The Evolution of Kanye West's Production Before "The College Dropout"

Before the bear suit.

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Image via Complex Original
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Kanye West has been one of the biggest rappers in the world for nearly a decade now.

But the album that cemented him as one of hip-hop’s most visionary stars, The College Dropout, came after years of paying his dues as a producer, all while trying to convince skeptics that he had artist potential beyond just being a “producer-rapper” vanity project.

From making beats for local Chicago acts under the tutelage of No I.D., to ghost-producing for Bad Boy hitmaker D-Dot, Kanye had a long road to travel before he landed in the Roc-A-Fella stable alongside Just Blaze to redefine Jay-Z’s sound for the 21st century. And every step of the way West had the sample-driven bangers to keep him climbing up the industry ladder.

While Complex TV goes behind the scenes on one of Ye’s classic productions, Talib Kweli’s “Get By,” we're looking back at 25 tracks that trace Kanye’s evolution from the earliest days of his career up until College Dropout.

Written by Al Shipley (@alshipley)

Kanye West "You On Something" (1995)

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Go Getters "Oh Oh Oh" (1998)

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Album: World Record Holders
Label: Hustle

The Go Getters, Kanye's early group with Timmy G and future G.O.O.D. Music mainstay GLC, released a handful of tracks in the late '90s, with "Oh Oh Oh" (also known as "Uh Oh") as their strongest bid for local radio airplay. John Monopoly led a picket line at WGCI to get the song on the station's playlist; when that didn't work, Mike Love began playing snippets of Go Getters music as a lead-in to ads. "Oh Oh Oh," which at one point nearly netted the group a deal with Elektra, is a crisp track full of tambourines and pizzicato string riffs, an overt attempt at a club banger.

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Grav "City to City" (1996)

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Album: Down To Earth
Label: Correct Records

Fresh out of high school and not yet a college dropout, Kanye West landed his first paid production work in 1996, when the rapper Grav picked several beats for his album Down To Earth. He was joined by Chicago's Lil Ray and original Beatnuts member Al' Tariq; the song showcased Kanye's polished early style on 8 tracks including "City To City," which pops with slap basslines and booming, somewhat generic drums. Foreshadowing his career strategy for years to come, Kanye leveraged that production work into a cameo as a rapper on the album, spitting bars on the track "Line For Line."

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Harlem World "You Made Me" (1999)

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Infamous Syndicate f/ Kanye West "What You Do To Me" (1999)

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Album: Changing the Game
Label: Relativity Records

One of the many smaller Chicago acts Kanye did tracks for early in his career, Infamous Syndicate was a female duo that included future Disturbing Tha Peace star Shawnna. His mentor No I.D. produced several songs on the group's 1999 Relativity Records debut, including the regional radio hit "Here I Go," but West got in three beats, with a feature credit on one. Shawnna's most infamous project with Kanye, however, was something we'll never hear: when they linked back up a few years later for her DTP solo debut, Shawnna gave Kanye one of his biggest hits by passing on the "Gold Digger" beat.

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Beanie Sigel "The Truth" (2000)

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Album: The Truth
Label: Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam

When the Broad Street Bully signed to Roc-A-Fella, he not only brought the label his street cred and unique lyricism, he also gave the Roc what would soon become its trademark soulful sound. The first three tracks on 2000's The Truth feature the first Roc productions by Kanye West, Just Blaze and Bink, with Yeezy holding down the lead single and title track. Years later, Ye would recall how other MCs missed the potential that Sigel heard in that Graham Nash organ loop: "It was on beat tapes, and niggas would hear it and say, 'Why you don't send me no fire?'"

The Madd Rapper f/ Eminem "Stir Crazy" (2000)

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Album: Tell 'Em Why U Madd
Label: Columbia

The Madd Rapper, a comical character created by producer Deric "D-Dot" Angelettie, parlayed appearances in skits on several hit Bad Boy albums into his own full-fledged project. But by the time Tell 'Em Why U Madd arrived in stores in early 2000, it had been delayed many times and overshadowed by Angelettie's incredibly misguided assault on a Blaze Magazine editor who had publicly revealed the poorly kept 'secret' of The Madd Rapper's true identity. Still, the album ended up being flush with some of the new decade's biggest future stars, particularly 50 Cent, who was introduced to the world on the album closer "How To Rob," and Kanye West, who was then D-Dot's protégé and so-called "ghost producer." One of West's beats on the album was even matched with Eminem, who turned in one of the deranged guest verses that cemented Em's budding superstardom.

Jay-Z f/ Beanie Sigel & Scarface "This Can't Be Life" (2000)

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Album: The Dynasty: Roc La Familia
Label: Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam

Kanye West has always been known for plundering the past with his sample-fueled productions. But for a couple years, his favorite drums were copped from a very contemporary source: in 2000, he used Dr. Dre's "Xxplosive," then less than a year old, for the backbone of his first of many collaborations with Jay-Z (of course, he wasn't the only one noticing those drums, which also laced the remix of Erykah Badu's "Bad Lady" that year). With Face and Beans providing crucial backup, "This Can't Be Life" was Hov at his introspective finest, setting the tone that when Kanye West was on the track, Jay usually had something to say.

Da Brat "Chi Town" (2000)

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Album: Unrestricted
Label: So So Def

Though it doesn't bite Dre drums, this Midwest pride anthem from Da Brat's third album, Unrestricted, may be Kanye's most West coast-influenced production, with hard G-funk drums and a lush buffet of percussion, from triangles to shakers to wind chimes. The 2000 track sounds like the last vestige of Kanye's clubby '90s productions, before he fully transitioned into the Roc-A-Fella soul sound. Like West and too many Chicago MCs, Da Brat had to leave home and align herself with a label from another region to get some shine, but here she sounds liberated to proudly rep her city.

Beanie Sigel "Nothing Like It" (2001)

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Album: The Reason
Label: Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam

"This right here is my favorite beat I ever did," is what Kanye West said in 2003, of the emotional opening track from B. Sigel's 2001 album The Reason. Unfortunately, plans for the track as the second single from the underpromoted effort never panned out. On Ye's mixtape Get Well Soon, he filled out the track with some backing vocals from The Boys Choir of Harlem, recorded at the same time that he put the choir on the College Dropout standout "Two Words." The track's title is one of 10 early productions still inked on Kanye's arm, although it's a little funny to think that such an ambitious guy might've once thought that deep cuts by Beanie Sigel and Foxy Brown would be considered among his life's greatest accomplishments.

Jay-Z "Takeover" (2001)

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Album: The Blueprint
Label: Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam

Just as rappers and A&Rs didn't understand "The Truth" when West first shopped the beat around, his vows that this nasty Doors-sampling track would be as hot as "The Truth" were met with skepticism. Of course, when Jay went in the booth and took aim at Nas and Mobb Deep over that fuzzed-out "Five To One" bassline, the beat's place in hip-hop history was sealed. "'Takeover' is one of the best diss songs ever, I'm not taking no sides or nothing," West said on the 2003 instrumentals mixtape Behind The Beats, comparing his work to Ron Browz's. "I know ain't none of y'all trying to compare the 'Takeover' beat to the 'Ether' beat. Dog, are you serious?'"

Jay-Z "Heart of the City" (2001)

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Album: The Blueprint
Label: Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam

The first beat Kanye West made in his apartment in Newark, New Jersey, after moving out east from Chicago, this track was always destined for major starpower, but for a while it wasn't clear exactly who that would be. Kanye initially wanted DMX to have "Heart of the City," and when Jay-Z recorded it, there was talk of having R. Kelly feature on the track. Instead, the original vocal sample remained, with Jay-Z ad libbing and talking back to Bobby "Blue" Bland's disembodied voice in the style that became one of The Blueprint's trendsetting trademarks.

Jay-Z "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)" (2001)

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Album: The Blueprint
Label: Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam

What still dazzles about "Izzo" is how it exemplifies Kanye West's flair for taking very familiar samples, and forming them into unique new shapes without making any attempt to disguise them. Where Lil Romeo's "My Baby," the other pop rap smash of 2001 that sampled "I Want You Back," did little to change or add to the iconic song's groove, "Izzo" chops up dashes of strings and piano over another bite of the "Xxplosive" drums (foreshadowing the way Mr. West would set another Michael Jackson classic to a new BPM on "Good Life"). The track's wildest easter egg, however, was the opening slide guitar from The Flaming Lips' "She Don't Use Jelly" that punctuates every other bar of the song.

Scarface f/ Jay-Z & Beanie Sigel "Guess Who's Back" (2002)

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Album: The Fix
Label: Def Jam South, Island Def Jam, Universal Records

After a couple years of leaning heavily on those Dre "Xxplosive" drums, Kanye finally retired them for the most part around 2002, but he went out with a bang. Face's sole Def Jam release, the classic The Fix, featured three Kanye West productions, including the killer tempo-switching "In Cold Blood." But it was the street single posse cut, with Jay and Beans reuniting the whole team from "This Can't Be Life," that ended up the project's most enduring song. It also represented a couple of milestones for Ye: the first time Jay shouted his name on a hit, and the first Kanye chorus to hit the radio. There's something amusing, almost quaint, about hearing Kanye rap "don't make me relapse/ back to the block with the fo'/ cause this street shit is all I know" shortly before he established a famously un-gangsta on-record persona.

Nas "Poppa Was A Playa" (2002)

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Album: The Lost Tapes
Label: Ill Will, Columbia

Nas had already rapped to three Kanye West beats before Ye ever got in the studio with Jay—on tracks by Harlem World and Jermaine Dupri, and this outtake from 1999's I Am. Even after providing the backing for Jay's most vicious Nas dis, 'Ye never involved himself in the feud like other Roc-A-Fella soldiers, and continued working with Nasty Nas on Late Registration long before Nas and Jay officially squashed their beef in late 2005. Still, it was interesting timing for Kanye's first production on a Nas album to finally surface on 2002's The Lost Tapes, almost exactly a year after "The Takeover," when tensions between the two camps were at an all-time high. "Poppa Was A Playa," co-produced with D-Dot, feels like a transitional production, with some of Kanye's emerging penchant for sampled soul rubbing up against the kind of sharp, brittle hi-hat dominated drum programming that defined his earlier tracks.

Trina f/ Ludacris "B R Right" (2002)

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Album: Diamond Princess
Label: Slip-N-Slide, Atlantic

With the Scarface productions still comfortably in his Roc-A-Fella soul wheelhouse, "B R Right" was Kanye West's first production for Southern MCs that sounded like it was firmly in their world. West once proudly proclaimed "A lot of people ain't know I did this" of the Trina/Luda teamup, while lamenting that he got barely a second of screen time in the video. Still, his drums were rarely ever harder, and the careening violin loop is inspired. The moment where the bassline 'sings' along with Luda when he says "ooh eeh walla walla bing bang" still stands as one of Kanye's most clever moments as a producer.

Jay-Z f/ Twista, Killer Mike, & Big Boi "Poppin' Tags" (2002)

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Album: The Blueprint 2: The Gift & the Curse
Label: Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam

The Blueprint 2: The Gift And The Curse was a famously anticlimactic sequel to a landmark album. But buried throughout the uneven double album was ample evidence that Jay's voice and Kanye's beats were a potent combination. "Some People Hate" may still be one of Kon-Man's most underrated productions, and "'03 Bonnie & Clyde" remains a shrewd pop rap smash, but the best of his four tracks for the album is clearly this speed-rap epic. Sadly, the song was never made a single, and if you search the phrase "poppin' tags" on YouTube now, nearly every result is Macklemore-related.

Talib Kweli "Get By" (2002)

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Album: Quality
Label: Rawkus, UMVD

"Get By" is perhaps the greatest example of Kanye having a beat in mind for one artist, and being proven wrong in the best possible way. "I was saving the beat for Mariah, and Kweli wanted it, and I really didn't wanna give it to him," West recalled in 2003, the day before he joined Talib to shoot the song's video. Thinking in the short term, he was after a $70,000 check to land a deep cut on what would be one of Mariah Carey's most forgettable albums, 2002's Charmbracelet. Instead, he got the long-term result of a hip-hop classic, the biggest radio hit by one of conscious rap's leading lights, and perhaps more than any of his outside productions, the song that would provide the public with a template for what Kanye West would express as a solo artist.

Kanye West "Wow" (2003)

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Album: Freshmen Adjustment
Label: Self-Released

With his buzz quickly escalating after The Blueprint topped the charts, Kanye West made his first serious bid for a deal as a solo artist, nearly signing with Capitol Records. But if the goofy single he proposed to the label, "Wow," is any indication, The College Dropout would've been a very different album if he'd gotten to make it as quickly as he wanted to. Instead, he ended up self-deprecatingly reciting the chorus on the album-closing "Last Call" monologue, as well as memorably turning the line on its ear in "All Falls Down." Around the time of "Wow," West nearly signed a production deal with Cash Money Records, and this loping, synth-driven beat sounds like a glimpse of what his production may have sounded more like if he was working alongside Mannie Fresh and Jazze Pha instead of Just Blaze and Bink.

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Freeway f/ Twista "Show Go On" (2003)

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Album: Get Well Soon...
Label: Self-Released

It's hard to say just how many killer Kanye West tracks were left off of albums due to pricey sample clearances, but it's safe to assume there were quite a few. In the case of "Show Go On," the beat was passed over not once but twice—it first appeared on early tracklists for Freeway's 2003 debut Philadelphia Freeway, and a year later it was slated to be on Twista's Kamikaze, and also ended up not appearing on the final product. We're not going to jump to conclusions that James Taylor is to blame, but that "Daddy's All Gone" sample may have been what held the track back, because it sure was hot enough to deserve album placement.

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T.I. "Doin' My Job" (2003)

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Album: Trap Muzik
Label: Grand Hustle, Atlantic

T.I. was still virtually unknown, at least outside Atlanta, when he recorded two Kanye West-produced tracks for his classic 2003 breakthrough Trap Muzik. Those tracks, particularly "Doin' My Job," helped cement the notion that Tip was not just the King of the South, but a rapper who transcended his region, sounding comfortable on all kinds of beats, including breezy soul samples.

Ludacris "Stand Up" (2003)

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Album: Chicken-n-Beer
Label: Disturbing tha Peace, Island Def Jam

Although Ye already had some Top 10 hits under his best thanks to Jay, it was Ludacris that took a Kanye West beat to the No. 1 spot for the very first time, though far from the last. Beating "Slow Jamz" to the top of the Hot 100 by only a few months, the lead single for Luda's Chicken-N-Beer was a wild, weird club banger that sounds unlike just about any Kanye production before or since. And given Luda's Illinois origins and Shawnna's appearance on the hook, it's also an unheralded triumph for Chicago rap.

Jay-Z "Encore" (2003)

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Album: The Black Album
Label: Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam

By the time Jay-Z closed the book on his recording career—well, the first phase of it, anyway—with 2003's The Black Album, it was already becoming clear that Roc-A-Fella's biggest star in his absence would be not Memphis Bleek or Beanie Sigel but the little producer that could. The Black Album was intended to be a production showcase for several of Jay's favorite beatmakers, but the bottle-clinking snares of "Encore" and "Lucifer" ultimately outshined the contributions of even more established producers like The Neptunes and Timbaland. "Encore" is perhaps the ultimate Black Album cut, with GLC and Don C. egging Hov on.

Alicia Keys "You Don't Know My Name" (2003)

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Album: The Diary of Alicia Keys
Label: J

Given his soulful, melodic aesthetic, it's surprising that Kanye had to become the hottest thing in hip-hop before the R&B singers started calling. But when they did, he rose to the occasion. The masterstroke of "You Don't Know My Name" is not just the track's sumptuous, lighter-than-air atmosphere, but the lengthy spoken bridge that Alicia Keys admits Kanye had to push her into the booth to record.

Twista "Overnight Celebrity" (2004)

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Album: Kamikaze
Label: Atlantic

In late 2003, one of the many advance leaks from The College Dropout, "Slow Jamz" featuring Twista, broke out of the mixtape circuit and soared up the charts, giving the two Chicago MCs their first Hot 100 chart-topper as headliners, and simultaneously powering the platinum success of West's album and Twista's Kamikaze. Their follow-up single, the cheeky "Overnight Celebrity," served as a public introduction of Miri Ben-Ari, the 'hip hop violinist' whose lush string overdubs were one of The College Dropout's most ambitious production touches. But the song could also be seen as an ironic anthem for both Kanye and Twista, who may have seemed like overnight celebrities to the mainstream at the time, though they'd both been working toward that breakthrough moment for a decade.

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