One thing the AI response fails to address is why the 808 became affordable. It got a really mixed response when it was released as people didn’t really like the unnatural synthetic sounds. The 808 (and 909) was a commercial failure and many of them made their way into the second hand market as producers were “upgrading” to sample based machines. Younger and upcoming producers found these machines for cheap and started experimenting with the sounds without regard to how natural they sounded. This pretty much gave birth to the sound of hip hop and many electronic music styles.
One thing the AI response fails to address is why the 808 became affordable. It got a really mixed response when it was released as people didn’t really like the unnatural synthetic sounds. The 808 (and 909) was a commercial failure and many of them made their way into the second hand market as producers were “upgrading” to sample based machines. Younger and upcoming producers found these machines for cheap and started experimenting with the sounds without regard to how natural they sounded. This pretty much gave birth to the sound of hip hop and many electronic music styles.