Kanye West

100 Best Albums

Essential Albums

  • The Life of Pablo
    The Life of Pablo
    The Life of Pablo

    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.

  • My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
    My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
    My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

    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.

  • 808s & Heartbreak
    808s & Heartbreak
    808s & Heartbreak

    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.

  • Graduation
    Graduation
    Graduation

    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.

  • Late Registration
    Late Registration
    Late Registration

    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.

  • The College Dropout
    The College Dropout
    The College Dropout

    Kanye West gained notoriety as a producer-for-hire before The College Dropout shook hip-hop to its core. The mix of styles and subject matter is breathtaking. Pop hits rub up against vulnerable moments. Street anthems mingle with wild humor. And “Jesus Walks” challenges beliefs like no other rap song before it. Kanye West attacks the set with confidence and conviction.

More To Hear

About Kanye West

Few artists have had as deep an impact on pop culture as Kanye West. Born in Atlanta in 1977 and raised in Chicago by his English professor mother, 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 ensuring that his chopped-and-pitched, soul-sampling sound would define rap for years after. He launched his MC career with 2004’s The College Dropout, embarking on a run of groundbreaking albums that each served as a major pacesetter for the culture around it. After 2005’s grandiose Late Registration proved that the success of his debut was no fluke, 2007’s Graduation aimed beyond hip-hop and squarely at pop stardom. Just when it felt like his growing canvas of strings, choirs. and guest stars couldn’t get any bigger, West turned inward for 2008’s 808s & Heartbreak, a sparse romantic confession that altered the course of hip-hop in favor of lovelorn rappers like Drake. From there he has sown reinvention into the DNA of every project, starting with the baroque grandeur of 2010’s budget-busting My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which made it onto Apple Music’s 100 Best Albums list. His 2013 opus Yeezus was more punky and fragmentary, smashing together divergent impulses and influences into something that only West could have made. By the time of 2016’s The Life of Pablo and 2018’s ye, he was downright infamous for a degree of brazen risk-taking (and outspoken commentary) that would have derailed almost anyone else. “You know how many times people told me my career was over?” he said to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in 2020. “No one is gonna control my opinion.” Whether it’s on 2019’s gospel-steeped JESUS IS KING or his pair of 2024 teamups with Ty Dolla $ign, West feels creatively unfettered and very much the master of his ever-expanding kingdom.

FROM
Chicago, IL
BORN
June 8, 1977
GENRE
Hip-Hop/Rap

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