Kanye West
The producer who built the 2000s sound, then took it apart three times on purpose.
- Albums graded
- 16
- Critic’s grade
- Highest grade
- Average grade
- Graded S
- 9
- Span
- 2004 to 2026
No. 1 on Top 10: Rap Discographies, graded S as a body of work.
Kanye West in the ShowcaseEvery album
16 albums, 2004 to 2026, each placed by its grade, then sorted onto the board.
The records
Newest first, each with the line its review opens on.
2026BullyThe best he has sounded in a decade, attached to writing that never gets out of bed.
2024Vultures 1Kanye West and Ty Dolla SignA slick, empty record built on provocation, with a co-star doing most of the singing and none of the damage.
2024Vultures 2Kanye West and Ty Dolla SignThe offcuts from the first one, shipped late and half mixed, with nothing that justifies a second volume.
2022Donda 2Sold only on a speaker he had a stake in, never finished, and by any normal standard not really an album at all.
2021DondaNearly two hours, three stadium listening parties, and maybe forty minutes of a very good album inside it.
2019Jesus Is KingA gospel album with a magnificent choir and too few songs, carried further than its writing should allow.
2018Kids See GhostsKanye West and Kid CudiThe one Wyoming record that got finished, and the best argument that the short format suited him.
2018YeTwenty four minutes cut in Wyoming against a deadline, rough at the edges and more honest than anything around it.
2016The Life of PabloA gospel record, a rap record and a mess, released unfinished and then edited in public for weeks afterwards.
2013YeezusForty minutes of industrial noise and some genuinely terrible lines, and the sound design is still ahead of nearly everything.
2011Watch the ThroneJay-Z and Kanye WestTwo of the biggest artists alive building a monument to their own wealth, and it is far more fun than that sounds.
2010My Beautiful Dark Twisted FantasyMaximalism as a moral argument: every excess on the record is also its subject, and it never once buckles.
2008808s & HeartbreakA cold, blank, hugely influential record that half the next decade grew out of, and one you reach for rarely.
2007GraduationHe swapped the soul loops for stadium synths and won the argument about where rap was headed.
2005Late RegistrationThe best built record he ever made, with strings and mallets and a chamber orchestra doing the work of a hook.
2004The College DropoutSped-up soul, a wired jaw and more jokes than any rap debut needs. The myth starts here and mostly earns it.