If there were no Kanye there would be no Big Sean, no Kid Cudi, no Drake, no Wale, no anybody who does that every man bullshit on a mainstream level.

It was never about the MCing, for anyone, be it the casual listener who loved him, the older hip-hop head who loved him or the hipster set (i.e pitchfork and co) who have loved him from the day he first arrived. It was always about his subject matter and personality, as far as Kanye the rapper goes. As for Producer, we don't even gotta question it, he has a good ear and made the kind of beats that a lot of hip hop heads and casual listeners alike appreciated.

Don't get it twisted here either, I'm not going to say he was the originator, he's more like the guy that made it all appealing to a large audience. Before Kanye, plenty of rappers occasionally addressed insecurity issues, working and struggling, wanting to make it and were honest and like-able (he wasn't so cocky yet). However none of them ever made a "All Falls Down" or "Through The Wire".

Remember the times brother, 2004. In that era he really stood out as non-gangsta, non-hood rapper. He used that to his advantage. Eminem did it when he came out by running with that psycho/drug/self-hatred shit. Kanye rolled with content anyone could relate to and still rapped well enough and made good enough beats to make it listenable. Most importantly, he was the first to do it on the level that he did, where it wasn't strictly for the heads or strictly for the purists, everybody loved that album then. It was really a game changer.

I mean shit, here we are 7 years later, and we're still feeling his influence. Like it or love it, the hood shit died off, the gangsta shit died off, and rappers who rap from middle class perspectives are getting the most hits. It's to the point where someone like Freddie Gibbs is the odd-ball in 2011 (I like him and think he does the gangsta shit exceptionally well).

That's really what it came down to. I mean we all know damn well that people in the underground did it better and we know that other mainstream rappers made attempts here and there to address the same topics. Thing is, Kanye was the first persona to somehow actively remain relevant on both sides of things, he was an instant superstar and yet he did so with an album talking about shit that related more to the every man then to the superstar.