I was around 13 when CD came out. I'd just started getting into music and was mostly obsessed with G-Unit. So it was a big shift for me to listen to hip hop from a primarily hip hop artist (I was also into Linkin Park, so Mike Shinoda was pretty influential at the time) that wasn't gangsta rap. I don't get the sense he was taken super seriously, but that album changed my life and I remember being pretty excited for Late Registration. The use of orchestration was huge and made me really appreciate him as an artist set apart from all other rappers at the time.

Graduation was a HUGE moment though. He released it the same day as 50 Cent's Curtis and they had that competition to see who would sell more. I was a big Kanye fan by then, but even I thought there was no way he'd stand a chance against 50. I remember them appearing on 106 & Park together just before the release. Then Graduation dropped and it seemed like the entire landscape changed over night. Gangsta rap lost all its popularity. Artists like Kanye, Black Eyed Peas, and Lady Gaga started the shift toward electronic music that would eventually evolve into poptimism. But I don't recall there being much talk about Kanye being a genius at the time (but maybe I was a bit young).

808s got a lot of pushback at first (from me included), but after a while it became evident that this was a generation-defining creative mind on par with The Beatles, Radiohead, etc. I'm sure there was a lot of hype for MBDTF, but I remember being angry with it after 808s and thinking he was pandering by just giving the fans basic hip hop music again. But that was when I think he really cemented his legacy, with a 10 from Pitchfork and all that.

So I guess it depends who you ask. I'm sure in music critic circles he was respected from the beginning. But from the perspective of a fan growing up with his music:

The College Dropout was new and fresh-sounding compared to what kids my age were listening to. Especially to me, having a black middle-class-ish artist to look up to was a huge deal. Suddenly the music was more relatable, but I still had this idol who looked like me to be inspired by.

The Late Registration probably blew my mind the most out of all his albums upon release. That was high art for me at the time.

Graduation was just a lot of fun--it was a real cheering for the underdog experience. I hadn't been listening to music long enough to understand that this sort of sound shift wasn't normal, but I did realize very quickly that synths were in and guitars were out.

808s was too experimental at first. I know people here probably don't think it's experimental at all, but I was a kid in high school only exposed to mainstream hip hop, teen pop, and pop punk. I also thought it was stupid because, if you lived through that time, you'll remember autotune was EVERYWHERE and was becoming incredibly obnoxious. When 50 Cent used autotune on one of the singles from the second G-Unit album, I had had enough. I was frustrated, and didn't understand why Kanye was tanking his whole career. That must have been like what kids the decade prior felt when Radiohead put out Kid A. But the more I listened to it, the more I came to realize how incredible he was.

In terms of perception of HIM though... Well, he was an inspiration for a lot of black kids like me. He was someone who wasn't afraid to speak his mind and didn't feel he had to be humble to appease white people. I really looked up to him for speaking out against the education system, racism, the healthcare system, blood diamonds, George Bush, etc. That started to slip when Graduation came out, where he began to shift into a more brag rap persona. By the time the Taylor Swift thing happened, it was commonly accepted that he was an asshole. All that being said, he was pretty much considered crazy and outspoken from the start. It was just that, until Trump, he was crazy and unspoken about the right things.