The Making of Kanye West's "The College Dropout"

We talked to just about everyone involved in the making of Kanye West's classic debut album. This is the oral history of how it all came together.

college dropout era kanye performing
Getty

Image via Getty

college dropout era kanye performing

Ten years ago today, Kanye West’s debut album, The College Dropout, first hit stores. Like many classic albums, there’s more to The College Droput than just the music itself. Of course the album is celebrated for its banging beats courtesy of Mr. West and the honesty, vulnerability, and humor of Kanye’s still-evolving raps. But what really made the album such a special moment in hip-hop was how it bridged the gap between the underground and the mainstream.

THE PLAYERS:

Miri Ben-Ari — Violinist

Common — Rapper

Consequence — Rapper

Damon Dash — Entrepreneur, Co-Founder of Roc-A-Fella Records, Executive Producer

DeRay Davis — Actor, comedian

Evidence — Rapper, producer

Freeway — Rapper

GLC — Rapper

Talib Kweli Greene — Rapper

J. Ivy — Poet

Syleena Johnson — Singer, Songwriter

Kyambo "Hip-Hop" Joshua — Co-CEO of Hip Hop Since 1978, President of the Urban Division at Columbia Records

John Legend — Singer, Songwriter

John Monopoly — Co-Founder of Hustle Period

Chike Ozah — Director ("Through The Wire"), Co-Founder of Creative Control TV

Patrick "Plain Pat" Reynolds — Producer, Songwriter

Gee Roberson — Co-CEO of Hip Hop Since 1978, Co-Executive Producer

Coodie Simmons — Director ("Through The Wire"), Co-Founder of Creative Control TV

Tarrey Torae — Singer

Twista — Rapper

Aisha Tyler— Actress, author

Kanye West — Rapper, Producer, Songwriter  

Antony "Tony" Williams — Singer, Songwriter, Kanye's Cousin

Dion "No I.D." Wilson — Producer, Kanye's Mentor

At the time, hip-hop was divided in ways today’s younger rap fans might not be able to fathom. Just a year before Kanye dropped his debut, 50 Cent came through like hurricanes do and shook the rap game up with his monster debut, Get Rich or Die Tryin’. It felt like rappers either had to be chiseled gangsters like 50 Cent or Cam’ron or backpackers like Talib Kweli or Common. There was simply no middle ground. But with The College Dropout, Kanye West was able to create a masterful project that spoke to rap fans of all tastes and creeds.

They say you spend your entire life writing your first album and that statement couldn’t be more true of Kanye’s debut. The story of this album starts in Kanye’s hometown of Chicago where the young man first dreamed of being a rapper. After finding his way to New York, getting down with Roc-A-Fella Records, and becoming one of the most in-demand producers in the game, Ye struggled to convince anyone to take him seriously as a rapper.

After failing to secure a record deal anywhere else, Kanye eventually settled with the Roc. But even then he had to struggle to get his team to believe in him. But everything changed on October 23, 2002, the night Kanye got into a car accident in Los Angeles after working late. He survived the crash, which gave him a new lease on life, and inspired him even more.

How do we know all this? Because we spoke to all the major players who helped make Kanye make his debut album. From A&Rs and managers like G. Roberson and Kyambo "Hip Hop" Joshua to rappers like Consequence and GLC to videographers like Coodie, everyone had something to say about how this historic album was made and how a go-getter named Kanye West got his start as a rapper. We even managed to find some unpublished quotes from Yeezy himself. So hop in your Benz and grab your Louis Vuitton backpack because this is The Making of Kanye West’s The College Dropout...

As told to Insanul Ahmed (@Incillin)

Additional interviews by Joe La Puma (@JLaPuma), Rob Kenner (@boomshots), Brandon Jenkins (@Jersey_Jinx), Thomas Golianopoulos (@golianopoulos), & Dharmic X (@dharmicX).

RELATED: Honorary Degree: Kanye West's The College Dropout 10 Years Later

RELATED: Pigeons & Planes - Kanye West on the College Dropout 10 Years Later

Before The Album: Chicago

kanye and common in chicago

"I'm a Chicagoan till Chicago ends/Till we blow like Chicago wind." —Kanye West

GLC: “There was this guy from my neighborhood who became best friends with Kanye. One day my friend came to the block and he had this funny looking haircut. Niggas was laughing at him like, ‘Man, who the fuck cut your hair?’ And, he was like, ‘My man Kanye. He make beats too and he raw with that shit.’ We was trying to rap back then so he influenced me to come over to Kanye’s crib and meet him.

“Kanye’s crib back then looked at lot like my brother's crib; it was a lot of African artist type shit because that’s what his mom was into. So I felt very comfortable. And Kanye had a lot of pornos, sex magazines, and nice clothes—he was really into girls, music, and black liberation as a shorty. We connected on all of that because it was instilled in him through his mom and it was instilled in me through my brother. We both had a crazy love for the hoes.


 

Kanye’s crib back had a lot of African artist stuff because that’s what his mom was into. Kanye had a lot of pornos, sex magazines, and nice clothes—he was really into girls, music, and black liberation as a shorty. —GLC


 

“We looked at rappers like these dudes are entrepreneurs, they not working a 9-5, they not punching nobody clock. It seems like they balling in abundance and they got all the hoes. So, it was like, ‘Hey, this seem like the thing to do.’ We started making songs that weekend. This was like in ‘93. We were both about 16.

“It’s hilarious when I hear people say ‘Kanye is in the illuminati.’ No, Kanye applied himself. When we would be out chasing hoes, there was times Kanye would be with us, but a majority of the time he’d be in his bedroom making beats with the same clothes on for days, no haircut or nothing. That dude was focused since he was a shorty because he knew what he wanted to do and he had a mother who supported the shit out of him.”

No ID: “It was an interesting process with Kanye because there was so much opposition for his shit. Me and an A&R from Relativity Records, Peter Kang, actually co-managed Kanye as an artist before Roc-A-Fella and all that. After a certain amount of meetings—there’s a ton of stories in that—I said, ‘It’s not my thing, I don’t wanna get in your way. Let me just help you.’ I saw a lot of things within his personality that I didn’t think I could manage. It’s one thing to get opportunities for an artist to make it. But to manage him through a career, I was like, ‘Eh, I’ll just keep doing my beats.’


 

I’d seen Hoop Dreams and I said, ‘I’m gonna do a Hoop Dreams on Kanye West.’ People used to be like, ‘Why are you following him?’ I’m like, ‘Dude, you’ll see. He’s going to win Grammys.’ —Coodie


 

“But there were a lot of stages of Kanye. There were stages where he was developing as a producer, the stage where he had his group Go Getters, then there was the solo Kanye West. He had a little bit of a tougher edge on his records back then. He was a little gangster. All of that kinda made him grow and develop and create the right image, direction, so on and so forth. So there were a lot of different directions.”

Common: “I met Kanye through No I.D. His beats were good, but they weren’t knocking me over. He didn’t have the polish that No I.D. had because No I.D. had more experience. When he was playing beats, it was like, ‘That’s cool as a sample, but those drums...’

"But I always knew Ye could rhyme. We had a battle on this radio station once. I was drunk, I don’t think he was drunk, but some people said he got the best from me. Me being from Chicago, I was one of the first artists out, so I was like the boxing champ. We always had respect and love for one another but I never said, ‘Man, Ye. I’m going to use his beat.’

Common and Kanye West's infamous "drunk" freestyle

Deray Davis: “[Back in the ‘90s] I was working with Erick Sermon. I was going to be on the Def Squad label because I rap too. John Monopoly called me. Kanye didn’t have his deal yet and John was like, ‘I want you to talk to him.” Kanye got on the phone, like, ‘Nobody rap like me, nobody doing what I’m doing.’ He rapped to me on the phone for 30 minutes straight. The dude did not stop spitting. He probably did a whole album back to back to back. I’m literally like, ‘Yo, this kid is crazy.’”

J. Ivy: “You’d hear about him in Chicago. We knew who he was gonna be, we knew that he represented greatness.”

Coodie: “I had a public access hip-hop show in Chicago called Channel Zero. Guys like Wu-Tang would come to Chicago, I’d film them, interview them, and we would put it out and Chicago would go crazy. Kanye wanted to be on the show just like anyone else in Chicago, so he started coming around as a young kid. I’d seen Hoop Dreams and I said, ‘I’m gonna do a Hoop Dreams on Kanye West.’ People used to be like, ‘Why are you following him?’ I’m like, ‘Dude, you’ll see. He’s going to win Grammys.’”

Before The Album: New York

kanye in new york with the roc

"What if somebody from the Chi' that was ill got a deal/On the hottest rap label around?" —Kanye West

No ID: “He really had to climb walls just to get a shot. Every door was being slammed in his face. It was Kyambo ‘Hip Hop’ Joshua who first took that leap of faith in him as an artist.”

Hip Hop: “No I.D. introduced me to Kanye in 1996 in Chicago. I had just got my job at Roc-A-Fella as an intern/A&R. I remember meeting Kanye right next to Harold’s Chicken. [Laughs.] As time went by, he started to send me beats but I wasn’t into managing producers at the time. Two years later, me and Gee started a production company and I went back to Kanye.”


 

One day, Kanye played me the beat for ‘This Can’t Be Life’ over the phone. I was like, 'Send it.' This was pre email, so I had to send him money just so he could send the beat to me. [Laughs.] - Hip Hop


 

Gee Roberson: “We were looking for a small group of producers to have under our stable since both of us were heads of A&R for Roc-A-Fella Records. The logic was for us to make our life easier by having an in-house team to produce for all the artists we had on the roster. We were going to imitate the Roc-A-Fella model and it started with sorting out talent.

“Kanye has done a lot ghost production for Derrick ‘D-Dot’ Angelettie and a whole bunch of producers Puffy had. He was producing a bunch of other things that he didn’t get credit for. Hip Hop brought him to my attention, like, ‘His beats are crazy, we got to mess with him.’ Kanye was our first signee in 1998.

Hip Hop: “That’s when Beanie Sigel’s ‘The Truth’ beat happened. One day, Kanye played me the beat for ‘This Can’t Be Life’ over the phone. I was like, 'Send it.' This was pre email, so I had to send him money just so he could send the beat to me. [Laughs.] Jay heard it and he was blown away. He did it right then and there. That opened up the door to the whole Roc-A-Fella/Kanye thing.”

"This Can't Be Life" was the first song Kanye West produced for Jay Z

Coodie: “Kanye wound up moving to New York. One day, I’m watching BET and I saw Jay Z’s ‘Izzo’ video and I was like, ‘Wait a minute—that’s Kanye’s track!’ That was one of the first tracks I heard when I met him in like 1997. That’s when I was like, ‘Oh I got to get to New York.’ So I moved to New York when Kanye was working on The College Dropout and going to different labels trying to get signed.

“Everyone was looking at us crazy because he’d walk in with a camera filming. They’d be like, ‘Who is this?’ Like Dame Dash used to be talking shit about us. But what was crazy was next thing you know, everybody in hip-hop had cameras. But believe me, it started with me and Kanye. He been working on the album way before he even moved to New York, but I documented the making of that whole album. I have [hundreds] of hours of footage.”

Dame Dash: “I remember one time I asked Just Blaze to flip this beat for me and he wouldn’t. I was aggravated. So then I had asked Kanye to flip the ‘Champions’ beat and I had liked the fact that he reacted with speed. It was just respect. I knew that there was a work ethic that it takes to win on a professional level, and I saw that he had two times that.”


 

To me, it was all about lanes. The lane that was wide open was being that guy in a Benz with a backpack. Timing is everything, and I saw Kanye West filling that lane.

—Gee Roberson


 

Gee Roberson: “In the midst of working with him he was like, ‘Yo, I’m not just a producer; I’m a rapper. You’ve got to sign me as a rapper.' I’m like, ‘We going to sign you up. You gon' get the production out there, and after that we’re going to get the domino effect; the beats into the raps.’ We started moving accordingly, focusing on his production and spreading it out—in-house as well as shopping to people outside the label. We built his production value which created and exposed his sound.

“I lost track of the phone calls I used to get whenever he used to do a session and they would be like, ‘Why he won’t just stick to beats? Why he want to rap?’ I’m like, ‘Yo, you guys bugging. He got some shit.’ They’d be like, ‘It’s cool but he should just stick to doing beats.’ I always would brush those comments off. People were actually mad when he would be rapping in their session. Now it’s like, ‘Yeah, I bet you wish you had him rapping for you now?’ [Laughs.]”

Kanye produced "Champions." Dame Dash introduced Kanye's verse saying, "I bet ni**as didn't know you could rap huh?"

Hip Hop: “When I first brought him on as a producer, I was shopping beats and they weren’t getting sold. It was like, ‘I want my beats to get placed.’ They started getting placed and then it was, ‘I don’t want to shop beats no more; I want to go to the studio and make the beats.’ When we could go into the studio and work hands on with somebody, the next problem was, ‘I don’t want to make beats for him because he’s wack and I’m better than him.’ Eventually it was, ‘I don’t want to sell beats no more; I just want to work on my album.’

"It’s like what he’s going through with fashion right now. Something pushed him to do more. It’s always been a fight for total creativity. I’ve never seen that kind of uncompromising drive in all my years.

Gee Roberson: “I honestly thought every label would put a deal on the table just off of GP because 1) It’s an act that we work with, 2) He’s our producer, 3) Clearly we could sign him ourselves, so we giving you the opportunity to work with us. What’s crazier than you passing on the A&Rs from Roc-A-Fella Records bringing you this? That was the part that was mind-blowing to me.

“To me, it was all about lanes. The lane that was wide open was being that guy in a Benz with a backpack. Timing is everything, and I saw Kanye West filling that lane. People have to remember something: let’s think back to 2000. You had a whole different sound of rap. You had this guy who had a demo with 'Jesus Walks' on it. The same guy would tell you that, ‘I’m going to be the biggest rapper in the word.’ And, people are like, ‘What are you talking about? You're a producer, cut it out.’


 

I needed Kanye to knock on the door because of the way he was dressed. When they opened the door, Roc-A-Fella would be hiding behind him and we’d all run in the house. He was someone that could articulate authentic culture in a way that was safe to white people.

—Dame Dash


 

“You had a guy who jumped up on tables in meetings. You had a guy who went to a meeting at Columbia to meet with Mike Mauldin and he told Mike Mauldin that he’s going to be bigger than Jermaine Dupri and Jermaine Dupri is like Mike Mauldin’s son. That level of confidence, that level of perseverance, that level of "I’m going to show the world"—that’s the Kanye West that I met. That’s what excited me. The drive and passion that the world sees today is the same exact guy that I met in 1998.”

Hip Hop: “The Roc-A-Fella deal was more like a default—we couldn’t get no other deals and that’s where I was at and that’s where, of course, they’re going to at least let me do that.

Dame Dash: “Kanye always had something to prove because you weren’t respecting him as a rapper. He was a producer and I was trying to put out a compilation album. But then I saw that he had something special; it was like his fear made him fearless. It was weird. I never really realized [he could rap]. After Jay and Cam, I was more into authentic experiences delivered a certain way and I didn’t really care. But I realized that he was going to make it happen and he didn’t mind being an asshole. If you don’t mind being an asshole, you’re not going to lose. He wasn’t scared, he had gall.

“I needed Kanye to knock on the door because of the way he was dressed. When they opened the door, Roc-A-Fella would be hiding behind him and we’d all run in the house. He was someone that could articulate authentic culture in a way that was safe to white people. He still would’ve been what he has become.”

John Legend: “Dame Dash and Roc-A-Fella signed him but I don’t think they really took him seriously. They just signed him because he was such an important producer for them and they wanted to keep him in-house. I had met Kanye in May 2001 through his cousin Devo Springsteen, who was my roommate in college for a couple years in New York as well.

"I was there during the early time when he was just developing a lot of the material. When I first started working with him, I honestly didn’t think his album would be special. As a rapper, he wasn’t that great. Kanye improved a lot. And it wasn’t just his rapping, but it was the songcraft, the production, the storytelling, everything about it came together so beautifully.”

"Getting Out The Game" was one of the early collaborations between Kanye West and Consequence

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com


Consequence: “I met Kanye West through 88 Keys when Kanye first moved to Newark in 2002. I rung the bell to his crib and he was just so excited to meet me. He ran down his whole ambition to be the next Michael Jackson and I was just like, ‘OK...’

“He had questions for me because I hadn’t really been on the scene since A Tribe Called Quest’s Beats, Rhymes and Life. It was kind of like he was looking at a ghost. At that time, I was so disenchanted. I had my own baggage. He made an offer like, ‘I feel like I could make a classic with you. You were incredible on Beats Rhymes and Life. I’m doing beats for Jay Z, Beanie Sigel, and the Roc is on fire. So if you help me put my album together and we form a team, I’ll eventually let you rhyme on the beats they’re paying x amount of dollars for.’


 

I was so tired of taking the train that I would steal his Benz truck and go to Queens. I’d come back and he be, ‘I thought you was going to the grocery store!’ I’d be like, ‘I did...in Queens.’ 

—Consequence


 

“We knocked out a song that day and I went home to Queens. Later Kanye called me like, ‘Did you hit my assistant up to give him your address so he could mail you out a beats CD?’ And I was like, ‘Uh ah nah not yet.’ He was like, ‘Come on man, I want to work with you, work with me.’ So I was like, ‘Alright.’ After that phone call, I started coming to his crib for the weekend and staying for days. We was hanging out, messing with chicks, we formed a friendship. Kanye had a vision at the time for me that I didn’t even know.

“I was still taking the train, he had just got the G5 Wagon. It was so crazy, I was so tired of taking the train that I would steal his fucking Benz truck and go to Queens in that shit. I’d come back and he be, ‘I thought you was going to the grocery store!’ I’d be like, ‘I did...in Queens.’ [Laughs.] But then the next day we would knock out some fire shit.

“We would study everything, we would study G-Unit, we would study Grafh who was hot at the time, the Young Gunz was hot at the time, and the whole Philly movement was on fire. We were just sitting back figuring out what’s going to be the point of entry for us to get in? We knew once we got in we could make a change.”

Before The Album: Los Angeles

the making of the college dropout la

"Good dude, bad night, right place, wrong time/In the blink of a eye, his whole life changed." —Kanye West

Gee Roberson: “I’m a firm believer that there are certain tipping points in life. He had been working on the album his whole life, but the tipping point was when he had the accident. That’s when I recognized that he had a different level of genius, of commitment, and of perseverance.

“I remember it like it was yesterday. He had the accident and I get the call. I’m in NYC, I take the next flight out to L.A. I get to the hospital, the guy’s face is the size of a building. I can’t even recognize him. He’s talking all crazy because his jaw is dislocated. My thoughts are going everywhere. I’m trying to make sure he’s going to be able to stay alive.


 

The accident wound up being a blessing for him: Whatever diction issues he had, he came back with a super clear voice. The same way [50 Cent’s voice changed after he got shot], Kanye’s voice changed. But instead of getting shot, he went through a windshield.

—Consequence


 

“I say, 'You alright? Hang in there.' Do you know the first thing this guy told me? Is this exactly who Kanye West is? He goes, 'Yo Gee, we out of here.' I’m like, ‘We out of here? What you talking about?’ I’m thinking, is he on some drugs? Painkillers? What’s going on? He’s like, 'Wait till I tell the world the story about my accident and what happened. I almost died. We out of here—you understand what I’m about to create?' I’m looking at him like, ‘Wow. OK, I got one of the ones, no doubt about it.’”

Consequence: “The Lord doesn’t give you any burdens that you can’t bear. The accident wound up being a blessing for him: Whatever diction issues he had, he came back with a super clear voice. That was one of the like pressure busts pipes things. The same way [50 Cent’s voice changed after he got shot], Kanye’s voice changed. But instead of him getting shot, he went through a windshield.”

Gee Roberson: “That was the tipping point because that turned into him camping out in L.A. at the W Hotel [and working at Record Plant studios] because he couldn’t get on a flight. That way he was able to get [medical] care in L.A., and we turned the hotel into a studio. So the only thing he had to do was get up out of bed, go into his living room, and create songs. That’s when the whole album went to overdrive. From that point, it was just recording every day.”

Hip Hop: “The W Hotel, that’s where Tupac did a lot of recording too, I found that out from Daz. Daz said there used to be apartments there and Death Row artists used to live there. Every morning Tupac would come to his room and they’d do a couple songs, like 'Ambitionz Az A Ridah' was recorded in that hotel. That was always real spooky to me. [Laughs.]


 

Kanye used to have songs about fat girls liking him [called] ‘Do I Look Like Your Type?’ [Laughs.] On the song Kanye was like, 'B**ch, do I look like your type?' [Laughs.]

—Hip Hop


 

“Even back then he had good records like ‘Hey Mama’ and ‘Jesus Walks’ but I don’t think he had really lived as much to have as many experiences. Like he used to have songs about fat girls liking him [called] ‘Do I Look Like Your Type?’ [Laughs.] On the song Kanye was like, 'Bitch, do I look like your type?' [Laughs.] There wasn’t that comfort zone yet that everybody came to know.

“A couple of things happened that changed that. I remember we went to see Tupac: Resurrection together and a lightbulb went off for him; he realized he could be himself. I always saw a lot of similarities with him and Tupac because of their upbringing and also because a lot of people don’t consider them lyrical—especially at that point.”

Plain Pat: “I was working at Def Jam doing the A&R administration, so you’d book a studio and I’d get the bill paid. I didn’t meet Kanye until he was signed. Nobody was fucking with him but Gee brought him into the office. Roc-A-Fella had an A&R staff but Def Jam controlled all the budgets and did the admin work. I just happened to work a lot of Roc-A-Fella stuff and Kanye was on there, so I got assigned to it.

“Nobody knew what the album was. Everybody thought it was like a compilation with all these rappers. He came in and he was like, ‘Nah, I’m like rapping the whole album.’ I was like, ‘Oh... cool.’ Nobody knew that he was gonna do a whole rap album. We were close in age so we got cool. He started hitting me up because there wasn’t anybody that was, like, fucking with him.


 

I sent him all these listings for cribs in L.A. and he was like 'They’re too small.' Even back then, he wasn’t popping but he wanted this big, giant crib. He’s like, ‘You should see where I live in New York, I have floor-to-ceiling windows.’ Typical Kanye s**t. —Plain Pat


 

“He was in L.A. there was a big issue with the rental car, he wanted a big car because didn’t like the little Lexus. But that was all we could get because he wasn’t popping. There were all these rules at Def Jam about what an artist could get, like you gotta be a platinum artist to fly first class. That’s why he got into the accident. That’s why he hates those small cars.

“While Kanye was stuck in L.A., we were trying to get him a crib out there too. I sent him all these listing for cribs and he was like 'They’re too small.' Even back then, he wasn’t popping but he wanted this big, giant crib. He’s like, ‘You should see where I live in New York, I have floor-to-ceiling windows.’ Typical Kanye shit. It’s not that he is being an asshole, but it’s like he has standards. It’s just how it was.

Coodie: “We had a big suite at the W Hotel that Dame got us. We were living up in there maybe a year working on the album. I remember it was my birthday on January 18th and we were in the rooms riding on moped scooters. The hotel smelled like gas for a week. We had a ball man.”

John Legend: “Kanye created his own buzz but a lot of that happened after he got in that accident. After the accident, I said, ‘Wow this guy is doing something really special with this album.’ When I was out in L.A., I remember telling him that this is going to be like The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.”

"Intro" / "We Don't Care" / "Graduation Day"

kanye performing at sob in october 2003

"If this is your first time hearing this/You are about to experience, something so cold!" —Kanye West 

Gee Roberson: “The original title was 'Drug Dealing' but were on the fence about that title. We wanted to go with a mainstream title. It wasn’t like a two second conversation either; that was a real conversation [about that title] but obviously we made the right choice.

“We used to be on high-alert—any beat that would come out of anyone’s session that was too crazy, it was like code red. That was one of those ones when he cooked it up, we immediately said, ‘That’s not being sold. You’re keeping that.’ [Laughs.]”


 

We used to be on high-alert—any beat that would come out of anyone’s session that was too crazy, it was like code red. That was one of those ones when he cooked it up, we immediately said, ‘That’s not being sold. You’re keeping that.’ —Gee Roberson


 

Hip Hop: “He was mixing Roc-A-Fella with what he was, but still speaking to Roc-A-Fella fans. Because his later albums don’t speak to them so much anymore. He was trying to find his way to blend the two worlds, to appeal to street people without doing it blatantly—these are conversations we had.”

Consequence: “It took a while for a guy like Kanye to write a song about hustling. He had to extract it—he got me to stop hustling. I was moving things in Queens and I got arrested. He kind of had that Puffy/Biggie talk with me like, ‘Yo man, you gotta put that shit down.’ He rapped from an outside-looking-in standpoint. Lines like, ‘Around the same time, Doe ran up in dude house.’ He had to gather that information because he wasn’t in the know. He’ll say it himself: he was never in the streets like that. So it was a collection of information that made sense for him to tell.”

"We Don't Care" samples The Jimmy Castor Bunch's "I Just Wanna Stop"(1979)

Coodie: “I used to do stand-up comedy in Chicago and Deray Davis was one of the guys that we were bringing up. Deray wound up moving to L.A. We needed a ride from the dentist's office, so he came and scooped us up. Kanye was like, ‘You gotta hear this song I did.’ This was when Kanye still had the wires in his mouth.

"Deray heard ‘Through The Wire’ and that’s when he said, ‘Without a arm I spit!’ So he started coming around more. Kanye really wanted Bernie Mac to do the intro. Bernie was like my mentor but Bernie couldn’t do it. So Deray came in."

Deray Davis: “I’d never done a skit or anything like that. I said, ‘Let me see if I can do a couple of things.’ So I did a British voice thing and he said, ‘That’s cool.’ I started doing other voices. Out of nowhere I did the closest Bernie Mac impersonation I could do, because I don’t really do impersonations, and that hit.


 

People on Twitter still be like, ‘Bernie Mac was great on Kanye’s album.’ And then someone will at me and say, ‘That’s actually Deray Davis.’ People will be like, ‘Oh, I never knew that!'  —Deray Davis


 

“Kanye started pitching ideas at me while I was in the booth, but I just started to say whatever I wanted to say. He gave me the concept, like he wanted an intro that was a graduation and he wanted a teacher. I didn’t go to college at all so I didn’t know this shit. I just talked about what I thought I knew about college, which ended up being some good freestyling. It ended up making sense, because people who were in school were like, ‘We’re in college and we don’t know about any of this!’

“It was really informal. Kanye was just listening, watching, and laughing. I didn’t expect that much of it to be on the album. I never knew how big it was going to be. People on Twitter still be like, ‘Bernie Mac was great on Kanye’s album.’ And then someone will at me and say, ‘That’s actually Deray Davis.’ People will be like, ‘Oh, I never knew that!'"

"All Falls Down" f/ Syleena Johnson

kanye west all falls down rapping

"I got a problem with spending before I get it/We all self-conscious, I'm just the first to admit it." —Kanye West

Kanye West: “Biggs called me [to tell me Lauryn Hill had declined.] He sounded like he had a frog in his throat. He said, ‘Man, you got a Plan B?’ Dame called Lauryn’s house and someone else picked up the phone and said Lauryn Hill would call back. [But no did].

“The song actually came out sounding better than the original. I wasn’t satisfied with how the original had came out. That’s why I was thinking about using a different single. Syleena really had that soul in her voice, she had the perfect voice for it. The song is actually way better. I still love Lauryn Hill and the music that she made. It’s unfortunate that it didn’t happen but if it wasn’t in God’s plan you can’t force anything.”

GLC: “Kanye was always the guy who took risk on fashion. People would be like, ‘Man, he crazy,’ or ‘This motherfucker gay.’ When we was shorties he was wearing Calvin Klein clothes, he tried to pull it for like three months at the most, but he couldn’t take the jokes and ridicule. [Laughs.]”


 

That’s the kind of pressure I used to put on him, be like, ‘Yo, football jerseys and Polo is basic. I do that.’ [Laughs.] 'You got to go ahead and show me something different if you want to impress me on a fashion level.’ —Dame Dash


 

Dame Dash: “[The Pink polo] wasn’t nothing to me because Cam was already wearing pink and we was already wearing Polos. I never been impressed with anyone’s Polo selection because that’s too easy. That’s the kind of pressure I used to put on him, be like, ‘Yo, football jerseys and Polo is basic. I do that.’ [Laughs.] ‘That’s not hot. You got to go ahead and show me something different if you want to impress me on a fashion level.’ I was educated at Savile Row, so that was nothing to me.

“Him and Just Blaze, they didn’t come fly. They became fly after they were around things that educated them and they had enough wherewithal based on what they were doing to buy shit. But they had to be educated. He always wanted to be doing things outside of the urban, that’s kind of like how I am. I saw him evolving, but he was never ahead of the game to me because I’m in Paris, I brought him to London. He wasn’t doing nothing super fly to me, no.”

The original version of "All Falls Down" with the 

Lauryn Hill sample

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Hip Hop: “Lauryn Hill wouldn’t clear it because she didn’t like her version of the song. That’s why she wasn’t against us using it completely because she could have not cleared [the lyrics] as well. Her main thing was she didn’t like her performance of it. She wanted that song to come out, it was only a [live] version, so I think she envisioned that coming out but and she didn’t want [Kanye’s songs] coming out before it.”

Gee Roberson: “I was losing my mind at having to cut parts [because of the sample] to make the due date. Ironically, life finds a way. [One of Kanye’s managers] John Monopoly was also an A&R rep for Jive records. Syleena Johnson was signed to Jive and John was her A&R. He was like, ‘I got someone to do it, she could kill it, and she’s from Chicago.’”

"All Falls Down" samples Lauryn Hill's "Mystery of Iniquity" (2002)

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Syleena Johnson: “The Kanye that you all see now was not that Kanye that I saw then. He wasn’t like what you think. He was nice and sweet which I know is hard to believe now. He probably still is, there are people in the industry who provoke you to do certain things.

“I knew of Kanye for a while, we’re both from Chicago. My A&R guy at the time, Wayne Williams, he formally introduced and he worked on my third album, Chapter 3: The Flesh, on a song called ‘Bullseye.’ While we were working on that song, it turned into him saying, ‘You, know Syleena...I have to meet deadline.’


 

Lauryn Hill wouldn’t clear it because she didn’t like her version of the song. That’s why she wasn’t against us using it completely because she could have not cleared [the lyrics] as well. —Hip Hop


 

“He wasn’t happy with what he was getting from other singers so he asked me to try it. I sang it exactly how it was on the record. He was like, ‘Well, sing it exactly how you would sing it. Try it the way you want to try it.’ That’s when I just added in a different flavor to it. He was like, ‘We’ll just talk to you later. We’ll see and let you know.’ They called me the next morning and they were like, ‘We love the song and we’re going to do the video and it comes out this week.’ I guess he was at a real deadline because a week later, I heard the song on the radio.

“He wanted the video to look continuous, he didn’t want the video to look like all the rest of the wack videos that were out. You saw me in the video at the beginning, I was supposed to come back at the end with Common, but nobody said nothing, so I just put my clothes on. People always like, ‘Well, why aren’t you in the video?’ I am. I’m just the flight attendant.

“People love that song, I hear about it all of the time. Probably because that’s the song that launched him into superstar status. So, forever I will be that girl that sang on the song. That was a big song, not just for him, but for a lot of people. It changed the tide for hip-hop in a way.”

The video for "All Falls Down" was directed by Chris Milk and shot at Ontario International Airport in Ontario, California. It stars Dame Dash's cousin, Stacy Dash.

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

 

Consequence: “Anything that you can do on Def Poetry Jam and it still sounds as good over a beat—you know that’s something that does work.”

Kanye West performing "Self Conscious" on Def Poetry Jam

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

 

"I'll Fly Away" & "Spaceship" f/ GLC & Consequence

kanye making of the college dropout

"Lock yourself in a room doing five beats a day for three summers/That's a Different World like Cree Summers" —Kanye West

GLC: “When we were in New York, I told Kanye, 'I need you to make me a beat so I can be on the radio in Chicago.’ All I cared about at that time was Chicago. We going through samples, came across sample of Marvin Gaye’s ‘Distant Lover’ and he made the beat. That verse came from a pure place. Here I am, a guy from Chicago, I was young and I was hustling. I quit doing everything because Kanye was like, ‘You need to come out here to New York.’ I just put it all out on ‘Spaceship.’

“I had just got off the phone arguing with my ex-girlfriend, because I had told her, like, ‘Man, all these people saying they fuck with me. They liking the music.’ And she was like, ‘If all these people saying they fuck with you, why ain’t nobody sign you then?’ That’s where the whole line came from, ‘Why you ain’t signed?/Wasn’t my time.’ Like, leave me alone, shut up.


 

‘Spaceship’ was for one of those silly mixtapes that he was working on at the time. It was a GLC song but when he sent it to me I was like, ‘Yo, you gotta put that on your album man.’

—Plain Pat


 

“[I said, ‘Lost my momma/Lost my mind’] because I lost my mom when I was 12. After I lost my mom, two-and-a-half years later I lost myself. I had diabetes but I didn’t know. One day I had a blood sugar level over 800 and I went into a coma. I was pronounced legally dead. I was resurrected because I was resuscitated at the hospital. I was only 14, man.

“I recorded my verse at his crib in Hoboken, in a bedroom that we set up into a studio. Back then we didn’t even have Pro Tools. Remember on 'Keep The Receipt' he was like, ‘While niggas had Pro Tools, I had no tools/Karaoke machine, fuck it, I’m old school.’ Like, we was recording on a Roland VS 1680 in his bedroom.

“Before Kanye and Consequence had their verses on there, it was just my verse. Whenever Kanye would play his album for anybody he would always play ‘Spaceship’ first with just my verse.”

"Spaceship" samples Marvin Gaye's "Distant Lover" (1973)

Plain Pat: “‘Spaceship’ was for one of those silly mixtapes that he was working on at the time. It was a GLC song but when he sent it to me I was like, ‘Yo, you gotta put that on your album, man.’

GLC: “Kanye was like, ‘I know I told you this, but that shit got to go on my album.’ I was like, Cool, you signed to Def Jam; I’m signed to nobody. Let’s go.’ So I helped Kanye out with his verse, helped him out with the direction of it and getting it together.

“Kanye really worked at The Gap. He really didn’t like the job, but his mom was teaching him responsibility, like, ‘Look, you want to have a nice car, you want to do this and that, you got to be able to support yourself.’ He worked there for the summer and it kept him G’d up because we was wearing Gap clothes mixed with Polo.


 

Kanye really worked at The Gap. He really didn’t like the job, but his mom was teaching him responsibility like, ‘Look, you want to have a nice car, you want to do this and that, you got to be able to support yourself.’ —GLC


 

Consequence: “GLC wanted to do a record with Consequence. I didn’t know GLC at the time, but we had a conversation about it. He played me this joint and I was like, ‘Give me a copy of it. I’ma write to it.’ I did my verse at Kanye’s crib and then Kanye jumped on it. Then he was like he really wanted to use it for the album.

“A lot of people have told me it was one of their favorite verses on the album. People loved the whole scenario of me explaining being in Busta’s video because it was actual factual. It was an emotional, ‘this is where my life is,’ introspective verse. ‘Spaceship’ was like the people’s record. The verses are memorable and relatable. They’re easy to remember and say back because they're not super complicated flows and punchlines. It’s the blue-collar anthem of the album.”

Kanye West directed the unreleased video for "Spaceship," which GLC leaked in 2009.

GLC: “I remember meeting Cee Lo Green back in the day and he had just lost his mom and he was like, ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you.’ I met Andre 3000 and he knew who I was. Jay Z even told me that I killed that shit. All these legendary, iconic-ass rappers were coming up to me talking about how I killed that shit. All this from me saying, ‘Yo, I need a record on radio in Chicago.’”

Tony Williams: “I didn’t even work on the album until the last two weeks. All my contributions happened in one weekend. I had worked with Kanye on one of my prior projects, but we’re two different types of artists.


 

‘Spaceship’ was like the people’s record. The verses are memorable and relatable, they’re easy to remember and say back because they're not super complicated flows and punchlines. It’s the blue collar anthem of the album. - Consequence 


 

"Since we’re first cousins, we’ve spent the holidays together in Oklahoma City. The holidays would come, I would go to Oklahoma City, and my dad would pick up Kanye’s mom from the airport. During our rides back to the house, we’d play each other whatever we were working on at the time. He had been working on College Dropout for months at that point. It was two weeks left til the deadline. He played ‘Spaceship’ and I just started singing on top of the track. His first reaction was, ‘Stop! Rewind that. Do that again.’ I started doing the same riff and he was like, ‘That’s the vibe that I’ve really been trying to get on that song!’

“After Christmas, he was going back to L.A. to resume recording for the final two weeks before the album had to be turned in. He said 'I want you to come to L.A. and sing what you just did on this song.' The song was pretty much done. It was just missing the soulful vibe that Kanye was going for, so I added the icing on the cake. GLC and Consequence and those guys were like, ‘Man, thank you Tony for blessing the song.’ One thing led to another, and I ended up doing ‘I’ll Fly Away,’ ‘Lil Jimmy Skit,’ ‘School Spirit,’ and ‘Last Call.’”

"I'll Fly Away" is a cover of The Humbard Family's "I'll Fly Away"

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Plain Pat: “The biggest [mistake I made during the process], or the one I’m most embarrassed about, the one that ‘Ye yelled at me so bad about, was the edited version of ‘Spaceship.’ When we made the clean version, the engineer fucked up the edit, so the whole verse was off beat.”

"Jesus Walks"

jesus walks kanye west performance.

"So here go my single dog radio needs this/They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus/That means guns, sex, lies, videotape/But if I talk about God my record won't get played, huh?" —Kanye West

Consequence: “He already had the beat and little bit of ‘Jesus Walks’ when I met him. Of course that was Rhymefest’s record and I think they worked it out for him to keep it, but Rhymefest started it off with him. [Ed. Note—Rhymefest declined to be interviewed for this article.] Rhymefest was originally his first artist but he opted to take a deal with Mark Ronson’s Allido Records label because Kanye didn’t even have G.O.O.D. Music at the time—it was just Kon-Man Productions.”

"Jesus Walks" samples Curtis Mayfield's "(Don't Worry) If There's A Hell Below, We're All Going To Go" (1988)

Miri Ben-Ari: “I remember him playing the track, I recorded without the lyrics. When I was recording it I was trying to go for like a Doomsday sound, kind of like classical music. I was trying to go for that vibe. I wanted to have a very romantic, soundtrack approach. But, on the other end, I wanted to have like a cutting-edge sound.”

The first video for "Jesus Walks" was directed by Michael Haussman on a budget of $650,000.

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

John Legend: “I did a lot of little things throughout the album that people don’t know about. Like I sang on 'Jesus Walks' even though people don’t really know it’s my voice. That part that kind of sounds like an exotic flute? That’s me singing through Auto-Tune.”

"Jesus Walks" samples The Arc Choir's "Walk With Me" (1997)

Coodie: “Kanye was the only person that was able to pull that off without falling into the category of ‘Christian Rap.’ He wound up doing two videos and he called us for the last video because he said there was a feeling that he wanted. He wanted Dave Chappelle to play Jesus but he didn’t do it.”

The second video for "Jesus Walks" was directed by Chris Milk on a budget of $500,000. 

Tarrey Torae: “Kanye is very easy to record with because he knows exactly what he’s looking for. He was looking for someone with a flexible voice and I had that flexibility. When I went in the booth he would say, like, 'I want more street on this,' or 'I want more soul.' Then I’d go in and maybe on the first take we’d get it. Sometimes there would be a second or third take but never a fourth or fifth.

 

“He didn’t waste time in the studio at all. If people came in there and started talking and hanging out, he cut them out. You had to be in there working or get out, like don’t come in here disrupting his work. I admired that. It taught me don’t waste time in the studio because it’s money. He was very intense about it, like, 'It’s my studio, it’s my project, this is what we’re doing. And if you’re not doing this, leave.' It was great to see.

“We would walk in the studio and he would have the dry-erase board loaded with what he was doing for that day and he would have my name next to songs. So I would take notes, like, ‘These are the lyrics I need to learn. This is what we’re doing.’ I would take my notebook and sit in the corner somewhere and get ready for it. That way I knew when it was time to go in, I could go in and knock it out. [Laughs.] We all know he likes to teach. It’s a characteristic, right? It’s cool though. We’d leave at 3 in the morning, he’d be back in there by 9:30 or 10 am.”

T.I.: "Kanye came down to Atlanta to the studio [to work on 'Doin' My Job.' I remember hearing 'Jesus Walks' and I was like 'Oooooooh, I don’t know—that shit sound risky.’ That shit popped though. When I was telling Kanye, 'I don’t know, bruh' my homeboy was like, ‘That shit go.’ Kanye and my homeboy were absolutely right."

"Jesus Walks" samples Lou Donaldson's drums on "Ode To Billie Joe" (1967)

Hip Hop: “That record is probably the first record that really made me believe in him as an artist. I realized that he had potential to be a real special artist. But it didn’t work as well as we expected because it was so blatant that radio didn’t play it that much. As far as breaking barriers and being original, it definitely did a lot of that. And it won the Grammy. It made it even better that it wasn’t that big, if it was something that had been playing all day [it wouldn’t have been as good].


 

Kanye still hasn’t really been that big when you really think about it. His albums are consistently good, but it’s never the biggest album in any year. Like College Dropout came around the same time as Game’s The Documentary, but Game sold two times more than Kanye.  —Hip Hop


 

“Kanye still hasn’t really been that big when you really think about it. His albums are consistently good, always critically acclaimed. But it’s never the biggest album in any year in hip-hop. It’s barely even the biggest hip-hop album at any given time. Like The College Dropout came around the same time as Game’s The Documentary, but Game sold two times more than Kanye. And that was something Ye was on: ‘I could do more. How do I reach that point?’ He still never reached it. He still never sold four million records [in the United States] on an album. The album underperformed compared to a lot of other albums but can’t nobody deny the impact that it had on music today.”

Common: “I was sitting here listening to ‘Jesus Walks’ I was like, ‘Man, that’s really amazing that you have a song in this time in hip-hop, that people played on the radio, that he performed at the Grammys, called ‘Jesus Walks. It’s not like he’s a gospel artist performing at The Grammys or that he got played at a gospel station. The song was on Hot 97. That’s groundbreaking in itself because in hip-hop we definitely talk spirituality, but most of the time it comes from an Islamic perspective because you had the Five-Percent Nation. It wasn’t even like people talking about Christianity was the coolest aspect of hip-hop. I really appreciated that he made that cool.

“That’s a testament to his talent, how he can make anything [accessible] for the average person. But it’s a testament to hip-hop too, like if you put it in the right form, people can appreciate almost anything you talk about.”

The third and final video for "Jesus Walks" was directed by Coodie Simmons, Chike Ozah, and Kanye West on a budget of $40,000.

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

 

Never Let Me Down" f/ Jay Z & J. Ivy

jay-z and kanye west never let me down

"I can't complain what the accident did to my left eye/Cause look what an accident did to Left Eye." —Kanye West

Hip Hop: “He did that the day of Jay Z’s concert at Madison Square Garden. Remember that line on ‘Big Brother’ where he’s like he, ‘Carline told me I could buy two tickets?’ I was actually the one that told Ye to ask to perform with Jay. And Jay was like, ‘No, he ain’t ready for that yet.’ And then it was like, ‘Can we get tickets? Well they cost this much.’ And I was like, ‘Fuck it, I have two tickets, you can have mine.’ He was like, ‘Nah, nah, I’m good, I’m good. I’m going to the studio.’ So he went to Sony Studios and he made 'Never Let Me Down.'”

Coodie: “I told him he should name the album something Jay-Z said, ‘Kanye West On The Track.’ I’m so happy he didn’t name it that.”

J. Ivy: “Coodie was one of my main homies. He was like ‘Yo, I’m at Kanye crib in New Jersey, come through.’ I knew Kanye from Chicago, but my reintroduction to Kanye was when I met him out in Jersey. Me and my then-girlfriend, now wife, Tarrey Torae, get to Kanye crib, and we walk in the door, and they’re like ‘Yo, this is J-Ivy, he was on Def Poetry,’ but they didn’t know we already knew each other. And they like, ‘This Tarrey Torae, she got one of the strongest voices, she out the Chi too.’ Kanye was like, ‘Oh word, you sing? Man, get in the booth.’ So he put her to work within minutes. [Laughs.]

Tarrey Torae: “Kanye had a little studio section in his living room all set up and we just started recording. I wound up recording two or three songs that night. I remember recording 'My Way,' another song that I think it was called 'Higher' that wasn’t released, and the third was just me doing some harmonies for 'Spaceships' that didn’t get used. There’s about 38 songs that I recorded with him in total [through the years]—some released, some not—but those were the first three that I did with him.


 

He did that the day of Jay Z’s concert at Madison Square Garden. I was like, ‘I have two tickets, you can have mine.’ He was like, ‘Nah, nah, I’m good, I’m good. I’m going to the studio.’ So he went to Sony Studios and he made 'Never Let Me Down.' —Hip Hop


 

“Later on, Kanye called me and said, 'Listen, I need you to come out to L.A. to feature on a song.' I jumped on a plane and I walked in the studio and I said, 'Hey, everybody.' But my voice was hoarse. Everyone was like, 'What’s wrong with your voice?' I was like, 'Oh, you know, plane air conditioning, I’ll be straight by tomorrow.' But the next day my voice was completely gone.

“I was out there for three weeks because for half of the first week, I couldn’t even talk. Three or four singers came in there, like, 'I can do it!' Kanye was like, 'No, I’m waiting for her. I want her sound.' That was really cool of him to be generous and patient.

“Kanye brought a choir in for ‘Never Let Me Down.’ He loved choirs. So they went in the booth and began to sing but then they came out of the booth. They realized what he was saying in the verses. They were like, 'Nah, there’s cursing on there, and there’s this and that.' Kanye was like, 'But it’s a good message.' And they were like, 'So what?' And then they left. So Kanye turned around and looked at me like, ''Uh...can you go in the booth?' And I was like, 'Yeah. Let’s do it.’ I wound up being the whole choir.”

"Never Let Me Down" samples Blackjack's "Maybe It's The Power Of Love" (1980)

J. Ivy: “When he got into the accident, he was in the hospital rapping to Coodie over the phone. Coodie was looking at me like, ‘Yo, this dude ain’t supposed to be talking and he’s rapping right now. Yo, he’s the truth!’ He told Coodie, ‘I’m going through this life-changing experience. I need you out here filming.’ So he flew Coodie out the next day. Coodie called me the day after talking about filming Jamie Foxx doing ‘Slow Jamz,’ like, ‘J, you gotta get out here.’

“I was broke as hell, dog. I didn’t have money to get on the train. But I was super motivated. I was at the crib, I put some music on, and I’m writing for hours. I get a call from Coodie at like 11 o’clock that night. He’s like ‘You need to come to L.A. right now! Kanye got this song with him and Jay Z on it, and he wanna put a poet on it. I told him he need to put J-Ivy on it!’

“Mind you, Coodie was a comedian. He’s a funny dude. So I’m like, ‘Dog, that ain’t funny!’ I’m like ‘A joint with Jay Z?’ This is when Jay Z was retired. He’s like ‘Nah dog, you need to get to L.A. right now. You ain’t got much time. You get out here tomorrow if you can.’ I realized he was serious. I was like, ‘If you for real, I’ma find a way out there.’


 

Kanye brought a choir in for ‘Never Let Me Down.’ They went in the booth and began to sing but then they came out of the booth. They were like, 'There’s cursing on there.' Kanye was like, 'But it’s a good message.' They were like, 'So what?' And they left.  —Tarrey Torae


 

“He was in the studio so he played the song for me on the phone. I hang up the phone and my first thought was like, ‘You need to write something right now.’ I turned to a blank page, I wrote down the title ‘Never Let Me Down,' and I wrote one line. After I wrote that first line, I got stuck—my mind went completely blank. So I start banging on the page, I was like, ‘God, I need a piece right now! Please give me one right now, man!’

“When I put my hand back to the page, my hand just started moving and moving and writing, writing, writing, line after line after line after line. I wrote a full page, turned the page over, wrote a few more lines. I stopped, I read over the piece, I was like, ‘Man, this shit kinda hot!’ I read over it like four or five times. I called Coodie back like, ‘Dog, listen to this.’

“I did the verse for Coodie over the phone and Coodie was going crazy. He’s like, ‘Oh shit! Hold on J, hold on.’ So he goes in the other room, the music goes down, the people get quiet, and he’s like, ‘J, I put you on speakerphone. Spit that piece again.’ I spit the joint like I had done it a million times. I’m just going in. When I finished, the room exploded, so everybody’s like ‘Oh shit!’ Kanye like, ‘Man J, spit it again!’ I spit it again. ‘Spit it again!’ I spit it again. I did it for like a half hour over and over. Then Coodie finally got back on the phone, he was like, ‘Kanye flying you out here tomorrow.’ I was like, ‘I found my way.’

“When I got to the studio in L.A., I was on 10,000 when I did it. I was screaming, hollering, I was swinging for the fences. Kanye was like, ‘Do it one more time but bring it down just a little bit.’ That second time, he was like ‘That’s it.’ I was like, ‘Nah, I got another one!’ He was like ‘Nah, that’s it.’

“Kanye told me that originally ‘Never Let Me Down’ ended with my verse. And I remember him telling me, ‘Yo, like you know you closing my album out?’ I was like ‘Whoa! that’s a huge honor.’

“Somebody said that he played it for Jay and Beyoncé, and Beyoncé was like, ‘Yo, that’s dope.’ So Beyoncé showed me a lot of love. I met Jay Z and he definitely showed love. Jay Z says that you’re dope—you can’t do nothing but love that.”

Dame Dash: “I think everyone that raps has inner competition. Definitely, there’s no question that [there’s competition between him and Jay]. I don’t think it’s a negative thing. It’s just a human thing. I think Kanye’s competitive enough—and they both know the same business model because I taught it to them: Put out an album in the fourth quarter, tour that motherfucker, and generate money from people.


 

Jay being in the game a little longer, he'll always be ahead of Kanye. But as long as they both work hard, they're both legends, they're both going to go down in history.

—Dame Dash


 

“Jay being in the game a little longer, he’ll always be ahead of Kanye. But as long as they both work hard, they’re both legends, they’re both going to go down in history. They both have experiences, so their wins should be different, but it’s still competitive. As a rapper, Jay’s number one. But then as an entertainer, Kanye’s number one. They’re two different people, you can’t compare them. Jay’s actual experience and what he raps about is completely different than Kanye.

“Jay had to earn, he earned. Not to say Kanye didn’t earn, but we signed him so we had that foundation. We had to go hit the street, we had to earn our credibility. Kanye was able to get credibility from us and he took full advantage of it and that’s what he was supposed to do. As hardcore as he works, he would have eventually got it in some way, shape or form, whether it would have been us or somebody else. But I know that because he ran with us, it definitely made his life easier.”

"Get Em High" f/ Talib Kweli & Common

talib kweli, common, and kanye west

"My teacher said I'se a loser, I told her why don't you kill me I give a fuck if you fail me/I'm gonna follow my heart/And if you follow the charts/Or the plaques or the stacks/You ain't gotta guess who's back." —Kanye West

Common: “Kanye had been talking to me for a while about being on his album. I was like, ‘Cool. I want to hear your album.’ After hearing songs like ‘Jesus Walks’ and ‘All Falls Down,’ it inspired me to be like ‘Alright ‘Ye. What you want me to do?’ He said ‘I got this song with Talib Kweli, and the beat is raw and I want you to get on this.’

“I was sitting in the room where I stayed in Brooklyn writing it, like, ‘Man, I’m about to kill this,’ because it was me coming right after I had done Electric Circus. I definitely had a lot to get off my chest. I’m an artist who likes to create and likes to explore, I did that with Electric Circus. I felt ‘Get Em High’ was me coming back around to the essence of who I am as an MC. That boom-bap MC, rap, shit-talking. To be able to go somewhere else and then come back to it, I think that’s what hip-hop is.


 

The verse wasn’t really a shot at Lil Jon, but for me, if I see some examples of rappers doing stuff, especially if its more than one and it just don’t seem authentic, then yeah you might be used as an example in my song. —Common


 

“When I said, ‘Y’all assumed I was doomed, out of tune/But I still fill the notes with real nigga quotes,’ I’m just saying I’m getting back to the essence. Like, I’m going to learn and stuff but I’m a man. If I’m on Electric Circus then I’m on that Electric Circus, if I’m on Be, I’m on Be, if I’m on ‘Get Em High,’ I’m on ‘Get Em High.’ There’s many dimensions to me.

“The verse wasn’t really a shot at Lil Jon, but for me, if I see some examples of rappers doing stuff, especially if it's more than one and it just don’t seem authentic, then yeah you might be used as an example in my song. But if I really want to call you out, I’m going to say your name. That’s the type man I am. It wasn’t specifically to Lil Jon—it was to whoever fit in that category. That’s just shit-talking rap, that’s part of being an MC.”

Talib Kweli: “When I was working on The Beautiful Struggle, Kanye came and played me some beats. By this time he was already one of the most successful artists in hip-hop. So our dynamic changed slightly. Before he would play me beats; now he was way more busy. He was like, ‘Yo, I don’t have any beats because I’ve been working so hard on this other stuff, but I’ll come over there and make some.’ I was just like, OK, you can do that, but what if what you make it and I don’t like? Are we going to be able to have another session?’ He was like, ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll come over there and make something.’ So I watched him make the ‘Get Em High’ beat in 15 minutes.

“He was like, ‘Yo the hook should be like, ‘Throw, throw your motherfucker hands—get em high.’’ Which was a hook I had done previously in my career. I was like, ‘I don’t know, ‘Throw your motherfucking hands in the air?’ That’s not really where I’m trying to go.’ I slept on the simplicity of what he was doing. Then he was talking about smoking weed and I was like, ‘I don’t know If I wanna make a weed record. Is there something else?’ He ended up playing me some other things. I think I ended up picking ‘I Try’ in that session.

“He was like, ‘Well shit, this is hot, and if you’re not gonna fuck with it, I’m gonna fuck with it.’ A few months later he was putting the final touches on The College Dropout, and he called me and said, ‘I have to turn in this album in two days, but I cannot do this album without you being a part of it. I’ve got this song over this beat I had made for you, remember ‘Get Em High?’ I have Common on it, and I want you to come and hop on it with us, but you’ve gotta do it right now.’ I was on tour in Europe. So I went and found a studio, recorded my verse, and sent it to him, and he put it on the album.

“A couple of months later, when the album came out, I stopped at Target to pick up a copy of it. Back then, if I was on an album, I would listen to the whole album, rather than skip to the song I’m on to hear how I fit. So I’m listening to the album and I’m completely blown away by it. I’m like, ‘This album’s a classic. This is incredible.’ I’m waiting, I’m listening like, ‘I can’t wait to get to my song.’

"When ‘Get Em High’ came on, where my verse starts on ‘Get Em High,’ is an entire bar after where I really started it at. He didn’t edit the rhyme. He just started it a bar late. So it’s like, when you count to four and you’re about to rhyme like, one...two...three...four, imagine if you got to five and then you went.


 

Whoever flew it in when I sent it to him, flew it in wrong. So it mathematically was on beat, but it’s definitely not how I laid it. So I was very upset. I called Kanye and I was like, ‘Yo, this is crazy. How could you do this to me?'  —Talib Kweli


 

“Whoever flew it in when I sent it to him, flew it in wrong. So it mathematically was on beat, but it’s definitely not how I laid it. So I was very upset. I called Kanye and I was like, ‘Yo, this is crazy. How could you do this to me? You gotta fix it for the second print of the album.’ He’s like, ‘Yo I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that. But that shit sounds hot.’ I said, ‘It doesn’t sound hot and I don’t rap like that. I’m way doper than how you have me sounding.’ I was upset about it.

“Then people started calling and emailing me, telling me how much they liked it. I was very dismissive of it because I felt like people just liked it because Kanye is popular. You’re just proud of me for being on the album. If you would have heard how I really laid it, you would understand. But after a month or two I got over it, and learned to embrace the verse and embrace the happy mistakes.”

Plain Pat: “Every first run of Kanye, there’s always errors. Like, the credits were fucked up. Remember when it came out with the white cover? That’s the remastered one. We remastered it four times to get it right. It was so much later nobody even cared. [Laughs.] We were already working on the next album and there I was still approving roughs from the first album. That first brown version, that’s not really available anymore.

Coodie: “Those type of of songs I used to film him rapping so he could remember the verse because he didn’t write nothing down. So a lot of times I’d film him rapping and then show it back to him. I definitely remember doing that for that song.

“I’d never seen him write no [lyrics] down. He’d be walking down the street mumbling his raps. He’d be like, ‘Going to the car, they want to [mumbles],’ Then he’d come back with the other words and then he’d fill it in. Sometimes he would go in the booth and he’d start putting it all together right there and recording at the same time.


 

Every first run of Kanye, there’s always errors. Like, the credits were f**ked up. Remember when it came out with the white cover? That’s the remastered one. We remastered it four times to get it right. It was so much later nobody even cared. —Plain Pat


 

Chike: “He raps like how his barber Ibn cuts hair. Ibn cuts around your head and then he goes and fills it in and gets it all. Kanye raps the same way. He doesn’t rap the whole song. It’s amazing how he even remembers the other part. It’s almost like he understands that his voice is an instrument. He builds his lyrics similar to how he builds beats, he harmonizes them [over the track]. So even though there’s no words there, he understands that the sound is still a word and he’s eventually gonna replace the sound. The sound is like the placeholder. It’s crazy to see the process of how he raps.”

Plain Pat: “‘Get ‘Em High’ wasn’t on the album. It was one of the songs that was on a laptop he gave me [filled with songs]. Then John Monopoly heard it when I was playing it and that got added to the album pretty late.”

J. Ivy: “I was the one who said ‘You’ve got mail!’ That was me because he didn’t want to use the actual recording.”

Coodie: “Kanye had his girlfriend at the time [Sumeke Rainey] in the studio, so he’d have her go in and do the girl ad-libs.”

"Workout Plan" / "The New Workout Plan"

kanye west performing workout plan

"It's a party tonight and ooh she's so excited/Tell me who's invited: you, your friends and my dick." —Kanye West

Miri Ben-Ari: "I remember a session at his old house in Hoboken. I was recording the ‘New Workout Plan.’ We didn’t even know what album it was supposed to go on. We were considering for it to go on my album. We didn’t even have a mic. I was recording with like a quarter inch cord for my electric violin to his... whatever he had there. His sequencer wasn’t anything fancy.

"The quarter inch was so short that I had to step on it in order for it not hit him in the face because he was programming the bass. It was so ghetto. But that was raw. That was that time where a group of people just came up with a fresh new sound. There was no limits, no rules, it was just fun.”


 

I hated that song, man. Like every Kanye album, there’s the one song that drives me crazy. —Plain Pat


 

John Legend: “I was on 'The New Workout Plan' too. I forgot about that. I did that whole, 'That’s right put in work, move your ass, go berserk, eat your salad, no dessert.' That’s me. [Laughs.] I wrote all of the lines. [Laughs.] It’s funny because I had to get a publishing request from J. Cole because he sampled that song, so we ended up being in a version of 'Workout' because he sampled Kanye.”

Plain Pat: “I hated that song, man. Like every Kanye album, there’s the one song that drives me crazy. Then he flew to Miami to do that stupid-ass video. It was just so goofy. It’s like he likes something about it and he would just go with it. He wants to make it work so bad, it’s like he wants to prove everybody wrong.”

The video for "The New Workout Plan" was directed by Little X.

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com


 

I did that whole, 'Go berserk, eat your salad, no dessert.' That’s me. [Laughs.] It’s funny because I had to get a publishing request from J. Cole because he sampled that song. —John Legend


 

Gee Roberson: “I remember Kanye coming up with the concept which had me on the floor. That video goes back to the comedy of Kanye West, having that lightheartedness. He made sure to always have that throughout the project. That’s one of the things I love about this album that people don’t really think about, the level of smart humor that it portrayed.

“We were having conversations about who would make sense to be in the video, but someone outside the box that would be entertaining. It was Kanye’s idea to have Anna Nicole Smith. Kanye was convinced about it being her and whenever Kanye is convinced then there ain’t no plan B. He was like, ‘Yo man, you got to find her.’ And I did and she was genuinely on board for it.”

"Slow Jamz" f/ Jamie Foxx & Twista

kanye west performing slow jamz

"She got a light-skinned friend, look like Michael Jackson Got a dark-skinned friend, look like Michael Jackson." —Kanye West

Plain Pat: “I don’t think anybody thought 'Slow Jamz' was gonna be a smash record. Twista wasn’t popping. And Kanye had a lot of records, like Dilated Peoples’ ‘This Way,’ that didn’t necessarily become big just because Kanye did it. It coulda came and went, but there was something about that song.”

Consequence: “The funny thing about that is how he got the beat. I had this skit called ‘The Baby Pops’ on my mixtape. I was like, ‘I need a joint to talk wild shit on.’ He was like, ‘Yo it’s this Luther record called ‘Home’ you should fuck with.’ He made a beat out of it and then that was ‘Slow Jamz.’ Another one—which was over Lenny Williams’s ‘Cause I Love You’—that turned into Twista’s ‘Overnight Celebrity.’ Lightning was striking all over the place but little did we know.”

"Slow Jamz" samples Luther Vandross' "A House Is Not A Home" (1981)

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Twista: “Kanye was like, ‘I want to hear you on this song right here.’ He explained the concept and I remember pacing in the studio, thinking to myself, ‘I’m going to name a bunch of different classic singers in this song right here.’ Jamie Foxx had nothing to do with it yet.

Coodie: “We wind up going to Jamie Foxx house and Kanye was telling him how they’re gonna name different iconic artists that sung slow jams. Jamie Foxx was in the booth getting loose but it wasn’t going well. But when I went in the booth with that camera, he seen that camera and started performing instead just singing. It’s almost like you’re not funny ‘til you go on that stage.”

Dame Dash: “I was in L.A. and Kanye came by The Bel-Air like, ‘I just did a record with Jamie Foxx.’ I was like, ‘Why? I hate when actors sing.’ But that shit just worked. He knew how to bring those banging hits.”

J. Ivy: “At the time, me and Aisha Tyler had the same attorney, so I brought her to the hotel where Kanye was staying at.”

Aisha Tyler: “I was asked if I wanted to guest on the album right after he had his jaw opened back up. He looked very different than he does now, he had lost a lot of weight after the accident. I went over to Record Plant, hung out, listened, fucked around a bunch until we got an idea that he liked, and then we laid it down. I honestly don't remember [if I got paid for being on the album.]


 

Of course I wanted to do the video when Kanye asked me. But I was very specific that I’m not a video vixen. —Aisha Tyler


 

“Of course I wanted to do the video when Kanye asked me. But I was very specific that I’m not a video vixen. Girls in hip-hop videos are accessories and I didn’t want to be an accessory, I didn’t want to come in and drop anything down or back anything up. So I said ‘I’ll come in and I’ll be Kanye’s friend.’

"He could have gotten another girl to do it, and it would have been fine with me. But he was like, ‘Well why don’t we play cards and we’ll let you win.’ I was actually on the celebrity poker tour at that time, so it fit me. People still hit me on Twitter all the time, ‘I just saw you in the Kanye West and Twista’s video.’”

Twista f/ Kanye West & Jamie Foxx "Slow Jamz (Music Video Version)" (2004)

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Gee Roberson: “Kanye put up his own money for the 'Through The Wire' video and we were working the record ourselves for eight months. We go to Kanye, like, ‘We need something with way more money behind it as a single.’ Meanwhile, Hip Hop and I accepted a position to be the Senior VPs of A&R at Atlantic Records. Atlantic gave us a list of artists to work on, one of them was Twista. Twista been out for years, he’s got no single, they didn’t know what to do with him.

“I’m thinking, I have to fulfill two sides of the coin. Let me see if we can give this record to Twista so it’s on Twista’s album, but we could keep it for Kanye’s album, and we work out some type of grace period. That way, Atlantic pays for the video but it also gives Kanye some real exposure. Me, Hip Hop, Jay-Z, and Kanye had this pow wow. Jay Z and Dame pow wowed with Craig and Atlantic. Craig Kallman at Atlantic was like, ‘Let’s try to work it out.’”


 

We had a Twista version because Atlantic was paying for everything, but then we had a Kanye version too. That was the agreement. That’s also why Twista’s Kamikaze album came out two weeks before ours. I’m thinking, ‘This is great.’ But then... Twista’s album came out and sold over 312,000 its first week...

—Gee Roberson


 

Twista: “When Kanye played it back for me [with Jamie Foxx on it] I was like, ‘That’s phenomenal.’ But what took it to the next level was when Jay-Z was like, ‘What’s up with that song that you and Kanye got? That ‘Slow Jamz’ song?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, he asked me to get on it.’ He said, ‘I think that’s a good look. That should come out as a first single for both of y’all.’ So Jay-Z was actually the one that put ‘Slow Jamz’ being a single into effect.

Gee Roberson: “We had a Twista version because they’re paying for everything, but then we had a Kanye version too. That’s also why Twista’s Kamikaze album came out two weeks before ours—that was part of the agreement. Since they were paying for everything, they would get the look. I’m thinking, ‘This is great.’ But then...Twista’s album came out and sold over 312,000 its first week...”

Twista: “That song was definitely the biggest thing that happened in my career. It didn’t hit me until we got to a couple of radio stations and they was telling me how ‘Slow Jamz’ was getting thousands of spins and people were calling about it.”

Gee Roberson: “I’m shitting bricks like, ‘I’m in trouble. I just took a record off the first artist that I manage and gave it to my 9-5er job and Twista did over 300K. I can’t come out and do 200K.’ [Laughs.] I’m saying an unlimited amount of prayers.

"That’s why I was a nervous wreck when it came to 'All Falls Down' and getting the Jay Z feature because of the timing—Twista’s album was coming out and I couldn’t risk The College Dropout being released far apart from that. Especially with what 'Slow Jamz' was doing in real time. So you can imagine my life as I was going through it. Those things mess you up mentally. But God blessed us with a 440,000 plus first week.

“But think about it—we could have ended up working at Sony or Capitol or Bad Boy. Of all the jobs to take, we took a job at Atlantic and ironically one of Atlantic’s artists that’s in need of a single is on the album by the artist that we manage. The timing of that is nothing but God.”

No ID: “When Atlantic began to press that record and it went to No. 1, that gave confidence to Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella to push Kanye all the way. That was the moment we knew the machine was behind him and there was no question it was gonna work.”

"Breathe In Breathe Out" f/ Ludacris

ludacris and kanye performing together

"First nigga with a Benz and a backpack/Ice chain, Carti lens, and a knapsack."  —Kanye West

Plain Pat: “The album definitely cost over $1 million [to make]. But when we started, I’d guess the budget was like $250,000. This was when Roc-A-Fella was wilding out. They had [their studio] Baseline going. It was just non-stop recording. They didn’t know who was recording what; it was just open. The bill would come in and just say, like, ‘Beanie Sigel Freestyle.’ It was out of control. So it was like months of these unpaid bills and beefing. Eventually, the entire Roc-A-Fella budget was on hold, except for Jay obviously.


 

Lyor Cohen didn’t want to budget Kanye at all. Nobody did. The only people who were fighting for Kanye were Biggs and myself and I was more or less fighting because Biggs was pushing me to fight for him.

—Dame Dash


 

“Meanwhile, Kanye was in L.A. I was letting him record but I wasn’t supposed to. So I had all these bills from Record Plant and I was holding them, I was hoping for the budget to reopen but it never got reopened. I was so scared that I would get fired.”

Dame Dash: “The Young Gunz had ‘Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop’ and Kanye hadn’t started to attack his record yet, but we saw what was going on. So I had to confer with Lyor Cohen, since he was the person who represented my partners, and present what we wanted to spend our budgets on.

“Because the Young Gunz had so many spins already, he was like, ‘I would like to chase the Young Gunz.’ I was like, ‘You’re fucking retarded. We need to chase both if we’re going to chase anything.’ And he was like, ‘Nah, we don’t have the budget for it.’ [Lyor didn’t want to budget Kanye] at all. Nobody did. The only people who were fighting for Kanye were Biggs and myself and I was more or less fighting because Biggs was pushing me to fight for him.”

"Breathe In, Breathe Out" samples Jackie Moore's "Precious Precious" (1971)

Plain Pat: “Kanye was back in New York hanging out in the Def Jam office with me and the Director of Marketing, Shante Bacon, and Lyor Cohen walked by. Shante probably introduced Kanye to Lyor because I didn’t know Lyor, I was just an admin guy. The next thing I know, Kanye was in Lyor’s office playing him all this music.


 

Lyor Cohen went crazy for ‘Breathe In, Breathe Out.’ Like, ‘This is my favorite one!’ We were like, ‘Check this ‘Jesus Walks’ one out.’ And he was like, ‘Don’t f**k it up Kanye. I only like this one.’ The next day, they opened up the budget just for Kanye.

—Plain Pat


 

“Lyor went crazy for ‘Breathe In, Breathe Out.’ Like, ‘This is my favorite one!’ We were like, ‘Check this ‘Jesus Walks’ one out.’ And he was like, ‘Don’t fuck it up Kanye. I only like this one.’ The next day, they opened up the budget just for Kanye. They were like, ‘Whatever Kanye bills you have, you can pay them.’ I was like so happy because I owed like 50 grand. [Laughs.] So that meeting really helped me out and that’s how he got them to notice him.”

Gee Roberson: “We actually thought that song would be bigger than what it was. I thought that would have been a single. It was a debate after [the album dropped] like, ‘Should we have put it on the album? Should we have just kept it on the mixtape?’ It goes to show you, once you finish the body of work you really don’t know until after it’s said and done.”

Consequence: “I remember Kanye always said he was kind of on the [fence] about ‘Breathe In Breathe Out’ on the finished track list. In my opinion, this record that John Legend did should have been on album called, ‘Gettin Out the Game.’ And, if this is just me, I felt ‘Magic Man’ was supposed to go on the album too—I don’t know if it was a sample issue. But I thought ‘Breathe In Breathe Out’ was dope too.”

"School Spirit (Skit 1)" / "School Spirit" / "School Spirit (Skit 2)"

making of kanye school spirit

"Told 'em I finished school and I started my own business/They say, 'Oh you graduated?' No, I decided I was finished." —Kanye West

Gee Roberson: “Those skits were genius. That was Kanye’s idea. That didn’t come from us. Skits [are important because] they’re there to help paint the picture and move the album. We all agreed to that in terms of the tone of the album and mood, he set the stage.”

Plain Pat: “[The amount of skits] was a thing we fought him on. We were like, ‘You can’t put two skits back to back.’ He would be like, ‘Why? I’m doing it.’ He would add those skits as we were mastering the album. He would just keep adding them and adding them. We were like, ‘No more skits!’ But he wanted it that way and we had to make it happen.


 

"The amount of skits was a thing we fought him on. We were like, ‘You can’t put two skits back to back.’ He would be like, ‘Why? I’m doing it.’"

—Plain Pat


 

"Dealing with artists, you never tell an artist no. They’re supposed to think crazy and out of the box. You want them to think that way. We let them get it out and we just figure it out later.”

Gee Roberson: “You know how many years of my life I lost dealing with that Aretha Franklin sample? I’m already losing years of my life because of the Lauryn Hill sample, so now enter Aretha Franklin. That sample was denied and was not going to happen. It was mission impossible. But Kanye had to have it—there was no ifs, ands, or buts about it. So I’m going crazy.”

"School Spirit" samples Aretha Franklin's "Spirit In The Dark" (1970)

Hip Hop: “Kanye wasn’t a big old record collector like that. He didn’t have lots of old records. His girl's father gave him a crate of records that a lot of [samples on the album] came from. He had Al Green, Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin all in there.”

Plain Pat: “We had like three other versions of the song. I was camped out at the studio while they were mixing all these other versions but we were just waiting for the sample to get cleared. He hated the other versions. That song would have been so weak if we didn’t get that sample cleared.”


 

Kanye wasn’t a big old record collector like that. His girl's father gave him a crate of records that a lot of [samples on the album] came from. He had Al Green, Nina Simone, Aretha Franklin all in there.

—Hip Hop


 

Gee Roberson: “It’s funny how these stories keep going back to uncontrollable things in your life and places you work at. This goes back again to me accepting a job at, of all places, Atlantic Records. I called upon Craig Kallman, the head Atlantic, to get involved and help me get that sample cleared once we got denied. Like a true guy, Kallman made it happen on my behalf.

“But the stipulation was that it had to be clean, which is why [it’s edited even on the album version]. That was the only way it had to be done, then we were both understanding about [it having to be clean].

“I was learning this from the living example himself, Kanye West, that you never take no. There’s no choice for me but to have the same mentality because I’m speaking 24/7 to the guy who’s living his life and being the example of all examples of that. In the midst of the no’s, I had to figure out a way. And I figured out a way.”

The uncensored version of "School Spirit" can be found online

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

 

"Two Words" f/ Freeway & Mos Def

kanye west and mos def song

"Two words, Chi-town raised me crazy/So I live by two words: 'Fuck you' 'Pay me!'" —Kanye West

Freeway: “No one really respected Kanye as a rapper. But I knew Kanye was talented because I had listened to some of his stuff. So when he asked me to get on the album, I said, ‘Hell yeah. Let’s do it.’ At the time, Roc-A-Fella was like a family. Kanye would be in one room working, Just Blaze would be in another room, Dipset might be in one room. Steel sharpens steel, so everybody was vibing off of each other’s music.

“I knew the song would feature other people, but I don’t remember if he told me Mos Def was going to be on it or not. When I heard the beat, I was excited because it was theatrical and big. I like beats that challenge my flow. I’ve been a fan of Mos Def’s, so it was good to work with him. That was a really big record for me. I perform that song to this day. Everyone loves it.”

Kanye West f/ Freeway & Mos Def "Two Words" (2004)

Miri Ben-Ari: “Kanye saw me performing with Jay Z and he wanted to [work with me] so he reached out to my manager and we got in the studio. The College Dropout is when Kanye developed his own unique sound. He did that by having people [whose] talent he trusted. He let them do them and he learned from them because he’s very open minded. He loves to learn.

“‘Two Words’ was the first recording I did with Kanye, so we didn’t really know each other well. The whole classical strings, orchestra was very new to Kanye. He wanted that sound, my writing, my sound, my style for The College Dropout. It was a fresh new sound, no one had done it at the time. Kanye liked to just sit and listen. I introduced him to that whole sound of classical strings and orchestration and he fell in love with it.


 

The weirdest thing is, he would put me in the studio and just watch me record. He’d just sit there for hours. He didn’t give me any [instructions], it was very minimal. —Miri Ben-Ari


 

“When I get in the studio, I’m like a one-woman show. I write on the spot, I produce, I arrange, I orchestrate, I do everything, and then I tell the engineer exactly how to record. He was very impressed with me. The weirdest thing is, he would put me in the studio and just watch me record. He’d just sit there for hours. He didn’t give me any [instructions]. It was very minimal. When you work with people you trust, you don’t need to. I learned so much from him too. You are your experience as an artist.

“He loved what I did on ‘Two Words’ so much that he had a version of ‘Two Words’ with only the strings. [Laughs.] I kid you not. He wanted to put out an album only with the strings.”

"Two Words" samples Mandrill's "Peace and Love" (1970)

Plain Pat: “We had boxes of instrumentals but we were like, ‘We’re not putting no instrumentals out.’ This was when whatever you put out as a song, 50 Cent would rap on it and then everybody would play 50’s version. It wasn’t specifically 50 though. In general, it’s like, fuck letting people rap over your shit. That’s why none of the singles have instrumentals.

"After a year or so, we were like, ‘Yo, we’re gonna do white labels.’ So I had like 50 boxes of vinyls in my office. We were like, ‘What are we gonna do with them?’ I ended up selling them to Fat Beats or something, made a couple grand. [Laughs.]”

"Two Words" samples drums from The 5th Dimension's "Rainmaker" (1971)

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Consequence: “We drove fucking four hours upstate somewhere I can’t remember to get to this compound because I guess that’s the only place they would let the Harlem Boys Choir record.”


 

We had boxes of instrumentals but we were like, ‘We’re not putting no instrumentals out.’ This was when whatever you put out a song, 50 Cent would rap on it and then everybody would play 50’s version. That's why none of the singles have instrumental versions.

—Plain Pat


 

Plain Pat: “Kanye did two records for Scarface, [‘Guess Who’s Back?’ and ‘In Cold Blood’]. He was like, ‘Whoever mixed those songs, I want them to mix my albums. Find them.’ It was Mike Dean so I got in touch with him and he mixed ‘Two Words.’”

Dame Dash: “The one thing about Kanye is, he’s brave. He will walk on the killer’s block, even if he’s not a killer. There was an infamous battle in London at my crib between Mos Def and Kanye. Even though you know him, how do you get in front of Mos Def and go rap for rap with him? That’s when I was like, 'He’s fearless.' Because most people wouldn’t have done that shit. He wasn’t scared to be himself.”

Mos Def and Kanye West battle in London.

Plain Pat: “People don’t understand. You get all types of random people on a song nowadays and it’s considered the norm. Kanye definitely helped make this new culture that we live in, everything today still goes back to those times. Hip-hop was way more segregated back then. Kanye paid his own money to go on tour with fucking Talib Kweli with his big-ass Roc-A-Fella chain and people looked at him like he was crazy. [Laughs.] We knew [Kanye was bridging the gap between underground and mainstream]. Like, we fucked with Mos Def and we fucked with Freeway. So it was like, ‘Why shouldn’t they be on a dope beat?’”

"Through The Wire"

kanye west through the wire

"Good dude, bad night, right place, wrong time/In the blink of a eye, his whole life changed." —Kanye West

No ID: “I remember when he first had the accident] and I talked to him, he was like, ‘I’ve figured it all out.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, you’re safe, God bless.’ He’s like, ‘Nah, I figured out my direction.’ For whatever reason, it clicked in his head. Kanye always had a way of thinking and I learned not to question it.”

Consequence: “He called me maybe like three days [after the accident] rapping ‘Through The Wire’ verses. I’m thinking to myself, ‘What the fuck is wrong with you? Why the fuck are you rapping right now?’


 

Kanye showed me the ‘Through the Wire’ video on his laptop. He said, ‘Def Jam is fronting on me because I’m not rapping in the video and they said I have to rap. I don’t want to rap.’

—Evidence


 

Dame Dash: “I remember when he smacked his face into a tree, I remember him asking me for a drum machine. So I paid for a drum machine and he started making all this music. I remember he shot the video and I started to notice that he was walking around with people, and that was exactly what I used to do. So I was like, okay, I see you.”

Evidence: “Kanye showed me the ‘Through the Wire’ video on his laptop. He said, ‘Def Jam is fronting on me because I’m not rapping in the video and they said I have to rap. I don’t want to rap.’ And he’s on the phone with Lyor Cohen, saying ‘I’m going to be big.’ I was just like, ‘Okay, this guy is determined.’

Deray Davis: “That ‘without a arm I spit,’ people have used that for hooks, for records, for mixtapes, CD, covers, all that. I had no idea that would be in the video. It came together organically. It’s amazing how you can plant a seed and just have it grow out of the water. People still walk up to me and say, ‘Without an arm I spit!’”

The video for "Through The Wire" was directed by Coodie and Chike and paid for by Kanye himself.  

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Coodie: “After he got signed, MTV wanted to do a ‘You Heard It First’ on Kanye on MTV, so this girl Yasmine Richard, she knew I had all this footage, so she called me. While I was at MTV she introduced me to people at MTV and one of those people was Chike, he was doing motion graphics for MTV.


 

‘Through the Wire’ told a story. When people understand your story they buy into you, I think Steve Jobs said that.

—Coodie


 

“After the accident, we came up with the idea to do the ‘Through the Wire’ video. I told Kanye, ‘Let’s put our video on a Polaroid. We could do the documentary footage and all that.’ We cut it up and I called Chike because we didn’t know how we could visually make it happen. Chike jumped on board with us and it was history in the making. That was the thing that took Kanye to the next level because people wasn’t believing in him until they seen that video.”

Chike: “The reason why we were even doing music videos was because we saw the void in creativity of the hip-hop videos that were out. Our goal was to change the norm.”

Coodie: “‘Through the Wire’ told a story. When people understand your story they buy into you, I think Steve Jobs said that.”

"Through The Wire" samples Chaka Khan's "Through The Fire" (1984)

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

Coodie: “We were sneaking into MTV every night. Kanye would be walking into MTV, they don’t know who he was, and say he was coming to see Chike.”

Chike: “History was made at MTV, right beneath their nose, and they didn’t even realize it. I was still working there when that video was No. 1 on MTV. I told my boss at the time like, ‘He’s not gonna be able to walk in here like this, y’all don’t realize really what y’all have sitting in here right now.’ He would come up and walk in regular, nobody would say nothing to him, he’d be sitting next to me on the computer the whole day.


 

I remember watching Rap City when ‘Through The Wire’ was No. 1 on MTV. Big Tigger was like, ‘Who came up with the concept?’ Kanye said, ‘Me.’ He didn’t say anything about me or Chike at all. I was like, ‘OK, something’s going south.’ —Coodie


 

“I went to art school and I do motion graphics, so I was showing him all different types of sites that had cutting edge typography and other visual stuff that I thought he’d be interested in, that’s how we bonded. I showed him [the design and filmmaking collective] MK12, next thing he doing a video with MK12. I showed him Show Studio—a fashion site—which is crazy because now he rolls with Nick Knight who was the director over there. I showed him this other site called QBN.com, this site K1OK, just all inspirational stuff.

Coodie: "The night of when he did the ‘Through The Wire’ premiere party at 40-40 Club, that was the night that was like, ‘Oh shit.’ That’s when Def Jam started recognizing him. Everybody was blown away by the video and it just kept building from there. Then after that show at SOBs on October 1st, he was bonafide, he was popping. It was full-on Kanye season.

"I remember watching Rap City when ‘Through The Wire’ was No. 1 on MTV. Big Tigger was like, ‘That video is great, who came up with the concept?’ I was like thank you Big Tigger, now I know I’m gonna get my shoutout. But Kanye said, ‘Me.’ He didn’t say anything about me or Chike at all. I was like, ‘Okay, something’s going south.’ I knew then."

Deray Davis: “I remember walking up to a club with Kanye while ‘Through the Wire’ was playing inside the club. We’re standing behind the rope. We’re like, ‘Yo, for real we standing outside?’ I’m like, ‘This motherfucker’s song is on right now.’ They’re like, ‘That’s Kanye? Oh shit!’ This is before he was getting carried in the club. [Laughs.]”

"Through The Wire" samples Outkast's drums on "Player's Ball (Extended Remix)" (1993)

"Family Business"

kanye performing family business

"Act like you ain't took a bath with your cousins/Fit three in the bed while six of y'all/I'm talking 'bout three by the head and three by the leg/But you ain't have to tell my girl I used to pee in the bed." —Kanye West

Tarrey Torae: “When he was writing the song, he kept saying, 'Man, I don’t know how to write this. I’m trying to figure it out.' He wanted it to be as close to other people’s experiences as possible. He was like, 'I need this to be about real-life family.’ I’m the oldest of 48 grandkids and that’s just on my mom’s side. I’m in the middle of 36 grandkids on my father’s side. So when he said, 'I need material.' I was like, 'I got plenty of material.'


 

Kanye was like, 'I need this to be about real life family.’ I’m the oldest of 48 grandkids on my mom’s side and I'm in the middle of 36 grandkids on my father’s side. So when he said, 'I need material.' I was like, 'I got plenty of material.'

—Tarrey Torae


 

“I started saying my aunt can’t cook so we warn guests not to eat her food. I told him about taking baths and sitting in the same tub with my cousins. I told him about sleeping in the bed together—how some people slept at the end of the bed and some people slept at the top of the bed and you had to stick your feet in there kinda the same way you put a shoes in the box where you turn it so they both fit in there. Matter of fact, at the end when he’s like, ‘Let’s get Stevie out of jail,’ that’s about my godbrother who had gone to jail.

“I was breaking down some of the funnier parts of how we grew up. My family is full of comedians, so we’re always laughing at each other or with each other. That song was definitely my family to the core. There was no switching it, he wrote it exactly as I described it, and he went from there. And he’s a great MC so he did an excellent job.”

"Family Business" samples The Dells' "Fonky Thang" (1972)

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com


 

I was a little salty about that situation. We were incubating John Legend on our dime. I felt that we had first dibs on him, but they went and did a deal someplace else.

—Dame Dash


 

Tony Williams: “When I asked Kanye if I could have an opportunity to work on the album there was a lot of hesitancy. He told me he had signed an artist to his management company that he was headstrong on showcasing on College Dropout, some guy by the name of John Legend—who I knew nothing about at that time.”

John Legend: “I sang on ‘Family Business.’ We recorded that originally in his apartment in New Jersey.”

Dame Dash: “He had John Legend with him and I was a little salty about that situation. [Laughs.] I just felt that we were moving Kanye and John Legend around, so we were incubating John Legend on our dime. I felt that we had first dibs on him, but they went and did a deal someplace else. So that was a little salty for me and it always has been.”

"Last Call"

kanye west, hov, and diddy together

"Killing y'all niggas on that lyrical shit/Mayonnaise-colored Benz, I push Miracle Whips/And I am..." —Kanye West

Coodie: “He made sure he got everybody because when he’s telling the story and he says their part, they had to actually say their part. It was a process of getting everybody to come in and do it.”

Evidence: “I first met Kanye West through our [Dilated Peoples] song ‘This Way.’ Black Eyed Peas had just come with ‘Where Is The Love,’ and they were blowing up, so Capitol Records thought we could do it just like they did. Capitol said, ‘We want you to work with Scott Storch or Kanye West.’


 

I said, ‘Jay is making The Black Album. Can you show this beat to him for me?’ He was puzzled. He said, ‘No, I’m the new Mr. Roc-A-Fella.’ But he wasn’t even out yet. In my mind, I’m like, ‘You’re pretentious.’ —Evidence


 

"Our album was done and we were happy with it. But when they said that, they also said that the budget was unlimited and that we didn’t have to recoup. We were like, ‘[It’s not] going to hurt us. So deal.’ We choose Kanye West. I didn’t really understand what was about to happen [in his career].

“At the same, my friend Porse, who would go crate-digging and then come to producers’ studios and sell gems, brought me this Bette Midler record, ‘Mr. Rockefeller.’ So I made the beat. I played him the beat one day and said, ‘Jay is making The Black Album, can you show this beat to him for me?’

"He was puzzled by it, like telling a kid that he can’t have this candy. He said, ‘No, I’m the new Mr. Roc-A-Fella.’ But he wasn’t even out yet. In my mind, I’m like, ‘You’re pretentious.’ But if you watch Fade to Black, he plays it for Jay Z and Jay Z was open off of it. But then Kanye hit me and said, ‘Jay Z passed. We’re going to prove a point.’ I was like, ‘OK.” [Laughs.]

Kanye West plays Jay Z the beat for "Last Call" on Fade To Black

“I didn’t hear anything back from him for a long time until my friend, who was working as an A&R at Capitol, called me and he was like, ‘You did ‘Last Call,’ right? I’m at Larrabee Studios and I can hear them mixing it.’ That was about an hour from my house, so I decided to drive over. I just walked in like, ‘What’s up? This is mine.’

"He said, ‘Look what we did with it.’ I couldn’t believe it. The sample didn’t clear and they had musicians replay it and musicologists sitting there telling us when it was good to be rightfully ours for copyright. The beauty of that was we got all the publishing. So, the checks that came from that were more than I had ever anticipated. We had actually been arguing over the advance that I was going to get. Had I known who he was going to be, I would have done it for free.


 

The best part was when he pulled me to the booth and said, ‘Yo, we need to talk about the interviews because this is going to be the biggest rap album of all time. So, we need to talk about what to say if people ask something about the beat.’ I started laughing, I couldn’t hold it back.

—Evidence


 

“The best part was when he pulled me to the booth and said, ‘Yo, we need to talk about the interviews because this is going to be the biggest rap album of all time. So, we need to talk about what to say if people ask something about the beat.’ I started laughing, I couldn’t hold it back. To me, he’s not a god, he’s just a guy. Like, if you told me this interview is going to be the best thing to ever come out, I’d be like, ‘Sure.’ [Laughs.]

“He told me to say that I did the music and he did the drums. Which is true. My drums are low. The kick pattern is my pattern. But then we were playing it and I was like, ‘That’s my shaker.’ And he was like, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘That’s my chime, too. It’s still in there.” And, he’s like, ‘Yep.’ But, then the ‘Get By’ drums are in there. And, the loop I inspired, I would have given up at the point where the sample couldn’t clear. ‘Alright, let’s just put a whole new track to it.’ But, he didn’t give up. He deserves it. If it says Kanye West and Evidence, it should because what I brought to the table and what you hear is substantially different.

“Dilated Peoples got to go on The College Dropout Tour. I also got a Grammy and a platinum plaque for it. He looked out.”

"Last Call" samples Bette Midler's "Mr. Rockefeller" (1976)

Dame Dash: “Jay didn’t want to give him the Roc-A-Fella chain off his neck. But Jay always did that shit man, he did that shit with Cam’ron too. He’s just not that dude that would be trying to be like, ‘Oh, congratulations.’ Then again, he was with an artist that he wasn’t 100% behind in those days. No disrespect to Jay, but at that time that was his opinion. Him and certain other artists, he didn’t want me to put out. But he was outvoted because Biggs would vote with me.

“On the day [we gave him the Roc chain], I was like, ‘Yo, announce him.’ Jay was like, ‘You do it.’ And I was like, ‘Alright, I did it.’ I took the chain off my neck, but it was my chain that had my motherfucking canary yellow diamonds. I never got it back. He better still have it. I need to get that shit back. [Laughs.]


 

Jay didn't want to give him the chain off his neck. So I took the chain off my neck, but it had my canary yellow diamonds. I never got it back. He better still have it. I need to get that back. —Dame Dash


 

“But again, because of his fear, he was fearless, so he would be playing with people. I remember after we made ‘We Are The Champions,’ he was in a compromising situation in an after-hours diner. He had his Roc-A-Fella chain on and he wasn’t getting out of there with that chain. He called me so me and Beans went down there. It wasn’t even a tough thing, people respected us and they were upset because they didn’t know who he was. Once we got there, he felt safe and he was ordering dessert. I’m like, ‘What the fuck is you doing?’ He was talking with some girl and I’m like, ‘Get in the car.’

“By the time we got in the car, the dudes that were in there were kind of like getting their heart up and they ran out. They were getting ready to do something but we were already in the car. We almost got into a compromising scenario.”

Gee Roberson: “No one did the story stuff on their first album. No one took use of the journey on leading up to it like, ‘I’m finally here, I’m delivering the world my first album, let me give you a snapshot of what it took for me to get to this point.’ The outro is genius because he’s giving you the premise of the inspiration of these songs.”

"Last Call" samples The Whatnauts' "She's Gone To Another" (1970)

After The Album

last call kanye west album

Kanye West:  “It’s all about the experience, The College Dropout experience. I’ll never be able to relive making the first album again. I’ll never be able to relive being able to walk through the airport and nobody knows who I am.”

Consequence: “The camaraderie during that time is the reason why we’re celebrating it 10 years later. You spend your lifetime trying to write your first album—that was Kanye’s life at the time. The landscape of music got hit with an uppercut. It was a barter for me giving up the resource of my flow, information, and my diligence for wanting to be back on. In this game, nothing sparks more interest than a major release that’s successful.

“At first people were like, ‘Consequence, why you fucking with him? He sucks.' I was like, ‘Nah he don’t suck. I promise you he don’t suck.’ The album dropped and the same motherfuckers is now on his dick. Like, ‘I remember you straight fronted on that nigga.’ This is an industry based on manufacturing and that’s the timepiece—that’s a collector’s item. All that four-in-the-morning recording is worth it when 10 years later we can discuss it.


 

A lot of people said they could tell me and Kanye had been doing a lot of work together because of his delivery. So it was a good validation for me. - Consequence


 

“From an industry standpoint, a lot of people said they could tell me and Kanye had been doing a lot of work together because of his delivery. So it was a good validation for me. [As far as flows] I would make a pitcher of grape lemonade Kool-Aid, then we would start rapping, and then whatever happened...you know, just pay me later. When we read that he’ll laugh his ass off. [Laughs.] That ain't figurative language, that’s literally what happened.

“He wasn’t the MC that you hear on The College Dropout yet. It took a lot of work. I want to make sure that people understand that team the was around for The College Dropout [made it what it is]. The College Dropout is the cornerstone piece of Kanye’s career."

Miri Ben-Ari: “There’s a brilliance to Kanye. Some people call him a musical genius. Is he really? What music can he play? Can you tell me? So, what does it mean, musical genius? For Kanye, it means the ability to appreciate good music and good musicians. He always knew who to put around him. He knows what trends to follow. Not only in America, but globally. He knows how to fuse things right and how to introduce things at the right time. At the time, when College Dropout came out, urban music really needed that sound."

Common: “The night Kanye played SOBs in New York [a few months before the album dropped], I knew that hip-hop was about to change. He was the first artist to bring together the backpack crowd along with the Roc-A-Fella ballers. I remember seeing people throwing up the Roc, but it was all underground hip-hop backpackers doing it. That album, he bridged the gap.”

John Legend: “I certainly wouldn’t have gotten signed were it not for The College Dropout. Prior to the album’s release, we weren’t getting good offers and we were frustrated. When College Dropout came out, everything changed and everybody wanted to sign me.

 

“I felt like it was going to be special when we were working on it because I had worked a little bit on Lauryn Hill’s Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and I got that same feeling when I was working on College Dropout. It became a moment in hip-hop that was going to be special and going to be historic.”

Deray Davis: “A couple of years later after the album came out, Kanye walked up to me and handed me a big-ass bulk of money for the skits. I won’t go into the amount, but it was enough to buy a small car. Yeezy was like, ‘Take it.’ I was like, ‘What the fuck?’ He’d do shit like that all the time. So I was like, ‘Thank you, I appreciate it.’ That’s just the kind of guy he is.

“One of the biggest things of my career was being on that album. We performed at the Grammys. He changed everything with that. That’s what birthed all the Drakes. Kanye birthed all that’s going on now. He remembers the album, he remembers the people that was there, he knows what that album was it. That’s the root to all the big branches going on now.”


 

A couple of years later after the album came out, Kanye walked up to me and handed me a big ass bulk of money for the skits. I won’t go into the amount, but it was enough to buy a small car. —Deray Davis


 

Aisha Tyler: “As mercurial as Kanye is, what I’ve always found compelling about him is his honesty and his willingness to be very intimate. That’s what was so great about this album. It’s not like there haven’t been other vulnerable rappers, but it felt like he was willing to play every side of a part and be complex and not just have it be about ‘My car is the biggest, my dick is the biggest.’ That will always be a beautiful aspect of his work.

“Kanye captured something. He captured a moment, not just in the music but in the whole concept of that album, that felt new. I think a lot of guys who have come after—from Frank Ocean to Kendrick Lamar—they’ve flowed out of that. I’m proud of Kanye. It’s nice to see that when Aisha Tyler guests on your record, you blow up. [Laughs.]”

Coodie: “Working with Kanye was great for awareness for us. It took a while for people to separate us from Kanye so that enough people respect us just for the work that we’re doing like the 30 For 30 on Benji, and not just lumping us with, ‘Oh, those are the guys that did the ‘Through the Wire’ video.’

“As far as Kanye, after that album it turned into more of a business and everyone around him is about the money. The powers that be kind of took over and there wasn’t no room for us. We had a couple of opportunities we could have worked with Kanye, but it just wasn’t right for us. I would love to ask Kanye why we’re not working together.

“I still love him. I still hope the best for him. Every time I see something bad happen to him, I’m like, ‘I wish I could have been there to tell him no or tell him different.’ Ain’t nobody do that or say that but a friend. It just hurts me. But then, if I’m thinking like anybody else I’m like, ‘Oh my footage is gonna be worth a lot of money now! Keep doing crazy stuff! Yeah!’ But every time, I cringe, like, ‘Damn.’ But hey, that’s Kanye West. That’s his life, and I wish him well.


 

L.A. Reid wasn’t trying to hire me, they wanted to keep me doing admin work. But they hired me because Kanye called L.A. and was like, ‘Yo you gotta make Pat A&R or else...’

—Plain Pat


 

“The plan is still to do [the documentary about Kanye]. When it’s time, it will happen. All that footage I shot, people wanted that. They couldn’t have it because I owned it. People offered money before. I talked to Kanye he’s like, ‘Nah man, I don’t want nobody to see that side of me.’ That side of him is Kanye being humble, on the grind, doin' what it takes—now he’s a rock star. When people see that, they gone fall right back in love with Kanye because that’s what they miss about him.”

Plain Pat: “I didn’t get promoted to A&R at Def Jam until after College Dropout came out. It was when Lyor Cohen left and L.A. Reid came in. L.A. wasn’t trying to hire me, they wanted to keep me doing admin work. But they hired me because Kanye called L.A. and was like, ‘Yo you gotta make Pat A&R or else...’ They didn’t really fuck with me like that, but I was just up there as, like, the Kanye guy.

“[When making the album] I was going so far above the job I was supposed to be doing. Some days I would pay for something myself, like a studio, because we just want to get it done so bad that it didn’t matter. We just loved the music so much, it was important to us.”

 

GLC: “The album changed my life. It was like the first time the world heard me rap. I had about five different offers on the table off of that one verse. There I was traveling all across the world. Having people coming up to me crying, talking about, ‘They just lost their mom too and thanks.’ I always was a popular guy, I always had girls competing for my affection. But after that ‘Spaceship’ verse, my lady rate went through the roof! [Laughs.] And I embraced it!”

Hip Hop: “When I used to think about it, that shit made me cry. That shit was incredible, the way the album was being accepted. It was just everything that he wanted to do. Just thinking about it from that point of me and him out there in Chicago in 1996 all the way to that point when it came out is crazy.”

J. Ivy: “I remember when Kanye performed at Webster Hall [after the album dropped] and me and Coodie talked Dave Chappelle into wearing the bear costume. The album was a magical moment. We had a lot of gifted people come together. College professors have told me that they have taught people my work. People have tattooed my verse on their arms.

“I’m sitting in this cafe and this girl walked up and gave me a note right now. It says, ‘Thank you for exercising your gift. Chante Alicia, a fan.’ She just handed me this.”


 

I always was a popular guy, I always had girls competing for my affection. But after that ‘Spaceship’ verse, my lady rate went through the roof! [Laughs.] And I embraced it! —GLC


 

Tony Williams: “When College Dropout came out, it was like, 'OK I still have a chance.' My first album came out last year. Nobody gets to my age and puts out their first album. Before College Dropout came out, I had no idea of the magnitude of what Kanye’s celebrity was [or would become]. He’s still not ‘Kanye West’ to me, he’s just Kanye. I remember when he was born. [Laugh.]”

Syleena Johnson: “Me and Kanye lost contact, but it will always be something that I’m glad that I did. Maybe he’ll do a College Dropout 2. A lot of people be like, ‘Man, I wish he go back to what he used to do.’”

Gee Roberson: “It’s impossible to remotely measure what that album has done for my career, my business, and who I am today. You only get that one shot of having your first [artist’s album]. And of all the countless artists that I’ve came across throughout the years and around the world, how blessed am I to be the one to encounter Kanye West? Think about that.

“Even now, 10 years later, we still work together and I’m still saying, 'We about to tear it up because we working on this new album.' I’m still in awe. I shouldn’t still be amazed by what’s going on. One word: blessed. That’s it.”

Dame Dash: “I didn’t know that he could shift the culture. I didn’t know that he could do it on his own—I thought he needed me to do it. And I didn’t anticipate that he was fearless on the publicity-stunt tip. So the shit with the president and the Taylor Swift thing—I didn’t know he was that nuts! [Laughs.]”

Kanye West accepts the Grammy for Best Rap Album at the 47th Annual Grammy Awards

View this video on YouTube

youtube.com

 

Latest in Music