You can listen to their one compilation mixtape, World Record Holders, right here on Zumic. By this period in time, digging in dusty record crates for obscure samples was already a time-honored tradition, but Kanye would flip the game on its head in the years to come.Īround this time, West started running with a group called The Go Getters, whose members also included GLC and Really Doe, and recording his first tracks as a rapper. Though "City To City" contains none of the "chipmunk soul" that West would later pioneer, you can definitely hear the foundation of a style based around samples from the '70s, with a deep cut by jazz fusion artist Eddie Henderson fueling this particular jam. Below, listen to "City To City," a slap bass-accentuated highlight from the album. In 1996, when West was 19, he got his first production credits on an album called Down To Earth by little-known Chicago rapper Grav. became a mentor of sorts for West, buying him his first sampler and taking him under his wing. At age fifteen, he befriended older producer No I.D., who in 1993 had already produced the majority of Common's first album (he called himself Common Sense at the time). In the mid nineties, West was a teenager living in Aurora, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. The above line appears on the College Dropout track "Spaceship," a somewhat autobiographical tale of West's struggle to get a big break, detailing the grueling schedule he imposed on himself to better his craft. "Doing Five Beats a Day for Three Summers" Follow us on the part of Kanye's journey that doesn't require him to open his mouth at all: his evolution from freelance beatmaker to star-making curator. He began churning out beats at a workhorse pace in the late '90s, and even while releasing six solo albums in ten years, has had a steady stream of production credits for other artists in the past few years.
But while Kanye is more visible as a rapper and social provocateur, it's his production chops that initially got his foot in the door and continue to sustain his career in a way that his verbal skills, though adequate, could not.
In ten years as a solo artist, he's released six platinum albums, worked with everyone from Jay Z to Elton John, and achieved a level of critical acclaim that's rare for hip hop artists. With Behind The Boards, we’re looking to shine the spotlight on the best producers in the game. These musicians, responsible for creating beats, sampling and collaborating with MCs, slave away behind the scene while rappers get most (if not all) of the credit. In this weekly feature, we’re profiling the unsung heroes of hip hop music: the producers.