10 Albums That You Need To Listen To More Than Once

10. 808s And Heartbreak - Kanye West

In the years following the College Dropout, it's safe to say that most hip hop fans have cooled out on how innovative Kanye West's arrival was. Although the idea of a non-threatening rapper was certainly a change of pace around 2004, you can just as easily find rappers without a dangerous rap sheet all across Soundcloud today. Now, if you wanted to annoy hip hop fans, you needed to make a switch that people would remember.

Ahead of his album 808s and Heartbreak, West's dissolved 18-month engagement to Alexis Phifer and his mother's death played into the cold and chilling atmosphere of every track, which became a big turn-off for the people expecting something energetic in the vein of Graduation. There was also the fact that this was West's first hip hop album where he didn't even rap, sticking to Auto-tuned crooning for most of the record.

As much as this kind of drastic shift seemed off at the time, it ended up being the catalyst for the second wind of Kanye's career. Aside from being the icebreaker before My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, this cold and calculated approach has grown on the hip hop community better than anything else since, being the blueprint for everyone from Drake to the Weeknd. Even though Kanye is far from the genius that he makes himself out to be, he was at the very least ahead of the curve here.