Say more about this -- what is the 'push' that you see from him? Real question, not baiting for an argument. Like if you were trying to describe Kanye's influence to an alien who's only heard Earth's hip-hop up through circa 2006 because the more recent radio waves just haven't gotten that far yet, how would you talk about his impact?
Edit: and by that I mean beyond "other artists are influenced by or imitate the things he does." What are those things? (heavy use of auto tune being one, I assume)
So this is coming from a person that is a little older than say
@Woob_woob and to whom Kanye wasn't particularly important and really doesn't know how to speak on this subject matter very well so forgive me if I don't describe this totally correctly and for the generalizations.
Prior to Kanye the producer which pre-dates kanye the solo artist, hip-hop whether it be mainstream, underground, abstract (whatever label) was mainly using looped samples, looped drums, and depending on the artist other DJ elements (scratching is an example). Kanye began to use more variations of drums within songs that represented both a technical advancement, but also was very mainstream sounding. Those two things rarely happen together (I think). Usually, technical advancement trickles through and gets taken someplace else by a more mainstream sound/artist. Kanye was able to do both. Kanye isn't a gifted rapper, but early on the subject matter that was brought more mainstream in his rhymes was also an advancement. Kanye was classified as backpacker, which was a sort-of tongue in cheek, dis because backpack was associated with more underground, left-leaning, conscious (i h8 that term), or abstract hip-hop. Kanye took that more difficult, non-party rap, and through his production and writing made it into something else that was much more digestible by mainstream listeners.
Once the college trilogy happened, there was another evolution, that initially seemed far-fetched and ridiculous at the time. The use of auto-tune on 808's was artistically revolutionary. The album concept maybe less so but it was delivered pretty impecably. Auto-tune was well known and music snobreity were critical of it at the time, but Kanye took that criticism and created something the snobriety almost universal acclaimed as high-art.
MBDTF was another leap forward production-wise and as a singular piece of art. The production that was already very thematic, became even more so, and the marriage of personal, private thoughts with more classic expressions of black experience and to maintain a sound and product that was still very mainstream is (I think) both an achievement and surprising even after his 4 previous albums. By this point, the beats (drums) had advanced again. They were more layered, different instruments were being used, but I think like most of KW's work the sum of the parts are greater than any individual component.
After MBDTF I fell off. I was going thru some things and I stopped paying attention. So someone else will need to take it from there - not that anyone would agree with my summary.
