....he pretty much talked his way into classics rather than necessarily making them, if that makes sense.

For Jay, he said "I'm the greatest rapper alive" so many times, the media started pushing that narrative which resulted in a lot of the fans believing it.

In regards to Kanye, he proclaims every single album he makes to be the best ever made, so I think reviews tend to be slanted because of the grandiose expectations and larger-than-life stadium sound he tends to employ, on top of his braggadocio, which again results in the fans maybe overstating an album's importance at some point as well.

That's not to say that he doesn't have great albums, he definitely does, and several of them....I just think that the way you put it is apt in regards to his catalogue: he hasn't dropped a top to bottom masterpiece, yet every one of his albums has like 4 or 5 INCREDIBLE songs, amazing pieces of art that no one but him could create, then a few really good tracks, then a couple duds. Which to me means most his albums (808s and Yeezus excluded) are really, really good, but not necessarily the perfect, flawless front to back classics that he wants us to believe they are/the media portrays them to be.

My favorite example of this in his catalogue is MBDTF. When it dropped, everyone in media immediately certified it a classic album and perfect front to back. Meanwhile the expectations were so high that when I heard it I was TOTALLY underwhelmed and besides 2 or 3 songs didn't really touch it for like a year. But then when the hype died down and I decided his talent and history made every album he drops worthy of a second chance, I gave it a chance with unbiased ears and really liked it. I still think the narrative surrounding it is a little overblown ("Monster" is a song that people rave about that I'm kinda "meh - really?" about) but outside of 2-3 songs I find it to be a really good album with replay value.

Anyway I just typed a whole lot of words to try and say that I think Jay's influence on Kanye's ego may be understated a bit. Obviously Kanye had a universe-sized ego to begin with but I do believe that Jay's penchant for proclaiming himself to be the best rubbed off on Kanye as well.