The evolution of music over the years follows the inspiration of its predecessors, through samples, mentors and other uniquely creative individuals incorporating what they considered to be some of their favourite works in the industry into their own. However, there had to be one person who thought up this type of sound on their own, changing the way the modern world sounded. Albums or projects that were way ahead of their time, leading the way for the coming years of music.

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Aquemini – Outkast

One of the largest inspirations in Hip-hop today, comes from the group who created all time classics, such as “Roses” and “Ms.Jackson” Outkast had already changed the game forever. But those were classics, Aquemini was a project that would influence the further generations of Southern hip-hop and rap. The album blended the line between their heavy boom-bap lyricism with some live instrumentation and a unique mix of psychedelic jazz and funk. The album sounded completely different from what similar artists were putting out at the time, fracturing what was the standard and creating a new path for the genre for future musicians in the industry.

The Velvet Underground & Nico – The Velvet Underground

An album released during what was considered the “flower power” era, the project brought upon a new avant-garde aesthetic featuring psychedelic and droning feedback or distortion along with the brutally honest themes of the underground scene of New York City. The album swiftly became the blueprint for records that blended both punk and alternative rock and is widely regarded as a horseman of the genre for the job it’s done for up and coming artists in terms of inspiration.

Pet Sounds – The Beach Boys

An album that pioneered the entire studio as an instrument itself, Brian Wilson’s magnum opus with Pet Sounds utilizes some of the most ridiculous sounds and somehow integrates them into his project, such as bicycle bells or even barking dogs mixed it with unconventional instrumentation and turns it into an orchestral pop arrangement with vulnerable lyricism which redefined the scale of pop music.

808s and Heartbreak – Ye (fka Kanye West)

Following a personal tragedy, Ye discarded what we considered his traditional rapping in order to craft an album that was created entirely sung through Auto-Tune, over top of these sparse icy drum machines called 808s. This created a new movement ultimately normalizing the usage of the auto-tune, with influence in artists we see today like Travis Scott, somebody who looked up to Ye throughout his music career. It also introduced the 808 drum into the music world, something not commonly seen in music until then, with the machine becoming much more popular now thanks to the album. The project featured some of his most famous tracks “Heartless” and “Welcome to Heartbreak”.

Velocity: Design: Control – Sweet Trip

An album that helped inspire one of the more popular genres these days, hyperpop, Velocity: Design: Control brings about a seemingly glitched-out IDM, blended with both shoegaze and dream-pop sounds to craft an explosively electronic sounding record. For its first few years after release, the project was heavily overlooked by many, but two decades later it seemingly blew up online as fans of the hyperpop genre had found the foundational text for their favorite “glitch” sounding albums.

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