Before you unsheathe your sharpest of Internet rebuttal swords, hear me out. There aren't many contemporary artists that inspire as much debate, defense, loyalty, and disgust as Kanye, and even if you hate Kanye the Person, you probably have a fond memory of a song or album that endeared you to Kanye the Artist. I know you and your best, hip-hop loving friends have probably already come to blows over whether Late Registration is better than Graduation, or whether Ultralight Beam can match the impact of Jesus Walks, so tread forward lightly. Reading this may cause you to pick a fight with your peeps about your favorite 'Ye tracks and their reach, so get your shouts ready about which cuts out of his immense catalog had the power to influence listeners and other artists alike. Here's my take. I'm not knocking the significance of "Stronger" or "POWER," but I believe "Say You Will" is Kanye's most influential track, and I've got three solid reasons why.
1. The song introduces us to "New Kanye."
"Say You Will" is the first track on 808s and Heartbreak, an album that I and many others dismissed as too sad and too "out there" upon the first listen. 808s dropped at the tail end of 2008 and debuted as the number one album on Billboard soon after T.I.'s Paper Trail and Young Jeezy's The Recession dominated the Hip-Hop/R&B charts with hard beats, trap sound, and street themes. Kanye had been moving away from the norm in the rap game already in the glitziness of Graduation, and in the year since its release, he had endured the personal tragedies of his mother's death and the dissolution of his engagement to Alexis Phiffer. This was the type of unmitigated torment we all go through in life, but Kanye was forced to deal (or not deal with it) in the spotlight. Slightly over a year later, 808s and Heartbreak emerged as the product of immense loss and, well, heartbreak.
When Kanye and 50 Cent infamously pitted their releases against each other, Graduation beat Curtis by a wide margin, and fans signaled that they were ready for something different in hip-hop. It was the fork in the road, the point in pop culture that unequivocally separates “Old Kanye” from “New Kanye,” which is the moody, brash(er), even more adventurous version that has endured through the release of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Yeezus, and The Life of Pablo. This was the shift that paved the way for 808s, which marked the end of Kanye’s appeal to a sizable chunk of his fanbase. Even so, we still don't wholly trust him (especially when it comes to his new signees), but we can't say the guy isn't still skilled at what he does.
2. "Say You Will" opens Kanye's most influential album.
Speaking of those mind-bogglingly bold and awesome artistic choices, "Say You Will" is the track that Kanye chose to introduce this monument of an album. Through that choice, I believe he made the track the most influential, like a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was an intentional, insightful move and it does what an intro track is supposed to do: tease the album and draw in the listener's attention. But the comical scoldings of Bernie Mac we were used to were absent and there was no hard-hitting flow like "Good Morning" delivers on Graduation. The song's premise is simple enough, but "Say You Will" was terrifying in that it was unfamiliar—our Kanye was usually so brazenly confident and utterly cool, but here he was immersed in confusion and lust after a random late-night call from his ex-lover. But throughout the minimalist instrumental of haunting vocal loops, electronic beeps, and knocking bass, we get a taste of all of the heartache, lust, fleeting joy, loneliness, despair, and hope that follows throughout the rest of the album. Despite its vast differences from its predecessors and from what his peers were doing at the time, Kanye was setting a standard we really didn't know we needed in the mainstream, so much so that countless artists have cited this album as crucial in their own development of the craft. Think about it: without "Say You Will," there's no 808s as we know it, and without 808s, there's no Kid Cudi, The Weeknd, Childish Gambino, Future, Chance the Rapper, Travis $cott, or Frank Ocean. Even Lil Wayne calimed to be inspired, and Jay-Z took Ye's cue to go all experimental on his next record, The Blueprint III.
3. The instrumental was bananas.
Honestly, in any discussion of any Kanye song or album, to say that the beats are wonderfully constructed and intricately good is a non-issue, an assumption, and a fact that we don't usually have to cover. But in this case, I want to highlight just how crazy good the beat in "Say You Will" was, and how it gave us a study in the science beat-making down to the most minor of details and the feelings they can evoke.
The song completely eschews the typical structure of a successful rap/pop song in that it does not rely on traditional chorus-verse-chorus-verse structure to get its message across. It opens with the ever-present ethereal vocals, and a heavy boom of metronome-like bass to carry listeners downward into the abyss of Kanye's depression. His auto-tuned voice opens with the simple, yet painfully familiar question: "Why would she make calls out the blue?" Accompanying the anguish in his voice is the electronic beep that instantly calls to mind a heart monitor that almost makes you wonder (and almost fear) if it'll symbolically cease. We'd all heard sad rap songs before, but we'd never heard heartbreak sound quite like that —the distortion, the boom of the 808, the synthetic feel was all mysterious and daunting. Even stranger, Kanye abandons listeners to brood alone at the end of the song; nearly two full minutes of only the instrumentation follow his impossibly short verses. It’s almost as if he’s forcing you to feel, to consider the casualties involved in love and companionship. Musically, and in theory, it shouldn't work, but it does, and that lyricless snippet prepares you for the emotional turmoil that serves as a pervasive theme throughout the rest of the album. Drake even covered this instantly recognizable beat on "Say What's Real," in 2009, cementing his place as a force in hip-hop and paying homage to an artist that would soon become his peer.
"Say You Will" got me through the drama of high school angst and messy break-ups with boyfriends and best friends alike, and I am forever grateful. With time, I reached the same conclusion most of the hip-hop community needed a little time to reach as well: 808s and Heartbreak was huge, monolithic even. It was important, and it was good, and Say You Will is an inextricable catalyst in its acclaim. It paved the way for the all of the history that Kanye made next: the 2009 VMAs and the debacle of Video of the Year, his redemption and bravura performance with MBDTF, the anger and ferocity of Yeezus and beyond.
So the next time you're embroiled in a roundtable discussion of Ye and his feats, don't forget "Say You Will" and the stir it caused in music. Because, really, it's difficult to imagine where he, and we, would be without it.
