The BIG List: VIBE x Nodfactor Present Kanye West's 50 Greatest Beats

Jay-Z “Encore” (2003)
Album: The Black Album
Sample: John Holt “I Will”
If there’s one thing Kanye specializes in, it’s grandeur. A sweeping trumpet fueled stadium beat—piano twinkles, roaring crowd and all—bolsters Jay-Z’s fleeting victory lap out the game and makes you feel like playing conductor. It’s the perfect goodbye, or, “See you later.”

Common “Be” (2005)
Album: Be 
Sample: Albert Jones “Mother Nature”
This brief yet soul-stirring two-and-a-half minute opener to Common’s arguable classic LP of the same name (produced primarily by West) kicks off with a cavernous, pulsing acoustic bass that evolves into a plush layer of keys and brass as Com waxes, what else, poetic. As album openers go, it’s the beginning of a beautiful collabo.

Cam’ron “Down and Out” (2004)
Album: Purple Haze 
Sample: William Bell feat. Mavis Staples “Strung Out” 
Back when Kanye’s beats had more of a street spark to them, he and Cam’ron made some beautiful music. This hip-hop gem has a bounce and a hood edge to it that’s perfect for Cam’s zigzag flow.

Kanye West Feat. Mos Def & Freeway “Two Words” (2004)
Album: The College Dropout 
Sample: Mandrill “Movement IV: Peace and Love”
A beat made for lyrical grandstanding, this critically heralded track off Ye’s debut hooks you with soulful strings, cipher-worthy pitter-patter drums and one pretty impressive orchestral choral arrangement, no lengthy hook needed.

Kanye West “School Spirit” (2004)
Album: The College Dropout
Sample Credit: Aretha Franklin “Spirit in the Dark”
A spiritual-esque feel-good rhythm peppered with a few mhmm hmms and fueled by sped-up Aretha vocals circa 1970 forms the basis for West’s college slack-off musings. It’s so *bleeping* soulful!

Talib Kweli Feat. Kanye West & Roy Ayers “In The Mood” (2007)
Album: Eardrum 
Sample: The Friends Of Distinction "Lonesome Mood" 
Tangy trumpets, drum slaps and a rich xylophone teleport you from subway straphanging with your iPod to a swanky nightclub during the Harlem Renaissance. A little Friends of Distinction vocal slither makes the cipher complete. Are you in the mood yet?

Kanye West “Good Morning” (2007)
Album: Graduation 
Sample: Elton John "Someone Saved My Life Tonight"
 Hearing this start the album let you know that Kanye’s evolution as a producer wasn’t just a fluke. The stripped down metallic snare with Elton John’s background singers riffing from “Someone Saved My Life” was pensive but focused.

Alicia Keys “You Don’t Know My Name” (2003)
Album: The Diary Of Alicia Keys 
Sample: The Main Ingredient “Let Me Prove My Love To You”
It’s hard to believe Kanye constructed such an enchanting R&B record—a Grammy winner at that (in 2005, for Best R&B song)—but the effortless background “oohs” here blend perfectly with those of the original, while the tranquil tumbling keys just warms your heart.

Kanye West Feat. Nas & Really Doe “We Major” (2005)
Album: Late Registration
Sample: Orange Crush “Action” 
It’s impossible not to be overwhelmed by the whirling sounds Kanye, Jon Brion and Warryn Campbell bring together on this first-ever (rhyming) collaboration between Nas and the Louis Vuitton Don. Lashing snares, crescendoed chimes and the kind of horns Caesar would wave to from his chariot make this instrumental ill enough to excuse the title and chorus’ major grammar fail. The emotional arrangement of brass and piano threatened to make this just another skinny jeans emo track but Yeezy kept it in the pocket with the classic Orange Crush drums.

Jay-Z Feat. Scarface & Beanie Sigel “This Can’t Be Life” (2000)
Album: The Dynasty: Roc La Familia 
Sample: Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes “I Miss You”
Pre-Roc-A-Fella, Kanye was struggling to pay Con-Ed and “get a Pelle Pelle off lay-away” when he crafted this gem for Jay’s posse-album-turned-solo-album. So Ye ruffled through his crate of oldies but goodies and sped up a Harold Melvin soul stirrer, emerging with a poignant track perfect for hard knock life doting.

Kanye West “Flashing Lights” (2008)
Album: Graduation 
Sample: Curtis Mayfield, “Little Child Running Wild
We all know he loves to show off, but layering some thumping handclaps over the 4:51 minute mark of Curtis Mayfield’s “Little Child Runnin Wild” is the definition of disciplined genius.

DJ Khaled Feat. Kanye West, Consequence & John Legend “Grammy Family” (2006)
Album: Listennn... The Album
Sample: Lou Rawls “You Make Me So Very Happy” 
Lou Rawls is pretty gangster, at least when he’s getting chopped and flipped for a G.O.O.D Music posse cut. At the 43-second mark of “You Make Me So Very Happy” these horns come blaring in that get pitched down with some sonic valium courtesy of Mr. West.

Talib Kweli “Get By” (2002)
Album: Quality 
Sample: Love "Doggone" & Nina Simone "Sinnerman" 
Before Kanye was toting Louis Vuitton backpacks, Talib scooped the novice rapper and took him on the road to get some early performing exposure. Surely this beat was suitable compensation years later. Listen—really listen—to the colliding elements: pulsating bass strings, infinite soul claps, tickled ivories, Nina Simone's deep vocals. All amount to a pureed production made for enduring life's everyday struggles. You're all welcome.

Kanye West “Gone” (2005)
Album: Late Registration
Sample: Joe Farrell’s “Upon This Rock” & Otis Redding “It’s Too Late”
Brion said of the track, "It's just a drum beat (Joe Farrell’s “Upon This Rock”), an Otis Redding sample (“It’s Too Late”) and Kanye going to town over it. There's a whole string section, and it turns into crazy soundtrack music. It's a big piece of work."

Kanye West “Paranoid” (2008)
Album: 808s & Heartbreak
If you were able to filter out Kanye’s singing, there were some above average instrumentals on 808s and heartbreak and this was one of them. Yeezy channeled his inner Don Johnson and made this a night at the Roxbury no one will soon forget.

Scarface Feat. Jay-Z & Beanie Sigel “Guess Who’s Back” (2002)
Album: The Fix 
Sample: The Originals “Sunrise” & Dr. Dre “Xxplosive” 
The thumping yet airy whistle-worthy feel of this ghetto anthem, balanced out by Scarface’s gruff rhymes, makes it tough not to bop your head to.

Kanye West “Street Lights” (2008)
Album: 808s and Heartbreak
There is a deafening silence in the first 24 hours after a break-up where all you can hear is your own pain. Kanye ran it through the MP and tapped out his emotions.

Common Feat. Dwele “The People” (2007)
Album: Finding Forever 
Samples: Mountain “Long Red” & Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson “We Almost Lost Detroit”
Kanye’s ambition to sonically tribute the late J. Dilla on Common’s Be works best on this symphonic track that richly cuts together ’70s vocal samples with electric bass. That Common dubs West “the new Preemo” on this song doesn’t even sound (too) incredulous.

Kanye West “I Wonder” (2008)
Album: Graduation
Sample: Labi Saffir “My Song” 
Most people have run to Labi Saffir’s “I Got The…” to package their melancholy (or angst in the case of Eminem) but Ye dug up this virgin break “My Song” to make us cry all over again.

Kanye West “Jesus Walks” (2004)
Album: The College Dropout
Sample: Lou Donaldson “Ode To Bill Joe” & Arc Choir “Walk With Me”
Easily one of Kanye’s top ten beats, the double-edged genius was in a) finding this Arc Choir sample and then b) manipulating the oft-used rolling drums courtesy of Lou Donaldsons’ “Ode to Billie Joe” to create the military cadence and mesh them perfectly to the gospeldelic moans and wails.

Kanye West “Stronger” (2007)
Album: Graduation 
Sample: Daft Punk “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”
The win for this was not just in the original sample source, but the way he had the bionic android belching his daily affirmations repeat throughout the beat as opposed to just in the hook.

Jay-Z “Takeover” (2001)
Album: The Blueprint
Sample: The Doors “5 to 1”
Everyone can recall Jay’s heartless zings at Nas and Ballerina P on this record, but what would a diss track be without a belligerent beat to match? Kanye plucks an aggressive Doors-sampled drum loop to propel this one, while the occasional “Ain’t goin’ nowhere”—also from the Doors—transforms a ’60s rock anthem into the perfect taunt. Come on!

Kanye West “Power” (2010)
Album: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Coproduction: S1
Sample: King Crimson “21st Century Schizoid Man” & Continent Number 6 "Afromerica"  
With some help from Symbolic-1, Yeezy crafted a space opera that would make George Lucas pop his light saber. We think Kanye was simply drawn to the title “21st Century Schizoid Man,” but it’s his left-field freak of the chants on “Afromerica” into an anarchists’ rallying cry that makes it so intriguing. If not for the co-production credit, we would’ve crowned this Ye’s best.

Kanye West, “Diamonds From Sierra Leone” (2005)
Album: Late Registration 
Sample: Shirley Bassey “Diamonds Are Forever”
Shirley Bassey had nerve to beef about the use of this sample and she didn’t even have rights to the track. Ye’s cousin Devo Springsteen gave him the idea to sample Barry and Don Black’s “Diamonds Are Forever” from the James Bond flick and Jon Brion sprinkled his Fiona Apple-flavored sazon. Who says Kanye doesn’t play nice with others? So why number one? With it's dips and accelerations and halts, the epic instrumental feels like a roller coaster. The sample is a classic example of Kanye flipping an unexpected rare gem in a meaningful way. The song’s significance to his career and the Roc is twofold, and the way he chopped up Shirley is what really gets his message across, even more so than the words he (and Jay-Z on the remix) are rapping. Blood diamonds, “it’s the Roc,” and all that aside, the beat is what makes this record. And there's not a better example of that in Ye’s portfolio.