In November 2002, Kanye West known at the time mostly for his contributions to Hip-Hop as a producer, recorded Through the Wire. He rapped it just a few weeks after his infamous car accident, while his jaw was completely wired shut. Not many rappers would record his debut single in that condition, yet Kanye did. That decision illustrated something very unique about his work.
Now, a traditional Hip-Hop track consist of an instrumental beat and a vocal. What makes Kanye such an innovative producer is how he’s never really limited a vocal performance to just singing or rapping. He’s filled every single nook and crannie of his music with the human voice, and it’s always pushed Hip-Hop forward.
Kanyes debut album The College Dropout was released in 2004. It’s an hour and 16 minutes, 24 tracks jammed packed with music. One of the stand out tracks on the album is Jesus Walks. It won Kanye a Grammy, and got him a BET nomination for best gospel artist in 2005. His use of the gospel song Walk With Me by The ARC Choir fills the entire song to the brim with vocal samples. They become the base line, the percussion, and the melody. It’s even layered over more vocal samples like a military drill sergeant and an exotic flute song that’s actually John Legends voice. Kanye layers vocals like choirs a lot. He does it throughout Late Registration on songs like Hey Mama,
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He chose synthesizers that sound like vocals, but it’s important because the orbit here is still around the voice, Even more so on 808’s and Heartbreaks. Kanye doesn’t have a great voice, he’ll admit that, yet he sings in almost every single song on 808’s. Sometimes he’ll even sing the entire song, of course with the help of auto-tune. He does this especially on the opening track Say You Will with how that booming 808 drum alternates between the left and right ear while synthy vocals fill the space like a