Despite arriving two days late, Kanye West's latest G.O.O.D. Friday Sunday track did not disappoint. The Kendrick Lamar-assisted, Madlib-produced "No More Parties In L.A." resonated especially well with fans who prefer Ye's earlier albums, with HNHH user Jar Jar Binks pointing out that it's "reminiscent of College Dropout and Late Registration, but new at the same time." Lots of that is due to Kanye's bars, which are wordier and more linear than most we've heard post-Yeezus, but another key callback to his younger years is the chipmunk soul beat.
Back in Roc-A-Fella's early 2000s heyday, Kanye and Just Blaze were credited with creating that sound, speeding up classic R&B and soul music tracks to fit faster tempos and create a nice distinction between the rapper and vocal sample respective pitches. It led to several Jay Z classics, most notably "This Can't Be Life" and "Heart Of The City," but by the time West put out College Dropout in 2004, his own compositions began surpassing the soulfulness of the '60s and '70s loops he employed. Outfitting tracks with live choirs, percussion, strings, West and a few key players (John Legend and hip hop violinist Miri Ben-Ari among them) made this music burst with life, passion, and struggle. It's beyond neo-soul or "retro" hip hop, it truly is the soul music of the early 21st Century.
To take a look back (and perhaps, depending on what SWISH actually ends up sounding like, forward), we're listing the ten most soulful cuts in Kanye's solo discography. The majority of tracks on his first two albums fit that descriptor, so narrowing things down was difficult even from their 42 collective tracks, but we did it, thanks to a loose rubric:
Sample (Does the track sample soul music?)
Additional instrumentation (Besides the sample, does the rest of the track sound like soul music?)
Character (Does the track cover traditional soul topics such as real-life struggle, oppression, and/or love?)
With the trajectory Ye's career's taken, it got easier as we went along. For instance, I'll bet you can guess the one Yeezus cut on here. Still, we ended up with the odd number of eleven, so...
Honorable Mention
"The Joy"
2010
Sampling both Curtis Mayfield's "The Makings Of Love" and Syl Johnson's impassioned grunts on "Different Strokes," this Pete Rock-produced member of the inaugural G.O.O.D. Fridays class is at once gritty and smooth. It struts and stutters with a classic funk feel, and Mike Dean's always-ace guitar playing is fluid in a way that can only be taught by hours of studying the technique on old records. Add backing vocals from bonafide soul man himself Charlie Wilson and a trippy coda from Kid Cudi (unfortunately cut from the version that'd end up on Watch The Throne), and you've got a pretty well fleshed-out soul outing. If there was more going on than verse-chorus-verse in the songwriting, this would be top ten.
"Jesus Walks"
2004
Soul music is gospel's secular cousin, so it's only right that the best gospel-rap song of all time appears on this list. This instrumentation's sparse, with Ben-Ari's violin and a vocoder providing the only melody not found in the sample of The Arc Choir's "Walk With Me," but is soulful in its choral chant minimalism.
"Spaceship"
2004
The 6/8 time signature is crucial in many a soul ballad, but one that's a major rarity in hip hop's 4/4-dominated sphere. By retaining that aspect of Marvin Gaye's "Distant Lover," West accomplished the difficult task of form-fitting hip hop to another genre's constraints, with GLC and Consequence smoothly configuring their rhyme schemes as well. The presence of John Legend and Tony Williams on backup vocals adds more heft to the song's lyrical content, which reads as a modern day version of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot."
"Family Business"
2004
Despite most of these songs' similarity to music from the 60s and 70s, Kanye's brash presence can often keep older folks and non-rap fans from enjoying the otherwise familiar sounds. "Family Business" is the number one choice for a song you could play for multiple generations of soul music fans. In addition to the uplifting lyrics, the choir-led hook and warm piano line are timeless.
"Crack Music"
2005
Completely opposite of "Family Business" is "Crack Music," which instead has its lineage in soul's more scathing, political history. Attacking the Reagan era crack epidemic, West is backed some funky drumming, a "Jesus Walks"-style choir that features Keyshia Cole and Charlie Wilson. Let's not forget that fire-and-brimstone sermon delivered at the end either.
"Roses"
2005
With guys like Stevie Wonder and Curtis Mayfield leading the way, the 70s saw soul music get much more ambitious and expansive, with songs being drawn out into multi-part suites. "Roses" represents this era's epic proportions better than the Late Registration track that actually samples Mayfield, "Touch The Sky," building from a minimal beginning to a huge climax. Tony Williams dukes it out with a Bill Withers sample, and masterminding it all is composer Jon Brion, who makes the track Kanye's lushest at the time.
"Hey Mama"
2005
The second place finisher for "most family friendly Kanye song," "Hey Mama" buoys a heartwarming tale with bright, Kumbaya-style soul. A retro beat, sweeping strings, and a vibraphone make for an even richer sonic backdrop than the original sample material. Another example of West silencing anyone who claims that sampling doesn't take talent.
"Gone"
2005
With arguably the best vocal sample in any Kanye song, and definitely the best use of strings in his discography, "Gone" remains a fan favorite due to its cheeky interpolation of Otis Redding's lyrics ("We strive at home, I ride on chrome") and thrilling second half. Talk about real life struggles, this is Ye at his most lyrically honest in his career.
"Everything I Am"
2007
On Graduation, West began moving away from his original sound and sampled from a wider selection of records (Elton John, Daft Punk, and Steely Dan are all credited on various tracks). Second half highlight "Everything I Am" takes us back, courtesy of DJ Premier's flip of a rare record. By this point, the classic-sounding piano licks and pitch-perfect backing vocals almost seem too easy.
"See Me Now"
2010
"See Me Now" was a sunny exception amid the torrent of tortured MBDTF-era cuts in G.O.O.D. Fridays. It's also probably the happiest-sounding thing Lex Luger's ever produced. Uncle Charlie does his thing on the Brian and Brenda Russell-sampling cut, but the real reason this is included is because of the presence of the most soulful woman of the 21st Century: Beyoncé.
"Bound 2"
2013
The stylistic gap between the rest of Yeezus and its closing track couldn't have been wider. After nine tracks of synthetic, clamorous chaos, we get one of the most organic-sounding and undoctored dashes of chipmunk soul in Kanye's discography. Pulling the sample from a rare Ponderosa Twins Plus One record, West showed that he could still crate-dig with the best of them, and by toning down the "stick my fist in her, like a civil rights sign"-style lyrics of the rest of the album, he allows himself to examine his realtionship with his wife. You know, grown man shit.