his albums are in the style of, of a sound that HE'S defining? At least with his more recent albums, I feel like even if they end up as music of the moments, he was the reason the music defined the moment to begin with. Dropout's soul, sped-up sample obviously wasn't the first album to sound like that, but Ye was very responsible for it being a huge fad in hip hop. Dropout sounds so "early 2000s" because he made that sound the defining sound of that era.

Same can be said with 808s (though, unlike the others, I have zero love for that album).

In that sense, I don't think he should be discredited for his albums being stuck in the era they came in.