I get what you're saying. I don't mean to disagree with everything you say in this forum so don't take it personally. But an album that's very sonically-oriented isn't less of a rap album. I never saw rap without beats. If you don't have a beat, you don't have a rap song. You have some spoken word concoction. If you have a melodic beat and rap, what you have is a better rap song. Plain and simple.
Also, I would not call the line I quoted a punch line. A punch line is something like, since I mentioned Celph Titled already, "My click is raw, be prepared when you meet us / Kill an unborn baby and you still couldn't de-fetus (defeat us)". What Kanye said was metaphorical with every phrase having a double meaning and with the whole line having a big socio-political and socio-economic implication. It's not just that the line was witty based on the double meaning, but what it represented overall. The line has like 200 years of history in it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not making this line out to be something out of this world, but for Kanye, a producer focused on all aspects of making a song, this line is pretty damn lyrical.
Now, quote me a line from 2010 that's better than the Kanye line I quoted.