How was it when The College Dropout came out?

[LunaticVillage415]

Kanye was the biggest thing in Rap in 04’. Black people definitely were fukking with Ye. His music was played on black radio 24/7. Hood nikkas fukked with Ye too because he was like a modern day Pete Rock in terms of beat production. Everyone wanted a Ye beat back then. Also, his ability to make songs was crazy. Dipset and G Unit musically were weak compared to Ye. Dipset and G Unit peaked in 03’. After that, both camps no longer generated the level of success they had that year. Which is why there was the widely publicized album release square off between Ye and 50 in 05’.

I knew no one who was a super tough guy who refused to admit Ye was dope. And Ye wasn’t exactly Drake either. He spent his childhood in the hood in Chicago and came off as being true to the game black. People forget how big positive Hip Hop was in the early 90’s. The early 2000’s saw a brief reemergence of positive Hip Hop with artists like Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Dead Prez and Common making hits. Ye was like the last neo soul influenced neo backpacker positive rapper to emerge and make an impact in the early 2000’s. Ye was like a modern Native Tongues, Tribe Called Quest type rapper. He also had everyone switching their wardrobe from tall tees and jerseys to all Polo everything and premium denim. He had hood nikkas dressing like a 2000’s Carlton Banks.

 

[Cloutius Maximus]

i was more excited for late registration. the roll out for that was incredible. Ye was definitely that dude when LR dropped

i remember a snippet of We Major leaked and I ran that shyt back so many times like

 

[TheDarceKnight]

I think people also aren't understanding that College Dropout dropped like two months after Beg For Mercy. So people were still on G Unit heavy even though College Dropout ended up bigger than that album and the G Unit solos that came out that year.

Also, Kanye had an impact on Dip Set's run as he was featured on Cam's "Down and Out" and produced "Dip Set Forever". He was credited with "Down and Out" on production, but later clarified that his cousin Brian Miller produced it.

No rapper was bigger than Kanye in 2004 except 50 and maybe Kast.

Great post. Yep, I think Beg for Mercy was Nov. 2003 and Dropout was Feb. 2004. They were close, and the popularity of G-Unit would go on to slowly decline as Kanye's would continue to rise.

I'd even say Kanye's impact on Dipset goes a little farther than that. IMO Kanye, Just Blaze, and Bink all had some influence on the Heatmakerz even before Kanye was as well known for rapping.

Kanye produced on Diplomatic Immunity too. It was only 1 track, and it wasn't that dope. But yeah, I always thought part of that chipmunk soul style was influenced by Kanye.

 

[Foxmulder]

I’ll be honest my reaction was “this nikka trying to rap now”? Bought the album 2 months after release and been a Kanye fan ever since.

 

[TheDarceKnight]

How was Blaze beats more popular when Kanye was more sought after during that era?

And act like the singles Just produced weren't pushed extra hard.

Just blaze beats were more popular breh.

O3 bonnie?? All they did was sample Makaveli. That song wasn't poppin like that anyway. They just pushed it extra hard.

I gotta jump in this convo. I think Kanye's beats were a little more popular, but I think the margin was pretty slim. I remember people even thinking Kanye produced shyt like Girls Girls Girls/U Don't Know/Song Cry because he seemed to develop the biggest name out of the big 3 Blueprint producers.

@Wacky D I feel like Just had a little more well known bangers within the more street rap lane. What We Do, I Really Mean It, Roc The Mic, Mack bytch, Breathe, Safe to Say, etc.

Obviously he had Song Cry, PSA, etc, but I think Kanye had slightly more mainstream mainstream commercial beats. He was doing singles for Alicia Keys and stuff like that. You're right that 03 Bonnie and Clyde wasn't a huge deal, but neither Kanye nor Just had many songs on Blueprint 2 that became big singles.

 

[JustCKing]

I gotta jump in this convo. I think Kanye's beats were a little more popular, but I think the margin was pretty slim. I remember people even thinking Kanye produced shyt like Girls Girls Girls/U Don't Know/Song Cry because he seemed to develop the biggest name out of the big 3 Blueprint producers.

@Wacky D I feel like Just had a little more well known bangers within the more street rap lane. What We Do, I Really Mean It, Roc The Mic, Mack bytch, Breathe, Safe to Say, etc.

Obviously he had Song Cry, PSA, etc, but I think Kanye had slightly more mainstream mainstream commercial beats. He was doing singles for Alicia Keys and stuff like that. You're right that 03 Bonnie and Clyde wasn't a huge deal, but neither Kanye nor Just had many songs on Blueprint 2 that became big singles.

Kanye also had beats that were more in the street rap lane, I mean:

Jay Z- This Can't Be Life

Jay Z- Takeover

Scarface- Guess Who's Back

Beanie Sigel- The Truth

Beanie Sigel- Nothin Like It

Dip Set- Champions

The Game- Dreams

And "Bonnie & Clyde" was a big single on BP2. It's actually one of Jay's bigger singles.

 

[MurderToCassette]

I remember when College Dropout was fairly new and he was on the cover of Scratch Magazine. In his interview he said he wanted to drop a version of The College Dropout with just the strings and call it the "Stringstrumentals", thats when I knew he was on some other shyt

 

[Wacky D]

I gotta jump in this convo. I think Kanye's beats were a little more popular, but I think the margin was pretty slim. I remember people even thinking Kanye produced shyt like Girls Girls Girls/U Don't Know/Song Cry because he seemed to develop the biggest name out of the big 3 Blueprint producers.

@Wacky D I feel like Just had a little more well known bangers within the more street rap lane. What We Do, I Really Mean It, Roc The Mic, Mack bytch, Breathe, Safe to Say, etc.

Obviously he had Song Cry, PSA, etc, but I think Kanye had slightly more mainstream mainstream commercial beats. He was doing singles for Alicia Keys and stuff like that. You're right that 03 Bonnie and Clyde wasn't a huge deal, but neither Kanye nor Just had many songs on Blueprint 2 that became big singles.

Kanye's stock in the mainstream rose up AFTER he started rapping.

When people seek out mainstream producers, they mostly want the name value that comes with it. A feature of some sort likely comes with it as well, if the producer is an artist themselves.

Just blaze singles from like 20 years ago are still lingering, like "Oh boy" and "pump it up" and the list goes on. Let's not act like he was a popular mix-show producer.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Instant classic.

Dude was on fukking Oprah.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Not gonna lie, my first reaction was like damn this is me even though I just got into high school. This is coming from a super dipset fan but I never felt like I related to em. Felt refreshing and I found it very cool that he made all of the beats.

Yep. Next to Pharrell and NERD, Kanye was the only ones pushing back against RAMPANT gangster rap and created a lane for the entire lane of alternative suburb rappers we have now

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

how yall forget the FRESHMAN ADJUSTMENT mixtapes?

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

The same demographic that tried to downplay early Kanye, were the same ones begging for a Kanye beat.

this is so profound I never considered it.

This is PRECISELY what they were doing

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

Y'all need to stop lying y'all wasn't bumping Common the time College Dropout dropped because after Like Water he dropped Electic Circus and by the way y'all nikkas talk about Yeezus y'all did not fukk with Common left field experimental album Electic Circus, y'all left him for dead and the only people I know that love that album are the hardcore Okayplayer Heads.

So y'all need to stop frontin, It was Kanye who brought Common back on Get'Em High, it was Kanye who put the battery in his back again when he came with to me Hip Hop Quotable of the year and produced his 2nd Classic album BE, Kanye resurrected Common from the dead and made him who he is today, he gave Common a 2nd life

Y'all stop frontin

Yep. Kanye saved Common from going extinct.

 

[Slim Charles]

The influence of Kanye, College Dropout, Late Registrarion looking back was huge. That whole conscious, hip hop head , sneaker head breh who goes on Niketalk/ hip hop forums/ listens to ‘real hip hop’ was very niche scene. Here in London there was a very small crowd of people who you could talk about Mos Def then talk about the latest Jordan release. Was a great era

now the internet’s wider explosion into the mainstream plays a huge role and other factors but Kanye was cut from the same cloth as that internet streetwear hip hop dude, and without question Kanye turned a lot of people into that whole scene. And now every little kid a sneaker head hypebeast.

 

[jensyao]

I was watching rap city in the basement with big tig at the time and every fukking day, Through the Wire would come on early or super late in the time slot (I swear, Rap City took payola to play videos because songs like Money in the Bank, No Problem, and Lil Jon songs in general were mad annoying and redundant but they play those shyts exclusively several times a day in 2005-06, which made Big Tig retire from the show...Don't get me wrong, Lil Jon was the shyt in some settings when he first came up but the singles that he decided to promote late in his career were questionable and monotonous/repetitive at best when there were better hits on the album)

they were trying to push the narrative that Kanye rapping after his accident was death defying, was a choice of conscious, and was equivalent to 50 cent getting shot 9 times. they were trying to push the narrative that all artists who go thru some type of traumatic death experience comes out rapping with a sense of purpose harder than those who didn't go thru any of it. I remember kanye was on rap city and he didn't shy away from any of the questions about his accident and he really thought it was a come-up ploy to get attention as a promotional narrative similar to how 50 got shot and people wouldn't stop talking about it, except that more people in america go thru car accidents each year and it gathered some clout but not enough until Kanye dissed George Bush on TV and that's when all the conscious fans came out the woodworks and thought that Kanye was the real deal and started buying his albums along with trying to make 50 cent retire with Graduation vs Curtis.

Kanye's All Falls Down (Self Conscious) video premiered on 106 and park countdown and I really thought that hip hop was going to steer back into the direction of the talib kweli/common wave of being introspective and lyrical until we found out that Consequence penned most of Kanye's early raps, so it was all smoke and shadow puppets from there -- Talib Kweli started emulating Lil Wayne's southern style of rapping on a couple of his albums after this...Chicago definitely had a wave with Shawnna, Common, Kanye, Consequence, Twista and a couple chicago producers coming up but then the wheels fell out the wagon for some reason...twista couldn't make a hit without kanye's direction and kept on making horny strip club songs with the phrase "lemme drink your bathwater" in one of his songs -- Twista always had flair when other people give him a sense of song direction but somehow mostly stayed in the same creative lanes when coming up with his own songs...Common decided to team up with Pharrell and made Universal Mind Control where he abandoned his The Corner Last Poet vibes and traded that for some hipster shyt. The boost phone commercial with Luda, Common, Game, and Kanye was fire and I was surprised they made a full song out of it on a Game Mixtape and that was when hip hop sincerely felt unified before it all fell apart. Shawnna split with Ludacris probably because of money/contract issues -- in fact, all rapper-ran labels have disgruntled signees during this time. Consequence was mad at Kanye for not giving him ghostwriter credit and royalties and Kanye had to pay Consequence hush money. Everybody from chicago fell off the rails after that run in 2004-05, where kanye ran his rapper-rehabilitation clinic label trying to recruit ghostwriters for his own projects but that was chicago's run in a nutshell before southside trap, juke, and drill came along and Kanye tried emulating a few of those one hit wonder rappers for a creative come-up. again, I never understood how the stauchinest of religious background white boys decided to like Kanye even as early as MBDTF's Good Friday drops/Touch The Sky video -- that shyt never made sense to me...I think Kanye was also in a playboy magazine talking about how he convinced Evel Knievel that his portrayal of him for the Touch The Sky video was an act of adoration if somebody could find that article...Kanye was on some self righteous afrocentric shyt talking about blood diamonds in Diamonds Are Forever but then tried to appeal to more of his religious conservative fanbase by making music exclusive towards their views and what they like, and then doubled down and said he was on this Jesus Walks mission this whole time, even though he made a lot of songs about his vices like MBDTF and I Love It in between