100 Best Albums
- NOV 22, 2010
- 14 Songs
- Graduation · 2007
- My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy · 2010
- 808s & Heartbreak · 2008
- The College Dropout · 2004
- VULTURES 1 · 2024
- Graduation · 2007
- Watch the Throne (Deluxe) · 2011
- The College Dropout · 2003
- Late Registration · 2005
- My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy · 2010
Essential Albums
- Despite (or perhaps thanks to) its turbulent gestation, The Life of Pablo crackles with twitchy genius. Kanye described his seventh record as a “gospel album with a lot of cussing” and spiritual inflections course through its best moments: “Ultralight Beam” is a celestial slow-burn that anoints the guesting Chance the Rapper Kanye’s chosen one, he casts Kim and himself as Mary and Joseph on the haunting “Wolves,” while the quickly infamous “Famous” has Rihanna and Nina Simone take it church. It’s a luminescent glimpse into Kanye’s constantly evolving worldview.
- Watch the Throne is the first album where JAY-Z actually sounds relaxed. Not relaxed in that tight, who-you-callin’-funny kind of way, but relaxed like you’re on top of a mountain looking down into the valley: nowhere to go, because you’re already there. He’d been collaborating with Kanye West for more than 10 years, developing a chemistry that borders on fraternal—you sense Jay didn’t just stake his business on him, but his reputation. Where Jay is the head (detached, analytical), West is the messy, impulsive heart. Not only do they represent two different sides of the rap coin (Jay the projects-born hustler, West the middle-class auteur; Jay old-school, Kanye new), they draw out the distant regions of each other’s personalities: West’s confidence to be authoritative about the world beyond himself, Jay’s comfort to let down his guard and be loose. The result is music that is personal (Jay’s verse on “Welcome to the Jungle”), political (Kanye on “Murder to Excellence”), intoxicated by wealth and status but primitive in its aggression (“N****s in Paris”). As a musical guide, West has always been a perfect fit for Jay: The soul samples make him identifiable to conservatives pushing against the futuristic side of rap (“Otis”), but he doesn’t care enough about orthodoxy to let it hold him back—he doesn’t just sample Nina Simone, he runs her through Auto-Tune (”New Day”). Measure it against either one’s career arc and it’s a classic: Kanye gets to celebrate being hailed a genius after My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and JAY-Z gets to take a break from polishing his own monument long enough to remember how he built it. With the rise of Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, and Drake, Watch the Throne gets to rest in the knowledge of seeing the pendulum of rap swing back toward pure lyricism without sacrificing musical omnivorousness that helped it cross over 10 years earlier—a reaping not just for JAY-Z and West, but for their chosen art. Don’t let their boorishness fool you into thinking they don’t know what’s going on; the smartest guy at the board meeting is always the one in jeans. “Fuck that bitch; she don’t wanna dance,” West raps on “N****s in Paris.” “Excuse my French, but I'm in France.”
- 100 Best Albums The most expensive hip-hop recording ever made, Kanye West's fifth album was a 68-minute LP pulsing with the rapper's singular mix of the self-aggrandizing and the confessional. The album combined the art-rock ambitions of The Beatles, the opulence of Pink Floyd, and the pop-star grandeur of Michael Jackson—but had the personal gravity of a singer-songwriter statement. There's a nine-minute prog-rap opus ("Runaway") that came with a 35-minute short film. The album art is by contemporary artist and Warhol associate George Condo. "All of the Lights" features an orchestra and vocals from Rihanna, Alicia Keys, and Elton John. But despite its ostentatious appearance, the heart of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is that of raw honesty, with West's frayed ends of reflection, self-criticism, relationship woes, ruminations on fame, and moments of anger. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy would forever change the landscape of hip-hop, its genre-crossing boldness, limitless imagination, and sheer sumptuousness of presentation foreshadowing the genre's 2010s turn towards maximalist sounds and arthouse design.
- Perhaps the best comparison for <I>808s & Heartbreak</I> is when Bob Dylan went electric in 1965. Like Dylan, Kanye didn’t need the fame or credibility: His third (and third multiplatinum) album, 2007’s <I>Graduation</I>, had come out only a year earlier, and he’d already established himself as the kind of visionary who could steer the conversation while hovering somewhere above it. Like Dylan, the new direction made him a genius to some and a traitor to others—a split that highlighted both the divisiveness of his art and the conservative streak in a scene where the imperative to keep it real can be as stifling as it is comforting. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, Dylan sang—a line, incidentally, from the first electric song of his that most people would have heard (“Subterranean Homesick Blues”). But you’d have to have a pretty good internal compass to bet your future on where that wind’s gonna take you. It isn’t hip-hop in the conventional sense. At least, it certainly wasn’t when it came out in 2008. But in the intervening years, the album has become a blueprint for an entirely new wave of rap: introverted, melodic, melancholy, confessional—the sound of Drake and The Weeknd on down to Juice WRLD and Lil Uzi Vert. His pain is real (“Coldest Winter”), but his arrogance is, too (“RoboCop”). He recognizes the transitory nature of life (“Street Lights”), but it doesn’t stop him from holding a grudge (“Heartless”). And no matter how alienated fame makes him feel (“Welcome to Heartbreak”), he can’t quite give it up (“Amazing”). Kanye says he started exploring melody because that’s how teachers taught concepts to him when he was a kid—learning through song. And for all its robotic austerity, <I>808s</I> is a kind of kids’ album, or at least one that taps into the rush of unsorted emotions that comes with youth. If he runs all its tracks through Auto-Tune, it isn’t just to get the notes right, but to convey the reality of what it means to try to feel everything at once: You go numb.
- If College Dropout was our introduction and Late Registration a victory lap for a newly anointed champion, then Graduation crystallizes Kanye West's stratospheric success in 24-carat surround sound. Kanye's third album pushes his reflexive rhymes and musical imagination to new places. "Good Life" is a layer cake of silver-gilded synths that lets the listener bask in Kanye's luxurious dream life for three vivid minutes, while the Daft Punk-sampling "Stronger" beams us into a futuristic dance party, awash in neon color.
- Soulful instrumentation and crisp beats define Kanye's second release. The Chi-town rapper used the extra cash earned from The College Dropout to orchestrate a lush, dynamic follow-up that marries pop-soul grooves and explosive hip-hop rhythms. The soul-inflected “Celebration” and the R&B brooder “Bring Me Down” showcase his seductive mix of hard-edged, city-bred beats with soaring strings. He hits heartbreaking heights with the stormy “Roses,” a powerful ode to his dying grandma. But it’s the Ray Charles sample and the irresistible thump of “Gold Digger” that cemented the world’s Ye addiction.
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About Kanye West
Born in Atlanta in 1977 and raised in Chicago by his English professor mother, Kanye West initially studied to be a painter while making beats on the side—a multidisciplinary drive that came to mark his career. After working on increasingly high-profile projects in the late 1990s, West broke through in 2001 with his work on JAY-Z’s The Blueprint, producing and co-writing some of the album’s biggest songs while influencing the future of rap with his chopped-and-pitched, soul-sampling sound. He launched his MC career with 2004’s The College Dropout, while 2005’s Late Registration proved his success was no fluke. By 2007’s Graduation, West transferred his aim from hip-hop to outright pop stardom. And just when it felt like his growing canvas of strings, choirs, samples, and guest stars couldn’t get any bigger, he turned inward for 2008’s sparse, lovelorn confessional, 808s & Heartbreak. From there, he has sown reinvention into the DNA of every project, starting with 2010’s sprawling and grandiose My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which made it onto Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums list, and continuing across releases such as 2013’s punky and fragmentary Yeezus, 2016’s brazen The Life of Pablo, 2019’s gospel-steeped JESUS IS KING, and his pair of 2024 teamups with Ty Dolla $ign.
- FROM
- Chicago, IL
- BORN
- June 8, 1977
- GENRE
- Hip-Hop/Rap