Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak Makes Rolling Stone's "Most Groundbreaking Album" List

Many have recognized Kanye West, without a doubt, to be one of the biggest influences in today’s musical realm. Today, Rolling Stone identifies this, and in their roundup of “The 40 Most Groundbreaking Albums of All Time”, Yeezy’s 2008 release 808s & Heartbreak is the most recent one to make the list, which goes all the way back to 1940 with Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads. While heavily criticized upon release, it soon became the template for many up-and-coming artists. Here’s what they had to say about the LP:

“Kanye West’s Auto-Tune-heavy, emotionally naked fourth album came after a brutal year during which his mother died and his engagement broke up,” the famed music-based magazine wrote. “But the album’s cavernous sound and exposed-soul lyrics confused even those who had been aware of West’s recent trials. Its core aesthetic was like nothing in Hip Hop: freshly butchered feelings enumerated in detail, but masked by digital processing; beds of spare synths used to balance a mix of singing and rapping. However, over time it served as a new template for up-and-comers in Hip Hop and R&B. Drake cited West as his budding sound’s ‘most influential person’ when he was hustling mixtapes, while artists like Future further tweaked the idea of using Auto-Tune as a way to convey emotions that evoke too much feeling when spoken of explicitly.”

Check out the rest of the list here.