Way before “Yeezus,” North West, and “Imma let you finish,” Kanye West was a talented rapper, songwriter, and producer, able to score solo hits like “All Falls Down” and production slam dunks like “Slow Jamz.” He was earnest and affecting, ambitious but self-deprecating. We’re a long way from Kansas now, though, Toto. Today, music competes with fashion, tech investments, and collaborations with big business for Kanye’s attention. But if you’ve ever wondered where the tender side of Kanye West has gone, it’s in the songs he produces for other people.
“‘03 Bonnie & Clyde” by Jay Z feat. Beyoncé (2002)
Before “Drunk in Love,” Blue Ivy, the On the Run tour, and the elevator fight, Jay Z and Beyoncé had one of music’s most enigmatic unions. She was already a TRL superstar, the Diana Ross to Destiny’s Child’s The Supremes. He was already a year past his seminal album “The Blueprint,” a year away from his first retirement, and four years away from his comeback album “Kingdom Come.” “‘03 Bonnie & Clyde” is the future first couple of music’s opening a gambit — a show of strength, a coy confirmation, and a seductive tease all in one sweaty, flamenco-tinged bodega jam. Kanye provides the perfect launch pad for Jay and Bey, borrowing from equal parts Prince in 1987 and Salma Hayek in “Desperado.” Think of this as a dry-run for “Bound 2.”
“You Don’t Know My Name” by Alicia Keys (2003)
The crowning jewel of the nostalgia exercise that was Alicia Keys’s early career (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially when it’s done as tastefully and masterfully as this), “You Don’t Know My Name” is a 70s mellow gold classic out of time. Keys provides the heat and the eargasmic peaks and valleys but West lets her emote in wide lens, with a genius Technicolor sample from the Main Ingredient’s “Let Me Prove My Love to You” that positively bleeds all over her ecstatic “Baby, baby, baby”s. It’s the greatest six minutes of Keys’s career — who can forget “with the hot chocolate”? — but it’s some of West’s best production work too, two early 2000s gods feeding each other musical ambrosia.
“I Want You” by Janet Jackson (2004)
“It’s like a seesaw when it comes to your love,” Janet Jackson croons on this R&B ballad from her “Damita Jo” album. As far as Jackson come-ons go, that rates about a three on a scale of one to “Tie me up, tie me down, make me moan real loud.” But it’s especially charming when you remember what family she comes from. “I Want You” is the closest Jackson’s gotten to the Hitsville U.S.A. sweetness of her brothers’ early Motown work, an “Ooh Baby Baby” for the post-wardrobe malfunction era. Conducting a Minneapolis waltz with strings filched from the BT Express’s cover of “(They Love to Be) Close to You,” Kanye gives Jackson the slow-dance anthem she’s never had.
“Used to Love U” by John Legend (2004)
West and the R&B crooner John Legend take marital distress to church on this “Get Lifted” single. The song doesn’t sample anything from Aretha Franklin’s gospel albums but this is how we imagine the “Amazing Grace” album would sound like, cut and spliced into a divorce anthem. The sampled vocals, the choir-like background singers, that stubborn drum loop, Legend’s red hot testifying — divorce court never sounded this good.
“Where You Wanna Be” by Brandy feat. T.I. (2004)
If you’ve ever wondered how 1960s Dionne Warwick would’ve sounded like on a Kanye single, this is as close as it gets. With an unfussy beat keeping track like a metronome on a grand piano, Bacharach-like strings setting the scene, and Brandy’s “vocal bible” stacked harmonies in full force, this sparkling deep cut from the criminally underrated R&B classic “Afrodisiac” is a prime example of Kanye’s production work from the classic “College Dropout” and “Late Registration” era.
“Stay the Night” by Mariah Carey (2005)
“Stay the Night” is one of the prime cuts on Mariah Carey’s 2005 comeback album, “The Emancipation of Mimi.” But the Motown-kissed production, end-of-summer breeziness, cotton-candy piano loop, and uncharacteristically straightforward crooning take us all the way back to 1995 — as if Mariah Carey never left the jeep she was dancing on in the “Fantasy Remix” video. Think of this as the 30, flirty, and thriving “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” to her immortal “I’m in heaven with my boyfriend, my laughing boyfriend.”
“Find Your Love” by Drake (2010)
Two years removed from West’s polarizing “808s & Heartbreak,” a breakup album where auto-tune is the gateway drug to bloodletting, “Find Your Love” sports some of that album’s electro emoting. Percussion can sometimes impair a sad song’s affectivity. On “Find Your Love,” it functions as a metaphor, as if the persistent percussion is what’s keeping our lowly protagonist from “finding your loving.” It’s surprisingly affecting at 2:10, when the percussion disappears and Drake sings earnestly over synths, like a boombox-holding Lloyd Dobler for the iTunes era.
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Kanye West is coming to the Philippines to headline the Paradise International Music Festival on April 9, 2016, at the Paradise Grounds in Aseana City, Parañaque.
