Kanye West Social Rules

Throughout musical history, there have been numerous artists who have shaped the sound, direction and aesthetic of their respective genre and pushed it to uncharted territory. These artists are hailed as icons and their impact casts a vast shadow on both future newcomers and the artists that are currently known to hold the crown. Kanye West is an artist whose name deserves to be held to this standard, as an innovator, tastemaker and arguably the most influential artist of his generation. While this may be considered a radical notion to some, and even sacrilegious to a few, West’s imprint on hip-hop music can be traced through his albums and reflected in the work of some of today’s biggest stars. One can look no further than West himself to …show more content…
Genres exist as identifiable categories that can act as constraints on an artist’s ability to create, and hip-hop in the early 2000’s certainly followed a defined set of rules. The early 2000’s in hip-hop is often referred to as the ‘bling era’; a time when the music of the genre had to have the Timbaland sound of digital keyboard beats, the lyrics reflected expensive tastes and braggadocio, and all the artists had to uphold the tough, gangster persona in order to be taken seriously. This pattern could have been seen by artists such as Young Jeezy, TI, Ludacris, and the biggest rap artist of the time, 50 Cent. 50 Cent followed this formula nearly perfectly and rode the hit party single “In Da Club” to 872,000 first week sales for his debut album. In this era, it seemed that there was no place for introspection or observations on topics such as religion, family, prejudice and materialism, until West stepped into that void. In referring to the album’s lyrical content and his character, West once said, “My persona is that I'm the regular person. Just think about whatever you've been through in the past week, and I have a song about that on my album.” This stance of appointing himself in direct relation to the