Is Kanye West's Yeezus the ITCOTCK of hip hop?

There were a few moments in Kanye West's career that made me draw parallels between what was going on with rock in the early 70s and the 2010s hip hop scene. His "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" album for instance had some very interesting ideas in it that could be called progressive; namely the songs Runaway, Blame Game, and Lost In The World. He also sampled King Crimson in POWER, a blatant nod to the prog pioneer. But at the end of the day this was still just a hip hop album with progressive elements in it.

2013's Yeezus was a different beast. It really opened the floodgates for what could hip hop could be. It didn't have to have a steady beat on completely repetitive samples with drums. In fact, hip hop didn't even need drums. It could have guitar solos, lush ambience, dissonant synth attacks, pulsating arpeggios. After this album came out, many hip hop artists began to emerge using much more experimental and "progressive" elements. Albums such as Danny Brown's "Atrocity Exhibition" for instance, or Tyler The Creator's "IGOR". It opens up with an abrasive punch in the face with "On Sight" similar to the opening track of ITCOTCK as well.

I'm not saying that there wasn't progressive elements to some hip hop before this album. There was Kid Cudi, Kanye's earlier work, and the electronic music producers who were making the raw ingredients to what Yeezus became. But it was Yeezus that really put this new approach to hip hop on the map in a big way and served as source of inspiration for many artists. In that way, I consider Yeezus to be hip hop's King Crimson moment. I look forward to see what else they'll do with the genre in the future.

I understand that not everyone on this forum likes Kanye or hip hop all that much. I used to hate it myself. But albums like this really opened my eyes to the art form it can be at its best and I hope you can enjoy it too. Unfortunately, rock is not the prevailing music genre in our culture, hip hop is. But it's cool to see people taking it and making something artful out of it, so maybe there's still hope for mainstream music.

Lots of revolutionary artists actually

I never understood the appeal of this kind of music... So, a post like this can only make me laugh out loud!

^Yup....100% yup. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5 and their masterpc The Message is the ITCOTKC. The Sugarhill Gang and Kurtis Blow also were the starters well before NWA, Public Enemy. The latter two were the originators of gangsta rap, all down hill after that.

siLLy puPPy wrote: Yeah i agree. Public Enemy blows Kanye away. Run DMC's Raising Hell would probably be considered hip hop's equivalent to ITCOTKC because it single-handedly brought hip hop to the mainstream Other artists that revolutionized hip hop in some way were the Wu Tang Clan, Snoop Dog with the G-funk. NWA was the leading gangsta rap artist Lots of revolutionary artists actually

Does Wu-Tang Clan get an honorable mention?

Edited by SteveG - August 24 2021 at 06:27

^ That makes sense to me. Their debut was a killer though.