'm not a fan of Misogynist hits like Kanye's Workout Plan or Golddigger, but hey.) But Bob Dylan?
(Admitting to knowing and liking hip-hop is probably instant disqualification for any future YC application. :)
And this is magically topical, since in my mind it reinforces that Kanye may be a great producer, but even Jay says, "If skills sold / Truth be told / I'd probably be / Lyrically / Talib Kweli."
Autotune. He also assembled a team of people hipper than himself to do research and development for him. In this way he's similar to contemporary artists like murakami, hirst and koons in that he's more of a manager, while his employees do the work of figuring out what's hip and helping him incorporate that into his music, videos and fashion sense.
Auto-Tune was also used to produce the prominent altered vocal effect on Cher's "Believe," recorded in 1998. When first interviewed about this, the sound engineers claimed that they had used a vocoder, in what Sound on Sound perceived as an attempt to preserve a trade secret.[7] After the massive success of "Believe," many artists imitated the technique. It was evident in songs of the late 1990s and early 2000s. Some notable examples are Gigi D'Agostino's "La Passion" and Janet Jackson's US #1 hit "All For You," among many others. After years of relative dormancy, the effect was revived in the mid-2000s by R&B singer T-Pain, who elaborated on the effect in contemporary popular music by making active use of it in his songs, a style that has since gone on to be imitated by numerous other R&B and pop artists[8] such as Kanye West and, more recently, Jamie Foxx in his hit song, "Blame It".[9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.O.A._(Death_of_Auto-Tune)
Personally, I think the hordes of talentless R&B "singers" using auto-tune have completely destroyed its creative potential. I cringe every time I hear it.
That's what we all have to do. Not just keep repeating the same shit in slightly different forms, but go somewhere else and do something new.
You can't know what you don't know till you've been somewhere you haven't ever been.