Rap in the early late 90’s and early 2000’s was very different from the landscape it is at today. Beats consisted of heavy hitting drums and lyrics were centered around gang life and violence.
Kanye started his journey in the early 2000’s producing for small rappers before eventually landing a deal with Roc A Fella records after Jay-Z heard his unique style of sampling and producing. Kanye’s first major beat was “This Can’t Life” which was a chipmunk soul sample. Chipmunk soul is a style of producing where you speed up vocal samples from a sample to create a “chipmunk like” sound. This beat was the first of its kind and Kanye brought it into the industry and many more producers followed him.
But Kanye was trying to make it big as a rapper so he started rapping and producing his eventual debut album. However there were many complications as his label would was not signing Kanye as an artist. Kanye would fight for studio time and try and get other rappers to put in good words for him so the label might sign off on his album. However, one night Kanye was coming back from the studio and got into a car accident breaking his jaw. This was a major setback but Kanye saw this as an opportunity and made the song “Through the Wire” which was unique because he was rapping though a mouth that was wired shut. After making a music video and showing other big artists and producers he released the single which garnered mainstream attention. The people wanted more Kanye and his label was pressured into signing Kanye starting his new career. 
The college dropout was one of the best debut albums of all time and was massively influential. Kanye was not a thug and never claimed to be, so when he made this album it went away from the rap norm of rapping about violent and gang like activities and instead rapped about family, his life, and his come up in the game. This album would later start a revolution in the rap industry as people heard this album and could now rap about more meaningful topics. This album alone is responsible for many artist branching out into their own lives and experiences.
Kanye did dropped two more albums: late registration and graduation. Both were impactful to the industry as Kanye went for a more pop style in graduation featuring artist like T Pain and Chris Martin. The album also included more electronic production with more synths that no one had really done before.
However tragedy would strike Kanye as he was at the top. His mom, Donda, would tragically pass away due to complications during surgery. This tragedy would cripple Kanye mentally and he had to recover. His next planned album was scrapped which was a forth album on the college trilogy and Kanye instead went to work on his next album “808’s and Heartbreak”
This album I believe is the most important album in all of hip hop and rap. When Kanye made this album, new technology like autotune and 808s drum machine heavily influenced this album. While Kanye was not the first rapper to use autotune as T-Pain was doing it before him, Kanye definitely made it mainstream. The 808s drum machine was a drum kit with that gave the album harder hitting drums. On this album Kanye sings about his grieving and loss of his mother and the absence of his fiancé that left him. Kanye sang about his feelings which was not a hot topic in rap. However, when Kanye dropped this album it changed everything about what you can take about in your song. The introduction of Autotune made headlines and paved the way for modern artists like the Weekend, Travis Scott, Drake, and Future. If this album is not made many modern artists wither do not exist or take on another completely different style. Kanye made 2 of the most influential albums in music history and that was just his albums from the 2000’s and not the 2010’s.
