Ironically enough, “The College Dropout” hit me – and pretty much the rest of the world – during my junior year of college. No one who gave that album a listen needed a degree to know that Kanye West was onto something huge.

His rhymes, his metaphors, his beats and his style shot through 2004 like a jolt of electricity, generating heat in the previously lukewarm rap realm. At a time when club friendly but poetically broke hits like The Ying Yang Twins’ “Salt Shaker” and Petey Pablo’s “Freak-a-Leek” topped the charts, Kanye crooned about selling drugs to get by (“We Don’t Care”), his near-death car crash (“Through the Wire”), and God (“Jesus Walks,” “Never Let Me Down.”)

But he wasn’t preachy. He didn’t paint himself as some sort of cleaned up, after-school-special emcee. He cursed. He dropped the “n” bomb. And he had fun with it, interspersing serious songs with tongue-in-cheek treats. “Slow Jamz,” his hilarious breakout hit with Twista and Jamie Foxx, ended up no. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100’s Top 10 Singles of 2004. “The New Workout Plan,” with its interlude of affirmations from formerly fat chicks, cracks me up still.

On every track on “The College Dropout,” Kanye kept his rhymes real, layering them over rhythms few others could conceive. (Who isn’t haunted by the choir and strings that wail through “Two Words?”) Kanye lifted the bar for beats. The melodies backing the tracks of Lupe Fiasco, Lil Wayne, Chiddy Bang, and the like? Thank “The College Dropout” for that.

So yeah, it was a great album. It has sold more than 3.5 million copies to date. It won two Grammy awards and put Kanye on the map as one of the pop culture geniuses of this era. But why is it the album of the decade?

Some might argue that Kanye didn’t do anything that wasn’t done before. Yes, Jay-Z, B.I.G., and many more treated rap as a means for storytelling long before Ye stepped into the game. These men were his mentors, and he makes mention of them – in fact, he often features their lyrical stylings — all over “The College Dropout.”

But here’s the thing – no one packaged it like Kanye. No one galvanized a new generation of hip-hop lovers like Kanye. No one, frankly, made music cool like Kanye.

Since dropping “The College Dropout,” Kanye has gone on to further influence hip-hop (exhibit A: “808s & Heartbreak” and the mass adoption of autotune), shape the sphere of pop (exhibit B: his collaboration with Lady Gaga, the new Madonna), and pioneer the trend of rappers collaborating with indie artists (exhibit C: Kanye featuring Santigold and Lykke Li: “Gifted”), to say nothing of his influence in the fields of fashion and design.

Not only did “The College Dropout” shake up the music scene in 2004, its ripple effect – making Kanye West a household name – continues to impact pop culture today. His influence remains supreme. Think about it: why would anyone have cared about what he said at ‘09’s MTV VMAs if he wasn’t a huge deal?

Therein lies my argument: more than memorable music, “The College Dropout” introduced us to a man with the power to change and shape our tastes for years to come. If any other album did that this decade, do let me know. 

>>> Sheila Marikar