Ranking All of Kanye West's Studio Albums
By Liam McKeone
Happy birthday, ‘Ye! Kanye West, rapping guru and music industry mogul, turned 42 on Saturday. In honor of the Chicago legend’s day of birth, here’s a ranking of all of his rap albums. To keep it simple, I’m only ranking the major studio albums that were solo releases, so Kids See Ghosts, Cruel Summer, and Watch the Throne will not be included. Other projects that he had a major hand in producing, like Daytona, will also not be included. Here’s a ranking of Kanye’s discography, from College Dropout to Ye (sadly, Yandhi cannot be ranked just yet).
The 2016 release of TLOP was highly-anticipated, but ultimately fell short of the high expectations we all have for ‘Ye. The gospel-style music is very well-produced, and the album as a whole has some enjoyable moments. His lyricism, however, can be described as lazy at best for the vast majority of the album, and while the shots at Ray-J and Taylor Swift were fun, they didn’t really make a lot of sense.
At times, the album felt thrown together, with no cohesiveness between the first third and the last. The best moments of the album come when Kanye the producer lets his music speak for himself, meaning it will rank at the bottom of any list that values lyrics equal to production.
Ye is an important album to understanding how Kanye’s personal development has progressed over the last five years, but ultimately falls flat in the wider view of his previous music. He opens up lyrically in a way he hadn’t since 808s and Heartbreak, discussing his struggles with bipolar disorder, and the tone is set early with the poignant I Thought About Killing You.
The production of the album is below the quality we’re used to, and at only seven tracks, there just isn’t enough time to establish a flow or rhythm within the album. While it’s an intriguing listen as the self-reflection of one of the most divisive figures in music at the time, there isn’t nearly as much substance as one would think from such a piece, and felt rushed through and through.
6. 808s and Heartbreak
808s is Kanye’s most influential album, but that doesn’t mean its his best. It’s an open wound of an album, coming after his mother’s death, and you can feel the anguish in the lyrics he puts out. It can be heart-wrenching at times, but the music is where this album flourishes, and why it’s considered a benchmark album for the current age of hip-hop. The electro-pop sound and perfection of auto-tuned choruses set the stage for the next decade of hip-hop, and continued to demonstrate that rap albums which stray from the tried-and-true formula of gangster rap that got the rap game off the ground in the 90s can still succeed.
As an introspective piece about the price of fame, the layers within the lyrics would create an entire genre of rappers and pave the way for artists like Drake to become commercially successful without having to follow in the footsteps of Jay-Z or The Game. It’s written from the heart, which means it isn’t as well-polished as his other albums, and while the production was important in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t always land. An exceptionally important album in the landscape of rap, but far from Kanye’s best work.
Anyone who’s argued with their friends about Kanye West’s music knows there’s two types of Kanye fans: the ones who love Graduation, and the ones who love Late Registration. As you can tell from the rankings, I’m a part of the former group who believe that, while Late Registration is a high-quality piece of work, falls behind Graduation in the grand scheme of things.
But don’t get it twisted. This is a fantastic album, filled with hooks that are still stuck in my head ten years after the fact and remains one of the ideal crossovers of hip-hop and pop, a revolutionary concept at the time. It’s not strong wire-to-wire, with some forgettable mashed-together tracks that drag near the end, but most of it still bops to this day. A great album with timeless tracks, but not his best in terms of cohesiveness.
On the first listen, Yeezus is, frankly, bizarre. But the more you listen, the more you can appreciate what Kanye brings to the table. The shrieking cacophony that makes up the foundation of the production side of the album lingers in your mind for reasons you can’t quite understand, and as the first commercially successful artist to make it the basis of an album, it paved the road for new-age rappers to break onto the scene.
The lyrics are strange and abrasive, but filled with emotion (mostly anger) that makes them poignant and memorable. When an artist so totally and completely subverts the expectations of his fanbase like Kanye did with Yeezus, it often creates a divide that they can’t come back from. But Kanye pulled it off, and the bold path combined with its success makes it one of his better releases.
My personal favorite, but not his best, Graduation came at the pinnacle of Kanye’s early career arc, one of the best examples of an artist at the top of their game knocking a studio release out of the park. The production is, again, outstanding, striking the perfect balance of backdrop beats and creative but catchy hooks. Lyrically, it exemplified Kanye as the perfectionist we know him as today, never satisfied and always working to reach the next level.
It perfectly encapsulated the first half of his prolific career, and gave him the worldwide recognition that he’d been so desperately seeking. For fans, watching him hit his ceiling and then smash through it was a special time. The songs are timeless, and so is their content. One of the albums we’ll remember Kanye for in thirty years.
The album that put him on the map, College Dropout will always have a strong argument as Kanye’s best work. An album filled with lyrics for everybody (and I mean everybody), it was one of the rare album that superseded gender, race, and economic status. Before this album, any and all popular rap music didn’t stray far from the roots of the genre that backed the rise of stars like Nas, Jay-Z, and N.W.A. College Dropout was one of the unique albums that was different in almost every way from what we considered as the industry standard, yet was critically acclaimed in all regards.
It set the stage for his future career, opening up entirely new possibilities in terms of what not only Kanye, but what other rappers could rap about and how they go about it. In only his first major studio release, he was already testing the limits of how hip-hop sounded and how wide of an audience it can reach. The replayability meter is at its highest here, and College Dropout will forever remain the piece that would show the world just what Kanye was capable of. An exceptionally important album for Kanye, and a benchmark album for hip-hop as a whole.
MBDTF is one of the best rap albums ever, and Kanye’s best work. He combines his highest level of lyricism with the usual quality production to create an album that is just incredible from front to back. Coming on the heels of his first experience as villain in the public eye, Kanye showed us all what he was capable of, and in the process told the world that he was who he was, and wouldn’t shy away from that. Owning his shortcomings and demanding that we recognize his greatness, the divisive star created a masterpiece that closely examined just how fragile the life of a man in the public eye is, while throwing up a middle finger to all those who ignored his talent in pursuit of criticizing his character.
From Runaway to Devil in a New Dress to Power, some of Kanye’s greatest tracks come from this album, the height of everything he tried to accomplish both musically and lyrically. In terms of context, in terms of production, in terms of lyrics, everything is perfectly Kanye, with not a moment wasted throughout the 13-track project. It’s without a doubt his greatest work, and a strong contender for one of the greatest rap albums of all time.