Since I'm already on the topic of Kanye (so you can skip this one, Mat, and wait for the next post) and he's just about at the end of his long, rocky awards show cycle and is getting ready for a new album, here's a mix I made shortly after The College Dropout finally came out, compiling some of the best of the many tracks he put out on mixtapes and/or were on early bootleg versions of the album but didn't make the final version, along with some favorite freestyles and collabos. I might've posted this once on Gov't Names too.

Kanye West - The Album Dropouts

side 1:
1. "You Know" f/ White Boy, John Legend and Belo of Do Or Die
2. "Wow"
3. "All Falls Down" (live snippet) f/ John Legend
4. "Self Conscious" (original version of "All Falls Down") f/ Lauryn Hill
5. "Changing Lanes"
6. "Wack Niggas" f/ Talib Kweli
7. "Wack Niggas" (remix) f/ Talib Kweli, Common and Consequence
8. "Better Than Yours" ("Milkshake" freestyle) f/ Common
9. "Dream Killers" aka "Gossip Files"
10. "Finally Got It Right" aka "Peace"
11. "I Need To Know"
12. "Stand Up" freestyle
13. "Heavy Hitters" f/ GLC
14. "Out The Game" f/ Consequence and John Legend
15. "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" f/ Consequence
16. "Electric Relaxation" freestyle f/ Consequence
17. "Yeah"
18. Akademiks Vol. 2 intro v/ Miri Ben-Ari

side 2:
1. "Keep The Receipt" f/ Dirt McGirt aka Ol' Dirty Bastard
2. "Nothin's Gonna Stop Me"
3. "Livin' A Movie"
4. "Roommates" f/ Consequence
5. "Take It As A Loss" f/ Consequence
6. "Arguments" f/ Martin Lawrence and John Legend
7. "Drop Dead Gorgeous" f/ Murphy Lee
8. "About An Angel (Got Nowhere)" f/ John Legend
9. "My Way"
10. "Home" f/ John Legend
11. "Apoloize"
12. "Hey Mama"
13. I'm Good intro
14. "Through The Wire" (remix)

It's not all top shelf material, but there's some great stuff on there (I was pretty pissed at the time that "Keep The Receipt" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" got cut from early versions of the album, but "Hey Mama" and maybe some others will make it onto Late Registration). All through 2003 I collected every mixtape and every outside production and every morsel of music I could find with Kanye's name on it, and as much as he likes to remind people, I don't think everyone realizes what an underdog he really was at that point. His album got delayed for nearly 2 years. I remember when he put snippets of the beginning of "Jesus Walks" on no less than 4 mixtapes, none any longer than 50 seconds, and on one of them he introduced it as "my new single -- what I want to be my new single", and you could tell by his tone that Roc-A-Fella wasn't wild about the idea. I never really got into that song, actually. After all those snippets, when I finally heard the whole thing all I could think about was the fact that he rhymed "Jesus" with "Regis".

Labels: hip hop, Kanye West, mixtapes

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 15, 2005 at 8:25 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.