Meh. They make it sound like Kanye is the vanguard of rap.
Maybe i'm wrong. And someone can prove me wrong, but Kanye's earlier production work with the soul stuff, up until Graduation (maybe), was somewhat lazy in his soul-sampling and beat sampling. His production sounds were pretty obvious where the beat was from. In a lot of cases, he doesn't change too much between the original sample (if anything at all) and really just added an appropriate drum or 808, and a bassline with the scratched-in hook.
It sounded dope, but i can't point really point to many beats where you listen to the sound and think "that's incredible how he flipped a small sample beat sample into something totally in left field.
Sometimes i think his music is made out to be more than it really is, just b/c it's Kanye. Especially with the "bringing soul samples back". If you check samples of music, it's always been around, just not as obvious as in Kanye's production.
Just Blaze, IMO, did more for soul-sampling on The Blueprint than Kanye. Kanye just stuck to that sound and sorta made it his trademark.
And RZA was the one to bring the style of sampling Kanye uses. I've seen numerous times on Reddit and a couple other places, where people treat him like some kind of musical god for "inventing chipmunk sampling". When infact, RZA's been doing that sampling style since Shadowboxin'. And perfected the chipmunk sound on 'For Heaven's Sake' in 1997.
Also, Puff's No Way Out had plenty of soul sampling. Mos Def's had that sorta sound.
Not to take a great deal away from Kanye, or to diminish his accomplishments. But I think his influence in terms of changing the sound is overblown a lot. He's a dope producer, and an average rapper. But I wouldn't put him as some kind of vanguard of the genre like too many people do.
(i'm prepared for negative reactions)