I was asked to contribute to Metal Lungies' Kanye West Beat Drop. As expected, I'm way more pretentious and long-winded than the rest of the dudes, oh well. The beats I picked were 'Guess Who's Back?', 'Never Let Me Down', 'Selfish', 'Go', and 'The Glory'. Follow the link below:
"This is from Kanye’s best beat-making era. Right after the success of The Blueprint and before he became a superstar, Kanye laced a whole lot of rappers’ albums with two or three beats and usually one of them ended up a street or radio single. In addition to the obvious “trademark” chipmunk-soul, all of Kanye’s beats from this mini-era had these strange, really-thick-but-rather-limp drums on them. It’s like he chopped the drums so short that he removed the beginning and end of the drum sound and sucked out all the bump. Similar drums — probably the exact same drums, really — are all over The College Dropout and critics cited them as a weakness, but it moves Kanye’s production even further away from conventional boom-bap. The drums don’t charge through, they contemplatively knock in the background as basslines and soul strings and subtle “Guess who’s back?” vocal scratches bubble up. My single of this song — it’s the B-side to “On My Block” — credits Kanye, but I’m pretty sure that’s Mos Def on the hook…"
I was asked to contribute to Metal Lungies' Kanye West Beat Drop. As expected, I'm way more pretentious and long-winded than the rest of the dudes, oh well. The beats I picked were 'Guess Who's Back?', 'Never Let Me Down', 'Selfish', 'Go', and 'The Glory'. Follow the link below:
7 comments:
hey Brandon - just wanted to give you props on the dope write-ups and i don't think your write-ups were too long. he he. Thanks for putting "GO" on there. Some Common was needed on there.
keep up the truth,
franchise (KTL)
www.iknowtheledge.com
I never quite got the criticism of his drums that I've heard you discuss or allude to. I think I'd have to spend a few more days with FL studio to undserstand.
Franchise-
Thanks!
Christopher-
DL 'Behind the Beats' of the 'College Dropout' Instrumentals if you can find them. I don't mind it but the drums are really weird if you listen. It's basically like, imagine a drum from a song and how the soundwave grows in size and then is at its biggest and then gets smaller, well it's like Kanye cut off the "small" part on each side of the drum. if that makes any sense, sorry...
On Kanye's drums...
He's one of the few superproducers that doesn't put his drums up loud in the mix.
Just Blaze's drums are designed to smack you in the face. Dr. Dre's are crisp, clean, and amazingly clear while chopping you in the throat. Timbalands are scattered and drawn from atypical sounds, but "Dirt off Your Shoulder" and "Put You on the Game" have punishing drums.
Most producers achieve this by stacking their drums. Kanye ususally takes 1 drum sound and rolls with. He recycles kicks and snares too. "Lucifer" and "Kanye's Workout Plan" have the same snare. "Gold Digger" and "Chi City" are almost the same pattern and sound. "Get By" has the same kit as John Legend's first single from his debut album.
Even his bangers like "Can't Tell Me Nothing" and "The Corner" have more bass in the mix that kicks and snares. He's the anti-Black Milk in that regard,
It seems with Kanye, the melodies and the artist take precedence.
Good description of his production style circa '02-'04, that's really my favorite era of his beats too. That's definitely Kanye on the "Guess Who's Back" hook, though, not Mos Def or whoever.
Here are some better K West Beats
Never Change, Faithful, Start the Show, I Wonder, Crack Music
'Faithful' and 'Start the Show'? Really?
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