808s & Heartbreak - Legacy and Influence

Legacy and Influence

Although West designed it as a melancholic pop album, 808s & Heartbreak had a significant effect on hip hop music. 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. During the release of The Blueprint 3, New York rap mogul Jay-Z revealed 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." 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.

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, including B.o.B, Kid Cudi, Childish Gambino, Frank Ocean, The Weeknd, and Drake. 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." 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."

Music writer Greg Kot views that the album "set off" the "wave of inward-looking sensitivity" and "emo"-inspired rappers during the late 2000s, writing that 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." Craig D. Linsey of The Village Voice writes 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." Marcus Scott of GIANT writes that rappers such as B.o.B, Drake, and Kid Cudi followed West's album with similarly-minded works, with Scott noting West's introspective, emotional themes and his synthpop and "Vangelis-inspired" music as influences. Drake's 2009 mixtape So Far Gone received comparisons from music critics to 808s & Heartbreak. Todd Martens of the Los Angeles Times cited 808s & Heartbreak as "the template for essentially the entirety of Drake's young career", and that wrote that he "shares West's love for mood and never-ending existential analysis". In a 2009 interview, Drake cited West as "the most influential person" in shaping his own sound.