A decade later, the six-year wait for Tha Carter V and West’s ostensible remake of Yeezus is likely the end of a period in which each artist’s commercial and creative impact led the pack, even as both projects gesture at the influence they’ve had on the genre. The characters they both played made the popular image of a rapper indistinguishable from the biggest pop stars on the planet, and set hip-hop on new courses with every album release. Kanye was the most thoughtful rapper alive, until he became the least thoughtful. Wayne built his career on releasing everything he recorded, until he got eaten by the machine.

Wayne was a rapper’s rapper who lived only to make music - the more head-spinning the better - and Kanye strove to convince a world behind on the times that hip-hop could be high art. Now, a tumultuous decade later, it feels like that era is ending.Īt their best, Wayne and Kanye deconstructed the rapper into two distinct, iconoclastic archetypes.

Two albums, two generational talents, both reaching their commercial pinnacles - these were coronations, and an era of rap at its peak. A year later, Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III sold over a million.

Kanye West’s third studio album, Graduation, sold 957,000 copies in its first week in 2007.

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