It’s been two decades since The College Dropout and it feels like it’s been several lifetimes.

On the other end of several generations of hip hop evolution is the early 2000s. The gangsta rap era had run through its major west and east coast cycles. G-funk maestro in chief Dr. Dre had developed quite the stable of post-gangsta MCs, starting with Eminem and then capturing lightning again with 50 Cent, whose own G-Unit stable was controlling the airwaves by 2004. Another center of hip hop power had formed around Jay-Z, who had become the biggest name in New York and was in the midst of his early imperial phase. In Jay-Z’s Roc-A-Fella organization at the time there was an up-and-coming producer who had been grinding out his style since the late 1990s. Back then Kanye West wasn’t the juggernaut eye-rolling circus of chaos he is in this brave year of 2024. He was a guy who’d amassed a fairly impressive collection of production credits, many of them on fairly unimpressive records. He’d worked with Lil’ Kim, Harlem World, Goodie Mob, and Foxy Brown. Notably, he’d produced “It’s Bigger Than Hip Hop“, a deep cut from dead prez’s classic Let’s Get Free, and Jay-Z’s “This Can’t Be Life.” That last one brought him the further attention of Jay-Z, who brought him in to produce several tracks on his next record, The Blueprint. One of those ended up being “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)“, a massive hit that was Jay-Z’s first entry into the Top Ten.

There was nowhere to go but up. He brought the style of ‘chipmunk soul’ to the mainstream – old soul samples sped up over solid beats. A few years later, with a massive production discography already amassed, it was time to take the next step and release his own solo record – produced by himself, mainly. His approach takes a further bit of context-setting. Back in the day there used to be a term, often derogatory, called backpacker rap. This was the term for ‘conscious’ rappers (like a sort of soft woke) who basically didn’t participate in the gangster ethos and couldn’t be classified as classic hip hop. These were guys like Common, Talib Kwali, Mos Def, and Black Thought. Kanye made this a whole metaphor. You have to understand: he was coming straight outta middle class Chicago. His father was a Black Panther, but his mother was an English professor who was eventually the Chair at Chicago State University. The expectation was that he would go to college and lug that backpack. As the middle class struggle tales on The College Dropout detail, he eventually ‘dropped his ass out of college’ after becoming disillusioned and pursued his dreams of making beats for rappers. So he was making backpacker rap about wearing and losing the backpack.

Up until he lost his mind around 2016, my line on him was always: “The biggest problem with Kanye West is that he’s exactly as good as he thinks he is.” There was something big-league about him from the very beginning. The first time I heard “Jesus Walks” I sat up and listened intently. I am not specifically a Christian, I don’t really care if there is some form of Christian symbolism in a piece of art but it normally doesn’t move me because of that (although Catholic imagery in horror is always a good time). There was something about that song, though, that hit like a brick. It was the production, of course; it’s always been the best part of anything Kanye is in. If these verses had been laid over the sort of smooth jazz beats you usually found on backpacker shit, it might have elicited some brief notice but I don’t know if it would have made the cultural splash that it did. Kanye’s beats were tailor-made to fit his tone and flow, though, so they ended up being much more engaging than they would have been otherwise. He came by that honestly, though: through grinding. When he raps about locking himself in a room doing five beats a day for three summers, it has the air of veracity about it. It sounds exactly like the sort of thing he would do, and of course the results bear it out. The man spent a great deal of time on craft, and it paid off in a big way.

The College Dropout was the first of Kanye’s college-themed trilogy; by the time Graduation dropped in 2007 he famously outsold 50 Cent and the hip hop world was never quite the same afterward. It was also the beginning of an incredible run of wildly creative records whose quality wouldn’t dip until he married a Kardashian, went off his medication, and embraced religion in a weirdly Nazi-adjacent way that continues to this day. Today’s Kanye and the Kanye of 2004 are like two completely separate people (hell the Kanye of 2014 seems like a completely different person) and it’s important to remember why he’s constantly written about and remarked on to this day: he’s almost certainly the greatest producer of his generation and might be the best rapper-producer (even though his rapping has always been one of his weaknesses, rather than a strength). I think when he lost touch with his middle-class roots is when he lost his way; the Kanye of 2024 can’t relate to the line “money isn’t everything, not having it is” anymore. Back then he was rocking a ‘pink Polo with a fuckin’ backpack’ and now who knows? The man designs merch that utilizes the symbols of the Confederacy or looks a bizarre amount like Burzum merch. This ain’t exactly the Louis Vutton Don anymore. It honestly feels a bit off to celebrate any anniversary with him, but the power of those old Ye albums is so great that you end up having to spin them, anyway. That’s the problem with Kanye: he’s exactly as good as he thinks he is.