All of that goes flying out the window today with the release of '808s & Heartbreak,' an album so exquisite, so assured, it threatens to invent an entirely new strand of urban pop music. And not 'urban' as in 'music industry code for 'black,' ' but urban in the sense that West is exploring the isolation, paranoia and longing of 21st-century. Kanye West returns with his fourth album 808s & Heartbreak. His highly anticipated 2008 album features the heart pounding first single, 'Love Lockdown' which premiered live for the first time on the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. The title of Kanye West's stark new album, 808s & Heartbreak, doesn't mark the rapper's foray into numerology.The title refers to the Roland TR-808, a drum machine whose indelible thump has. Bangers by Mitch. ™ EveryThingOnHereiMade™ 808s&HeartBreaks 808s & Heartbreaks, Bitch. Stream Tracks and Playlists from 808s & Heartbreaks on your desktop or mobile device.
Kanye West released The Life of Pablo this week to wide acclaim (I called it a near masterpiece), and while many people are already trying to put the album in its historical context, I'm going to do something even more stupid and reckless and try to rank all the songs he's ever put out. Some words on the rankings:
A) I left off Watch the Throne, G.O.O.D. Music, mixtapesand songs he produced and guested on. These are just the songs he released on his solo albums. I did this because the list was already too long and I'm sorta lazy.
B) I'm skipping all the skits, too. I hate the skits. No skits in the rankings.
C) Ranking Kanye songs is impossible. He's got 93 songs and I like or love about 89 of them. I did my best, and remember: The reason I ranked the song you love too low is because I personally have an issue with you. Yes, you.
Here's the list:
93. FACTS (Charlie Heat Version)
It's not too late to pull this Nike takedown off the final version of TLOP, Kanye, whenever that comes out.
92. The New Workout Plan
I have always hated this song. I hated it the moment I heard it and I continue to hate it to this day. It's a rock in my life, something I can always count on.
91. Bring Me Down
Ios 9.3 5 jailbreak 64 bit. Lot of Brandy in this song. Like, a lot of Brandy.
90. My Way Home
89. Drunk and Hot Girls
This song is almost saved by a bizarre and wonderful bridge from Mos Def. Almost.
88. Freestyle 4
87. Hell of a Life
This song on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy had some early ideas that he'd explore more on Yeezus, but the hook is tonally a mess and the weird harpsichord interlude has never done anything for me.
86. Last Call
85. I'll Fly Away
84. I'm In It
This song is probably too low, but it was the one song on Yeezus where West's confrontational lyrics didn't come across as clever, funny or knowingly antagonistic – he just sorta sounded like a jerk.
83. 30 Hours
82. Bad News
81. Pinocchio Story
A six-minute Auto-Tune freestyle in Singapore is how West closed out 808s & Heartbreak, and while I do think it fits as a stark closer to the album, it's still a six-minute Auto-Tune freestyle taped in Singapore.
80. Send It Up
79. Big Brother
78. Barry Bonds
West was so eager to get Lil Wayne in Graduation (he was the best rapper alive at that point) that he snuck this in, even though it's the weakest song on the album.
77. Late
76. Addiction
75. Never Let Me Down
74. I Love Kanye
I laughed the first time I heard this self-aware little song. I laughed the second and even third time. By the fourth time I was hitting the skip button.
73. Guilt Trip
72. Breathe In Breathe Out
71. Spaceship
70. Two Words
69. See You In My Nightmares
I understood why Kanye put Auto-Tune on himself on 808s & Heartbreak, but I will never understand why he put it on Lil Wayne.
68. Blame Game
67. Welcome to Heartbreak
I have a very, very soft spot for 808s & Heartbreak and still think, even to this day, that it's under-appreciated as a record. Welcome to Heartbreak has an ineffective verse from Cudi, though, and is the one time in the album the sadness feels like a bit of a put-on.
66. Famous
65. Hold My Liquor
64. Devil in a New Dress
63. I Wonder
62. So Appalled
Poor Jay Z. The guy had two features on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and he gets showed up by Nicki Minaj on Monster and Pusha T on So Appalled, and then I leave off Watch The Throne from this list for no good reason. Sorry, Jay.
61. Fade
60. Gold Digger
This song still makes me smile, even if it's aged terribly. It should probably be ranked lower than this, but I have to give it credit for being a legitimate cultural phenomenon when it came out.
59. Family Business
58. No More Parties in L.A.
I love this song, but it doesn't belong on The Life of Pablo. It's one of the best songs ever that clearly has no place on an album. Bring back G.O.O.D. Music and release it there, Kanye. Again, we still have time to fix this.
57. Low Lights
56. Slow Jamz
55. The Glory
54. Highlights
Kanye has done some funny things in his career, but issuing a call and response to the women working out in Equinox gyms might be the funniest. He put a call out to spin classes.
53. Coldest Winter
52. Celebration
52. Love Lockdown
The drums at the end of this song are as sonically pleasing a thing as West has ever put on a song.
51. Waves
50. Everything I Am
This is a song that some people hate, but I find it beautiful, and it still cracks me up that he tried to give the song to Common, Common didn't want it, and West said 'screw it' and just put it on his own album to prove a point.
49. Champion
48. Get Em High
47. Who Will Survive in America
I guess some people might consider this song an outro as opposed to a song, but I've always taken it as a standalone thing, and the abridged reading of Gil-Scott Heron's 'Comment #1' is as powerful and bleak a closing statement as I've heard on an album.
46. Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 2
45. Heartless
44. Real Friends
43. Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 1
42. Paranoid
I think this song is super underrated. I still put this on at parties. It's an 80s synth dance joint and people should play it more.
41. Heard ‘Em Say
40. On Sight
39. Homecoming
38. Street Lights
I know a ton of Kanye fans who hate this song, but I think it's one of the most cinematic songs he's ever recorded. It's one of those songs you put on in your headphones and you feel like you're in a movie, no matter where you're going or what you're doing.
37. School Spirit
36. RoboCop
35. Dark Fantasy
I'll never forget where I was when I first heard Nicki Minaj's fake British accent that kicks off Dark Fantasy, the opener to West's bombastic, magnificent My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. I was living as an unemployed writer in San Francisco, the type of person who had a lot of free time to fall in love with an album. I put this album on my headphones and went for a walk down Fulton St. to Divisadero, and after that Nicki intro and the chorus of women singing, the beat dropped. I stopped walking. I had to. 'I fantasized about this back in Chicago,' he starts, and I realized his entire career had built to this moment, this beat, this song, this album.
34. Good Life
33. Hey Mama
32. Roses
Hey Mama and Roses are two songs that are wonderful … and two songs the current iteration of West could never record. Both were recorded before the death of his mother and the shattering of his family life. On these songs he sings about his appreciation for his mother and his family banding together in times of trouble — 'so many aunties we can have an auntie team.' Compare that to West now, who raps about getting extorted for $250,000 by a cousin who stole his laptop from him.
31. Good Morning
30. Feedback
This is the sleeper of The Life of Pablo. I'm calling it now. This song will be one we go to for a long time.
29. Power
28. Amazing
This is the song when I finally got Auto-Tune. West wasn't using it to fix his singing, he was using it to transform himself into a automaton, devoid of feeling, singing robotically about all he had lost. 'I'm a monster,' he sings, 'I'm a killer. I know I'm wrong.' Then the best summation of himself he's ever sung: 'I'm a problem that will never be solved.'
27. Through the Wire
26. I Am a God
This song is Kanye at his most antagonistic, when he realized he had become a household name to Middle America for marrying Kim Kardashian, that he was in US Weekly, and didn't like what was happening. So he looked out at America and dared everyone to hate him. He named his album Yeezus. He called this song I Am A God. The song has a woman screaming, a vicious beat, and West demanding a waiter hurry up with his damn croissants. It was perplexing, aggressive, and if you didn't love it, you had to hate it. It was exactly what he wanted.
25. Crack Music
24. Monster
23. Stronger
22. Gorgeous
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was Kanye West getting every important artist in the world — or the ones he thought were important — to Hawaii. They holed up in the studio and emerged with this album, a massive and deliriously beautiful thing that represented everything West had learned up to that point. On Gorgeous he brought out Kid Cudi and Raekwon, like the manager of a baseball team calling in his two best relievers to close out a game. That and that grimy guitar over the top was all it needed.
Kanye West 808 Heartbreak Zip
21. Wolves
This should be the ender of The Life of Pablo. And yes, I know Kanye still needs to fix it.
20. Diamonds From Sierra Leone (Remix)
19. Blood On The Leaves
Kanye West is a walking contradiction, a fact no better demonstrated than on Blood On The Leaves, in which he takes a sample of Nina Simone's Strange Fruit and raps about a bad breakup and a girl trying molly at a party one time. It's an offensive pairing of sample and subject, nonsensical and weird, and yet when those horns and bass hit, you can't help but feel something.
I have always hated this song. I hated it the moment I heard it and I continue to hate it to this day. It's a rock in my life, something I can always count on.
91. Bring Me Down
Ios 9.3 5 jailbreak 64 bit. Lot of Brandy in this song. Like, a lot of Brandy.
90. My Way Home
89. Drunk and Hot Girls
This song is almost saved by a bizarre and wonderful bridge from Mos Def. Almost.
88. Freestyle 4
87. Hell of a Life
This song on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy had some early ideas that he'd explore more on Yeezus, but the hook is tonally a mess and the weird harpsichord interlude has never done anything for me.
86. Last Call
85. I'll Fly Away
84. I'm In It
This song is probably too low, but it was the one song on Yeezus where West's confrontational lyrics didn't come across as clever, funny or knowingly antagonistic – he just sorta sounded like a jerk.
83. 30 Hours
82. Bad News
81. Pinocchio Story
A six-minute Auto-Tune freestyle in Singapore is how West closed out 808s & Heartbreak, and while I do think it fits as a stark closer to the album, it's still a six-minute Auto-Tune freestyle taped in Singapore.
80. Send It Up
79. Big Brother
78. Barry Bonds
West was so eager to get Lil Wayne in Graduation (he was the best rapper alive at that point) that he snuck this in, even though it's the weakest song on the album.
77. Late
76. Addiction
75. Never Let Me Down
74. I Love Kanye
I laughed the first time I heard this self-aware little song. I laughed the second and even third time. By the fourth time I was hitting the skip button.
73. Guilt Trip
72. Breathe In Breathe Out
71. Spaceship
70. Two Words
69. See You In My Nightmares
I understood why Kanye put Auto-Tune on himself on 808s & Heartbreak, but I will never understand why he put it on Lil Wayne.
68. Blame Game
67. Welcome to Heartbreak
I have a very, very soft spot for 808s & Heartbreak and still think, even to this day, that it's under-appreciated as a record. Welcome to Heartbreak has an ineffective verse from Cudi, though, and is the one time in the album the sadness feels like a bit of a put-on.
66. Famous
65. Hold My Liquor
64. Devil in a New Dress
63. I Wonder
62. So Appalled
Poor Jay Z. The guy had two features on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and he gets showed up by Nicki Minaj on Monster and Pusha T on So Appalled, and then I leave off Watch The Throne from this list for no good reason. Sorry, Jay.
61. Fade
60. Gold Digger
This song still makes me smile, even if it's aged terribly. It should probably be ranked lower than this, but I have to give it credit for being a legitimate cultural phenomenon when it came out.
59. Family Business
58. No More Parties in L.A.
I love this song, but it doesn't belong on The Life of Pablo. It's one of the best songs ever that clearly has no place on an album. Bring back G.O.O.D. Music and release it there, Kanye. Again, we still have time to fix this.
57. Low Lights
56. Slow Jamz
55. The Glory
54. Highlights
Kanye has done some funny things in his career, but issuing a call and response to the women working out in Equinox gyms might be the funniest. He put a call out to spin classes.
53. Coldest Winter
52. Celebration
52. Love Lockdown
The drums at the end of this song are as sonically pleasing a thing as West has ever put on a song.
51. Waves
50. Everything I Am
This is a song that some people hate, but I find it beautiful, and it still cracks me up that he tried to give the song to Common, Common didn't want it, and West said 'screw it' and just put it on his own album to prove a point.
49. Champion
48. Get Em High
47. Who Will Survive in America
I guess some people might consider this song an outro as opposed to a song, but I've always taken it as a standalone thing, and the abridged reading of Gil-Scott Heron's 'Comment #1' is as powerful and bleak a closing statement as I've heard on an album.
46. Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 2
45. Heartless
44. Real Friends
43. Father Stretch My Hands, Pt. 1
42. Paranoid
I think this song is super underrated. I still put this on at parties. It's an 80s synth dance joint and people should play it more.
41. Heard ‘Em Say
40. On Sight
39. Homecoming
38. Street Lights
I know a ton of Kanye fans who hate this song, but I think it's one of the most cinematic songs he's ever recorded. It's one of those songs you put on in your headphones and you feel like you're in a movie, no matter where you're going or what you're doing.
37. School Spirit
36. RoboCop
35. Dark Fantasy
I'll never forget where I was when I first heard Nicki Minaj's fake British accent that kicks off Dark Fantasy, the opener to West's bombastic, magnificent My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. I was living as an unemployed writer in San Francisco, the type of person who had a lot of free time to fall in love with an album. I put this album on my headphones and went for a walk down Fulton St. to Divisadero, and after that Nicki intro and the chorus of women singing, the beat dropped. I stopped walking. I had to. 'I fantasized about this back in Chicago,' he starts, and I realized his entire career had built to this moment, this beat, this song, this album.
34. Good Life
33. Hey Mama
32. Roses
Hey Mama and Roses are two songs that are wonderful … and two songs the current iteration of West could never record. Both were recorded before the death of his mother and the shattering of his family life. On these songs he sings about his appreciation for his mother and his family banding together in times of trouble — 'so many aunties we can have an auntie team.' Compare that to West now, who raps about getting extorted for $250,000 by a cousin who stole his laptop from him.
31. Good Morning
30. Feedback
This is the sleeper of The Life of Pablo. I'm calling it now. This song will be one we go to for a long time.
29. Power
28. Amazing
This is the song when I finally got Auto-Tune. West wasn't using it to fix his singing, he was using it to transform himself into a automaton, devoid of feeling, singing robotically about all he had lost. 'I'm a monster,' he sings, 'I'm a killer. I know I'm wrong.' Then the best summation of himself he's ever sung: 'I'm a problem that will never be solved.'
27. Through the Wire
26. I Am a God
This song is Kanye at his most antagonistic, when he realized he had become a household name to Middle America for marrying Kim Kardashian, that he was in US Weekly, and didn't like what was happening. So he looked out at America and dared everyone to hate him. He named his album Yeezus. He called this song I Am A God. The song has a woman screaming, a vicious beat, and West demanding a waiter hurry up with his damn croissants. It was perplexing, aggressive, and if you didn't love it, you had to hate it. It was exactly what he wanted.
25. Crack Music
24. Monster
23. Stronger
22. Gorgeous
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was Kanye West getting every important artist in the world — or the ones he thought were important — to Hawaii. They holed up in the studio and emerged with this album, a massive and deliriously beautiful thing that represented everything West had learned up to that point. On Gorgeous he brought out Kid Cudi and Raekwon, like the manager of a baseball team calling in his two best relievers to close out a game. That and that grimy guitar over the top was all it needed.
Kanye West 808 Heartbreak Zip
21. Wolves
This should be the ender of The Life of Pablo. And yes, I know Kanye still needs to fix it.
20. Diamonds From Sierra Leone (Remix)
19. Blood On The Leaves
Kanye West is a walking contradiction, a fact no better demonstrated than on Blood On The Leaves, in which he takes a sample of Nina Simone's Strange Fruit and raps about a bad breakup and a girl trying molly at a party one time. It's an offensive pairing of sample and subject, nonsensical and weird, and yet when those horns and bass hit, you can't help but feel something.
18. Flashing Lights
17. We Don't Care
This was America's introduction to West, and aside from Jesus Walks, still feels like the most vital song off of College Dropout. West took a look around at his struggling friends, his community, his friends working minimum wage jobs and those selling drugs, and sang an anthem celebrating them. He brings in a chorus of kids, and they sing: 'We wasn't supposed to make it past 25 / joke's on you, we're still alive.'
16. Bound 2
If Yeezus was West staring at America and daring them to hate him, Bound 2 was his closing message to the fans who had been with him since the beginning. I'm still here. I still know how to make a song for a summer day. Thanks for sticking with me.
15. Lost In The World
14. Touch the Sky
13. FML
Kanye's most stirring track on The Life of Pablo is a stark examination of his own depression. Name-checking Lexapro isn't a typical move for a rap song, but Kanye isn't a typical rapper. The drone-like voice that's brought in at the end of the song is what sets it apart — that outro, which samples the Section 25 song Hit, is haunting, the voice of death over a cymbal and snare.
12. Black Skinhead
11. We Major
The opening 30 seconds of this song are some of the most glorious and joyous moments of music I've ever heard. It sounds like gold. It sounds like light.
10. Drive Slow
If you take the best 11 songs off Late Registration and remove all the skits and duds, it's Kanye's best album. This is a major highlight on an album with a lot of them, but West hadn't yet learned how to say no to an idea. Late Registration is bloated, but the best of them are some of his best.
9. All Falls Down
All Falls Down was Kanye taking a sobering look at materialism and doing so at a shockingly young age. He knew it was ridiculous, he knew he was spending his money stupidly, and yet, who doesn't want to look good?
(Plus the Stacey Dash appearance in the video is one of the great what the? moments ever.)
8. Say You Will
It's very important to remember that a lot of people hated, and I mean really, really hated the album 808s & Heartbreak when it came out. West had just given us his best and most polished hip hop album to date, Graduation, and here was this … thing. It was sad and introspective and weird, and he was singing on it, and what was this? Then people listened more and more, and the songs kinda grew on them, and then more people came along with that sound, and now every other hip hop song you hear is sad and introspective and weird and has singing on it. West saw it before anyone else. Drake used the Say You Will beat on a mixtape, then made the whole shtick his shtick, and he never looked back.
7. Gone
Gone was the moment I started taking Kanye seriously as a major, major artist. I thought he was a clever dude with one classic song (Jesus Walks) and some funny one-liners. Then he put out Gone, and at the end of the beat he cut everything out except for those Jon Brion strings … I'd never heard anything like it. My jaw dropped. I saw West alone, a spotlight on him, with an orchestra behind him. His song was so powerful is conjured an image in my brain. I saw him, I understood everything he was trying to do, and I was floored by it.
6. Ultralight Beam
When Kanye was recording what would eventually be called The Life of Pablo, he promised a gospel record. On Ultralight Beam, he gave us it, a song of immense beauty, a song about escape and deliverance. The voices swell … and Kanye steps off the stage, giving the spotlight to younger Chicago voice Chance the Rapper. Part of greatness is knowing your limitations. Chance was the man for this song, and Kanye knew it. So he gave it to him.
5. Runaway
The plinking piano note, over and over, endlessly … and then the second note. West constructs the melody before us, one piece at a time, letting us into his process. Then the beat drops, Pusha T goes nuts, and West lays himself bare, toasting the 'scumbags' and telling a prospective lover to run away. West was broken after his breakup with Amber Rose, and recorded the anthem to the self-loathing many.
4. New Slaves
You've probably scrolled down to see the No. 1 song on this list, which I still think is West's most powerful statement. But man, New Slaves. This song. West is done being subtle here, and with a spare beat, he rips apart America, holding up a mirror to our hypocrisy. It's self-involved and hyperbolic and furious, and it feels immediate. This is West's most direct statement yet, and it scared a ton of people, which was exactly the point.
3. All of the Lights
In terms of production, this is West at the absolute peak of his powers, and All of the Lights sounds just as incredible and cutting edge as it did when it was released. The drums, the horns, everything … it all just sounds fantastic, and then he throws Rihanna and Kid Cudi on there to round the whole thing out. What more does a song need?
2. Can't Tell Me Nothing
808's And Heartbreak Album Tracklist
In terms of bars, this is West's greatest song. Every couplet is quotable, and the opener: 'I had a dream I could buy my way to heaven / when I awoke I spent that on a necklace' is the entire summation of his artistic persona in two lines. On College Dropout and Late Registration the recurring critique of West was that he couldn't rap. On Graduation he silenced those critiques, and on this song especially, he showed that he'd mastered it.
1. Jesus Walks
Ranking these songs is always going to be an impossible task. I'm looking forward to my Twitter feed blowing up over this. But looking back on the scope of West's career, this is the song that I keep coming back to. It's the one that showed us he was more than just a producer who believed in himself. It showed us he had a vision, that he had something to say. 'I want to talk to God / but I'm afraid because we ain't spoke in so long,' he says, summing up not only his personal journey but the state of many of our relationships with religion. On his first album he was already wrestling with the big questions about sin and morality, about family and faith, and he was doing it over a beat that was perfect in every way. He made Jesus Walks. He's never going to hell.
