Ranking Kanye West's Albums From Great To Worst

During his recent interview with The New York Times, Kanye West discussed his discography in a way he really hadn't done before. He made some bold claims, but we couldn't act like most of them weren't true. He said that 808s & Heartbreak "redefined the sound of radio," while admitting that "the fact that I can't sing that well is what makes 808s so special." Meanwhile, he called My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy a "backhanded apology."

Ye's typical candor, along with the release of his new album Yeezus this week, got fans to restart the never endingdebate: What is Kanye West's best album? Kanye has one of the most impressive rap catalogs ever, spanning six solo records and two collaborative efforts, all released in the last 10 years. We're sure you're tired of arguing. So as a personal favor to you (thank us in the comments!), we have settled it once and for all, ranking Kanye's albums from worst to best.

8. Cruel Summer (2012)

Label: G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam
Producers: Kanye West (also exec.), Che Pope (also exec.), Andrew "Pop" Wansel, Anthony Kilhoffer, Boogz & Tapez, Dan Black, Hit-Boy, Hudson Mohawke, Illmind, Jeff Bhasker, Ken Lewis, Lifted, Mano, Mannie Fresh, Mike Dean, Mike Will, The Twilite Tone, Tommy Brown, Travi$ Scott, Young Chop
Features: R. Kelly, Teyana Taylor, Jay-Z, Big Sean, Pusha T, 2 Chainz, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, Cyhi the Prynce, Kid Cudi, D'banj, DJ Khaled, The-Dream, Mase, Cocaine 80s, John Legend, Travis Scott, Malik Yusef, Marsha Ambrosius, Chief Keef, Jadakiss
Sales: 438,000 copies

The best teams are said to be greater than the sum of their parts. Cruel Summer actually feels lesser than the sum of its parts. Released on September 14, just six days before the end of Summer 2012, the G.O.O.D. Music collective album is widely considered a flop, despite the fact that it boasts two smash hit singles in "Mercy" and "Clique," two legitimate bangers in "Cold" and "New God Flow" as well as an all-star remix to Chief Keef's massive "I Don't Like." Cruel Summer's undoing is its grandiosity, from the R. Kelly album opener to that unbearable "Sin City" spoken word interlude. It also suffers from lack of focus. Who exactly is part of the G.O.O.D. Music crew? One of the most prominently featured artists on the album, 2 Chainz, is not. Nor are Ma$e, Ghostface, Raekwon, Marsha Ambrosius. You know who is a part of the crew? Kanye West. Guess who we wish was on the album more? —Rob Kenner

7. Late Registration (2005)

Label: Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam
Producers: Kanye West, Jon Brion, Devo Springsteen, Just Blaze, Warryn Campbell
Features: Adam Levine, Lupe Fiasco, Jamie Foxx, Paul Wall, GLC, Common, The Game, Brandy, Jay-Z, Nas, Really Doe, Cam'ron, Consequence, Q-Tip, Talib Kweli, Rhymefest
Sales: 3.1 million copies

Generally, people who love Late Registration more than any other Kanye album rank Graduation at the opposite end of the list. People who think Graduation is peak-Kanye think Late Registration is the weakest of the solo releases. But the first time I heard Late Registration, I heard the Kanye West album I'd wanted to hear since before College Dropout arrived: A lush, beautiful hip-hop chamber pop album, chock full of brilliant hooks and train-stopping lines that could vacillate from hilarious ("Gold Digger") to serious ("Diamonds") to poignant ("Heard 'Em Say") and double-back again, into expertly distilled Kanye braggadocio.

The best part about revisiting Late Registration—an album that ages beautifully, and doesn't date itself at every possible juncture (hello, Graduation, with your Daft Punk and your Chris Martin and your painful Weezy verse)—being reminded of all the album's contributors that everyone often forgets. Sure, you've got Adam Levine doing the opening hook, Jay-Z throwing up the Roc, and Jamie Foxx doing his Ray Charles schtick on "Gold Digger," but what about Nas, on "We Major," on the same album as Jay, at the height of their feud?! Or Killa Cam's knock-knock verse on "Gone"? Brandy? Lupe Fiasco's career-launching verse on "Touch The Sky"? And, most notably, the presence of producer Jon Brion throughout this entire album, lending Kanye a level of technical expertise and pop mastery that he had yet to achieve on his own. Clearly, this album was crucial in terms of Kanye's career development. Is it perfect, though?

No. Hell no. The Paul Wall/Common/Game midsection suite is a trifecta of clunker beats and clunker guest verses. [ed note.: This is insane. "Drive Slow," "My Way Home" and "Crack Music" are as strong a string of songs as Kanye has ever recorded. But I'mma let Foster finish.] And do us Late Registration fans really think that any of these songs match up to the sheer genius of "Can't Tell Me Nothing" or "Champion," or that "Heard 'Em Say" compares to "Good Morning"? Of course not. But that's also why we love Late Registration: It's imperfect. It's flawed. In a lot of ways, it's quaint.

It's the last Kanye album to follow any kind of conventions (like skits, or Cam'Ron verses, both of which now seem downright precious). It's too long by at least five tracks. But it's also the last time we heard the mortal, rapper-Kanye on the mic, as opposed to stadium-status Kanye, broken-hearted-robot Kanye, outcast monster-Kanye ("KanYeti"?) or demon-deity Kanye. And the socially consciousness Kanye raps—from the "Allah-u Akbar and throw 'em some hot cars" bars that start the album, to the first verse of "Roses," to "Diamonds," and so on—are as contradictory and nuanced as they'd ever be, at least until the extremist reckoning that is Yeezus. But the reason we really love this album is best summed up by the album's closer, "Gone." It's odd. Why put Cam'ron on a closing track? Or let Consequence deliver a filler verse? Especially on this, the original Kanye-Otis Redding sample song, that already has so much going on?

Kanye's resounding response is Why not? In many ways, it's just another solid rap song, and yet, it transcends another-solid-rap-song norms, with Kanye slapping together bars too clever for their own good, and overindulging his guests. But at the end of the track, he runs through a theoretical scenario in which he abandons rap and imagines what that would be like for us, the listeners. Given the drastic tidal shift Graduation represents, the foreshadowing couldn't have been more prescient. Because that Kanye, the mortal rapper Kanye, did basically disappear after that. Years later, it still stands out as one his best verses. And it's been forgotten by many, too. "Gone" in its own way. But it's representative of the smallest (but a key) reason why we love Late Registration: Because you don't know how to. And that's fine by us. —Foster Kamer

6. 808s & Heartbreak (2008)

Label: Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam
Producers: Jeff Bhasker, Mr. Hudson, No I.D., Plain Pat, Kanye West
Features: Kid Cudi, Young Jeezy, Mr. Hudson, Lil Wayne
Sales: 1.7 million copies
In one of the most fan-challenging moves since Neil Young recorded a vocodered version of his folky 1960's classic "Mr. Soul" for his proto-electronica 1982 album Trans, Kanye scrapped rap for his fourth album. Relying heavily on the 21st-century version of the vocoder, Autotune, he sang his songs this time—fully realized melodies, emotive torch songs, over a cool, futuristic backdrop of all-synth R&B arrangements.

It was shocking at the time; some people thought it was a joke. But the melodies are very strong, the pain Kanye was in is tangible and moving, and as you look around today's musical landscape, 808s & Heartbreak stands as the most prominent blueprint for what's happened in the five years since it came out. —Dave Bry

5. THE COLLAGE DROPOUT(2004)

Label: Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam
Producers: Kareem "Biggs" Burke (exec.), Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter (exec.), Damon "Dame" Dash (exec.), Evidence, Kyambo "Hip Hop" Joshua (exec.), Kanye West (also exec.)
Features: Syleena Johnson, GLC, Consequence, Jay-Z, J. Ivy, Talib Kweli, Common, Twista, Jamie Foxx, Ludacris, Mos Def, Freeway, Boys Choir of Harlem
Sales: 3.1 million copies

Say what you will about the skits, about Kanye's drums, about the "New Workout Plan." The College Dropout was a great album. It wasn't just that Kanye West proved himself as a solo artist with the vision to become a major star. It was the moment of impact that would create a sea change in hip-hop and open the floodgates for entirely new approaches to what rappers rapped about.

He'd already shifted the sound of hip-hop on The Blueprint, blending soul music history with contemporary pop instincts; now it was time to rewrite the rules of lyrical content in hip-hop, reaching the intersection of the streets and the classrooms, the backpackers and the ballers, the underground and the pop charts. As he said on "Family Business," "A creative way to rhyme without using nines and guns."

Many of his followers focus on the latter part, but the first part—creativity—was key, too. In retrospect, it's harder to see how radical his first record really was; The College Dropout opened up a number of lanes that artists rushed to fill, and as a result, its thematic novelty is harder to see through the thicket of history. But it remains a startlingly unique, diverse record, and one of the most relatable records ever made. Funny, flawed, and emphatically human,The College Dropout may not have fully expressed what made Kanye who he was. But it created the space for him to do it. —David Drake

4. Yeezus (2013)

Label: Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam
Producers: Ackeejuice Rockers, Arca, Daft Punk, Mike Dean, Gesaffelstein, The Heatmakerz, Hudson Mohawke, No I.D., Rick Rubin, RZA, Travis Scott, Symbolyc One, TNGHT, Kanye West, Young Chop
Features: Chief Keef, Justin Vernon, Kid Cudi, King L
Sales: N/A
Yeezus might not go down as Kanye West's most popular album—if anything, it seems explicitly designed to alienate all kinds of fans, some of whom have run this week to J. Cole's more traditional (read: inspired by The College Dropout) approach to hip-hop, or Mac Miller's streamlined product of the dorm room canon. Rap has changed a lot since Kanye first broke out of the gate as a solo artist nearly a decade ago; back then, no major hip-hop artist would make an album about the humble beginnings of a College Dropout, and make his struggle to break into the music industry the central drama of his album. Today, those everyman stories are commonplace, so of course Kanye's taking a different tack. Where he began his career desperate for approval, he's now seemingly looking to piss fans off. No one at his level of success would think of releasing a record as confrontational and divisive as Yeezus. These days, the rappers we celebrate are successful by consensus. Kanye breaks the mold of what rap today sounds like, intending to provoke rather than soothe. The album also shows just how much he's mastered the art of bridging—or in this case, aggravating—the underlying seams of conflict between his audiences.

As time unfolds, this record will be accepted as one of his best records; despite its flawed, grotesque structure, its abrasive, brusque mood, and its unrepentant anger, there is something substantial here. It is a wholly unique album that seems to take up physical space. It won't be what you spend your summer hearing at the club (although "Send It Up" has a shot) and it isn't—thankfully—the righteous political rage many expected on the release of "New Slaves." But his lyrics will sustain, even the corny ones. Sure to be a favorite of critics ("abrasive" is critical manna, word to Death Grips), in the real world, Yeezus will divide his audience. But everyone will remember it. —David Drake

Via Complex Mag

( Stay tuned to know which album makes it to number 1)

Which one do you think best fits the number 1 position?