How to produce like Kanye West

Imagine if Mount Rushmore collapsed, the Yellowstone Super Volcano erupts and the giant stone heads are swept away in fiery lava. Somehow, miraculously, everyone is safe and no one is hurt and it is time to rebuild the giant rocky noggins. Presidents again? Boring, it’s 2021, it will be rebuilt using rappers, influential figures or notable creative powerhouses, and the first name on all these lists to add is obviously that of a Mr Kanye West. A year later, the colossal smoothly sculptured forehead of one of the most divisive and visionary individuals to ever grace the airwaves is carved into stone, staring unblinkingly down on his yeezy wearing disciples as “I am a God” plays through his chiselled goatee surrounded lips. Not bothered by this new tourist attraction, Kanye carries on the same. Every now and again he does an interview saying something that triggers a reaction or some clout-chasing rapper will claim that the king is dead and Mr West is now irrelevant, but he pays no attention. Clad in earth tones and surrounded by his GOOD music dream team, the ex-Luis Vuitton don works tirelessly on his miraculously un-burnt Wyoming algae ranch, cooking up albums which will influence music for decades and trainers which will be seen on the feet of hipsters, influencers and the rich alike, no one shapes culture like Kanye.

The MAGA hat wearing self-proclaimed god has had easily the most exciting career of any musician over the last two decades, bursting onto the scene as one of the genius producers on Jay-Z’s ‘The Blueprint’ Kanye was always destined for stardom. Initially solely a producer, he added a unique flavour to Jay-Z’s usual modern hip hop sound, sampling old soul records with a certain style which he’d be honing whilst making beats in Chicago for a few years before. Kanye’s work has always shared some common traits, from College dropout through to the current album of the year Donda (let’s just wait for that TDE Kendrick send-off album though), which includes those vintage samples, aggressive bass, prominent drums and meticulous attention to detail.

So how does he do it?

Kanye has always used more analogue equipment than many of his contemporaries and especially in his first era, College Dropout and Late Registration, he often said some controversial things concerning using computers heavily in the production process. A great video from 2004, which perfectly shows early Kanye’s work method from him using the ASR-10 like an extension of his body or his impeccable ear when he’s trying to find a edited sample off his keyboard which syncs with the metronome. Kanye still used the ASR-10 despite its age because it had 61 keys yet didn’t waste memory, a rarity back then. West used a few other pieces of equipment alongside his Ensoniq ASR-10 keyboard including an Akai MPC2000 MIDI Production Centre, a Roland VS-1880 24-bit Digital Studio Workstation and a Gemini PT-1000 II turntable. Kanye’s sampling skills are legendary and the fact he chopped, sped up and synced tracks with beats using the equipment he has to the level he did was very impressive and influenced a generation of producers.

So how can we do it?

With the arrival of Logic and sample libraries, modern technology has made sampling and beat making much easier since Kanye’s College Dropout days, so let’s look at what modern tools we can use to create Kanye style beats. In terms of how to sample like Kanye, here is a list of methods of getting free samples:

·         TrackLib – a library of royalty free tracks for your sampling usage, does require a subscription but has a huge amount of music, other websites like LANDR offer packs or one off free samples for you to play around with also.

·         Search the public domain – Have a trawl through the internet for songs where the licencing has expired or was non-existent to begin with, archive.org is a great place to start with a huge amount of old vintage style tracks, ripe for Kanye style experimentations. There is even a section of just gospel and religious sermons, great if you ‘follow god’ and think ‘Jesus is king’.

·         Make the sample unrecognisable – So this one is kind of cheating as yes, technically the sample is still there and lives amidst the mix but as the old proverb states if a sample plays in a forest of instrumentation and no one recognises it, did it ever play? Use a lot of effects, change the pitch, reverse it, make it your own or bury it in the mix. This can be a risky game, so always be careful and make sure you’ve done enough to make it different.

·         Clear the sample – Definitely the most expensive avenue to go down and probably not even a possibility for most mortal producers, but if you’ve found the perfect sample, then maybe legally clearing it is the only option. Obviously this is the route often taken by Kanye, as proven by his use of Syleena Johnson on ‘All Falls down’ when he could clear the publishing rights but not the performance rights of the Lauren Hill sample, hence the different vocalist.

Another consistently ‘Kanye’ component featured in nearly all of his songs, is the 808. The name 808 is most commonly given to just a certain bass sound today, which itself originated from the TR-808 drum machine. Originally the drum machine had a range of percussion sounds inside and was used heavily throughout the 90’s hip hop scene, but the easy to tune, loud attacking and quick resonating decay of the bass became infamous among producers. Outliving the massive popularity of the machine that spawned it (although which is itself considered a holy grail piece of kit), the bass alone carried on being casually referred to as the 808 and has been used in almost every hip hop, pop or trap recording since. These days there are a myriad of 808 flavours available, as producers have been tweaking and playing with the sounds, adding compression, distortion, sculpting the attack and decay, then making them samples.

To get started with 808’s, you’ll need to first acquire a good sample. Many 808’s have already been processed to provide more of a boom and accentuate that famous wall shaking quality of the original, so it’s worth looking through a fair few before choosing one. Your DAW will most likely come with its own, but it’s worth checking a market like LANDR, just to see what ones are available. 808’s are technically a short sub-oscillator frequency burst, meaning they oscillate to a specific pitch, so tuning them to the key of your track is essential to avoid any off sounds. Once pitched, your mean low end destabiliser will need a home, somewhere between 30-60Hz will do it, remember a 808 takes up a lot of space and normally provides a lot of sub, so be careful not to add too much and lose power or to adversely let it creep up to high the frequency spectrum. 808’s are the Japanese fighting fish of the low end, when using them, they like to be the only alpha in the aquarium, so try cutting some of the bass off of your synth basses or kick drums to give it some space and let it shine. Another tip for helping it stand out is to increase the attack time, this will define the order in which you hear the kick, ensuring it’s followed by the sub swell, and this is what helps round out the sound of the kick.

But clad in his spikey balloon-popping Balenciaga jacket, Ye hasn’t got the time or the tolerance for anyone else’s 808, he makes his own. Honestly I couldn’t find his exact 808, or the one that shows up on the majority of his tracks, but making your own is an option, besides the original was a shaped white noise sample. Below is a video which helps breakdown how to give it a go, there are some complex elements, but it is always fun to try things and possibly take your sound in a new creative direction. 

Old Kanye (College dropout to Graduation)

This era of Polo shirts and shutter shades will always be remembered as the defining Kanye. Before Donda’s passing, dodging cameras on Keeping up with the Kardashians or literally dictating streetwear fashion, Kanye was just making beats around Chicago looking to get a break. A couple of classic Kanye moves later (google him turning down his first record deal and insulting the record exec’s son), he landed a spot at Rocafella and worked on his own rapping/song writing. During this period, Kanye refined the classic 90’s hip hop sound, heavily utilising vintage soul samples, 808’s and tempo shifted samples. To achieve the sound from these albums, really focus on finding great samples to use, sometimes almost ‘boom bap’ sounding looped drums, with the really artful catchy use of melodic samples. The sample of Chaka Kahn’s ‘through the fire’ used on ‘through the wire’ is the epitome of a Kanye sample, having its speed altered to in turn shift it’s pitch. A great video on how to incorporate this Kanye sound can be found below (the video creator also creates one for each Kanye album, which are all worth a watch).

808s and Heartbreaks Kanye

Sometimes seen as a lull in Kanye’s discography, the album was delayed and sounded very different compared to his first three albums. Up to ‘Graduation’ his albums generally shared a celebratory tone, bravely mixing pop, rap and religious elements to create a landmark trilogy, 808s was far from celebratory and crossed the most into pop yet. The album was the first after Donda, his mothers, passing and his breakup with fiancé Alexis Phifer, it discusses deep topics concerning loss and reflects on what matters in life. The impact of the album has been untold, credited with legitimising vulnerability in rap, blending it with more pop song structures and losing all signs of bling era bravado. Artists like Juice wrld and Drake really drew inspiration and honed this sound, blending soft rap with pop sensibilities. The most obvious production tools used on 808s are, you guessed it, 808 drum sounds and auto tune. The use of auto tune is especially interesting, moving the vocal sculpting device into the spotlight for creating melodic, interesting vocal lines. Previous to the release of this album, auto tune was mostly seen as a studio cheat, to engineer stars out of hapless tone deaf singers, but on 808s, it’s openly embraced by the most famous rapper on earth and accepted as a mainstream vocal effect. This brazen use of auto tune really set the path for rap music through the 2010’s, directly influencing huge artists like Travis Scott and Future, especially Travis who himself took auto tune to the next level, living the life ASAP should have (creating a visionary psychedelic trap hybrid sound and both dated a Kardashian), releasing the pioneering Rodeo and trippy Astroworld. This video is a great tutorial on how to emulate the less sample reliant sound of 808s, but the key to the feel of the album really lays in the vocal manipulation and style that West delivered.

808’s could have been released at any point after its release and would have felt like a recent Kanye album. It’s minimalist, classic instrumentation still holds up today, with singles like ‘welcome to heartbreak’ able to slot into works like Life of Pablo and still sound cohesive.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (and most of watch the throne)

Often seen as Kanye’s greatest achievement, MBDTF came as a retaliation to all the critics of 808s, who said that Kanye had gone too far into a misguided pop/hip hop middle ground, had lost his relevance and simply didn’t understand the use of auto tune. Kanye brought together nearly everybody in the music industry for a star studded, maximalist, grandiose album that’s release would shake the foundations of mainstream music. From political campaign rallies to aftershave adverts, singles like ‘Power’ have been played through nearly every speaker to exist and songs like ‘Monster’ brought us career defining verses. MBDTF is praised as re-energising Ye’s career and bringing him back under the spotlight, returning to his love of sampling, classic Hip Hop drums (the drums on ‘all of the lights’ are possibly the best ever put on a hip hop track, fight me) and a plethora of big talent features. What separates MBDTF from the Graduation trilogy is the vast grand instrumentations, crushing electric guitar sounds and a new slightly more aggressive vocal delivery. To get a distinctly MBDTF style sound, add heavily distorted guitar tones, grand track intros and a lot of instruments, the album is known for its meticulous perfectionism, so replicating such a sound demands attention to detail. As a fan favourite album, many sound-alike tracks exist on YouTube so can be plundered for sonic inspiration.

Watch the throne features some of Jay-Z’s best verses, as the Goat looks down from the mountain top. Production wise it mixes flavours from MBDTF and Yeezus, with tracks like ‘Otis’ relying heavily on a looped sample whilst ‘No church in the wild’ features animal sounds and a brutalism which we’d have to wait to hear more of on the next 2013 cut. ‘In Paris’ has become a ‘Say my Name’, ‘Titanium’, ‘We found love’ style track, a modern ‘so good it’s overplayed so we’re sick of it, but it’s so good’ kind of song which created and is responsible for dubstep, no cap. Watch the Throne was Kanye releasing the last album of the bling era and bringing that chapter of hip hop to an end, thank you Kanye.

Yeezus (and Cruel Summer)

Possibly Kanye’s most debated album amongst hard-core fans, Yeezus was a very angry album which production wise leaned heavily on existing industrial hip hop. Critiqued by some disciples as being the first album where Kanye didn’t necessarily look ahead and set the next trend, but instead took sounds his contemporaries like M.I.A and Death Grips had already experimented with and fused them with his now even angrier lyricism. Looking at how to create sounds from Yeezus, we’re going back to a kind of 808 style minimalism, be it with somewhat sporadic outbursts of jagged saw tooth synths. The kind of heavy bass sounds and space in the music is slightly reminiscent of James Blake or Clams Casino, but obviously the most direct comparisons stylistically is with Death Grips. After doing some looking, I feel this video gets closer than most ‘Yeezus style’ videos do, mainly because I think the tempo is more on the mark. Maybe empty some sections out and come in with a gnarly sounding saw tooth synth or a squelching, bubbling modulated acidic synth for some direct Yeezus references.

I threw Cruel Summer in here as well as songs like ‘Clique’ share some DNA with the album. Other tracks like ‘New God Flow’ (a personal favourite) seemingly hark back to a more ‘Kanye’ sound with samples, vocal hooks and a gorgeous piano line, also Pusha T and Kanye together is a match made in heaven, with Kanye’s genius production coupled with Pusha’s lyricism. Around this and the Life of Pablo period, Kanye released the amazing ‘All Day’, which he famously played at the Brit awards surrounded by a group of grime artists, making a point that they’d been shunned by the awarding body. ‘All Day’ is a great single, it fuses the aggression of Yeezus with some great samples, some proper Kanye rapping and on the full version of the song, a Kendrick Lamar feature. The song finishes with an erratic Life of Pablo style beat change that is a taste of things to come and an oddball feature, Paul McCartney, harking back to his earlier use of Chris Martin.   

The Life of Pablo

The Life of Pablo marked a dramatic shift in Kanye’s career, a new era that was arguably started by Yeezus but covered by the industrial style, where erratic genius overtook the need for perfectionism. Where Yeezus had ‘Bound 2’ and ‘Black skinhead’, Pablo only contained one or two radio hits, but the album introduced the now infamous crazy Kanye album rollouts, disjointed releases and track edits which could carry on up to 6 months after the release. The album is still strong though, and barring a confusing remix of ‘Panda’ and the notorious track about Kanye loving Kanye, songs like ’30 Hours’, ‘No more parties in LA’ and the aforementioned ‘Fade’ really stand out, keeping the trend of on-trend features and fresh young talent (From Chief Keef on Yeezus, to the hidden Post Malone on Fade). To channel your own inner Pablo, first buy some 350’s and an oversized black sweat top, next follow the key Kanye steps of samples, heavy bass and gnarly drum fills. With Pablo though, don’t be afraid to go too gospel, it is often referred to as a gospel album with swearing and Kanye uses a tonne of old choir/pastor/religious samples throughout. Beat switches, which would maybe influence Travis or Kendrick also occur on nearly every track. Here is a great video breaking down Kanye’s production on this album, the creator also makes amazing other Kanye videos. ‘Wolves’ definitely seems a unique cut on the album, sounding like something off of ‘Cruel Summer’ the fact it was made for a runway show is obvious in its sparse instrumental and atmospheric vibes, known as one of the unfinished songs from the album which was heavily worked on post release, it still maybe lacks some direction.

Kids See Ghosts

The only Kanye album to be given the mythical 10/10 by the Needle drop, Kids see Ghosts is a fan favourite, being played at his Camp Flog Gnaw set and having a unique merchandise art style, Ghosts saw the return of oracle Kanye, giving us a glimpse of the future. This video below goes into an insane level of depth, achieving a sound stereotypical of most of the album. My personal favourite track off the joint Ye and Cudi album is the title track, which sounds like a haunted stroll round the New Orleans swamps, jittery crickets and foreboding atmosphere (aside from the distractingly bad ‘breakfast and head’ lyric). This track features more click sounding woody percussion and more space than the other tracks. The haunting Theremin style volume swell noises and the sighing vocal sounds add to the vibe and the slight uplift that comes near the end of the vocal verses adds some oomph and in a subtle way with just a deep bass sounds and extra vocals, it really is a masterpiece in minute detail. Also ‘Reborn’ has Cudi’s best vocals/lyrics on yet, so good I’ll forgive him for Speed’in bullet to heaven.

Donda

And here we are, the latest full length album from one of the greatest musicians/designers/visionaries of our generation. Clad in black with a controversial, unorganised and almost comical release, Donda brings a future sounding blend of gospel, hip hop and atmospheric bliss. Ignoring the strange ‘2’ versions of some songs on the album, with the bizarre rage inducing features they bring (What kind of fool replaces Hov with Da Baby, come on Kanye), this feels like a proper full length Ye album. The track listing brings with it a lot of variation, with a certified drill banger in ‘Off the Grid’ and spacious ambient bliss with ‘Hurricane’ and ‘Moon’. Production wise, the album feels like a culmination of Kanye’s prior work, the classic old school samples, the inclusion of gospel choir vocals, cutting synths and amazing features. One of the best parts of Donda is how the production emphasises the best in its features, using the choir and harmonies in the wisest places. Donda is the kind of heavyweight album which will influence music in the future and sparks a new age of Kanye, where we’ll hopefully get a Watch the throne two and maybe an official release of ‘Life of the Party’. Donda feels like a slightly more perfectionist Kanye is back, feeling more rounded and getting the Pablo ‘post-release’ treatment, making tracks like the ones that made the record definitely take time and patience. Seeing as Donda is the newest album, with the most click bait potential, there are already a plethora of ‘How to’ videos on YouTube. The album incorporates more trap elements and drill type drum patterns, covered in euphoric organ sounds and driving 808s basses. Once again, use a classic gospel sample and build it from there. Once again, below are two videos that will help us get the sounds we want. The album has a dark vibe to it, returning to a Dark Fantasy level of grandeur. Also, Flavio has a career highlight on ‘Off the Grid’, just facts here.

Honourable Mentions

·         Pusha T’s record Daytona – This is essentially Kanye producing album of the year material for one of modern Hip Hops top five. The album is a rich homage to old school hip hop and the sounds would easily work on a Freddie Gibbs album. Worth a listen if you loved Kanye’s first trilogy and his early work with Jay-Z.

·         ‘I Love It’ – A completely unexpected Kanye single that was just to prove he could still create a chart bothering pop track if he wanted. Built using mostly a three note bass riff, it is catchy and repetitive, with ludicrous vocals and an even more unexpected on trend feature.

·         The Nas album NASIR – In a similar vein to Daytona, the production is classic and aggressive, fuelling the lyrical genius of one of Hip Hops most venerated, goated voices. Produced by Kanye in true grand Ye style, the album features auto tuned vocal hooks, samples, choir vocals and high energy drum patterns.

·         Jay-Z ‘Encore and ‘I.Z.Z.O’ - Two of the biggest songs from Jigga which you’d have no idea Kanye built, the true carpenter of beats.  

·         ‘Follow God’ and ‘Ghost Town’ – As shown by the album list, I didn’t cover Ye or Follow God, generally as the albums were very short and Ye was lacking many stand out production moments. The two tracks here though are the most successful from the releases and definitely worth a listen for inspiration if you’re chasing Kanye’s sound from around this time. ‘Follow God’ has some strong rapping on from Kanye, something the two albums faced criticism for lacking.