Kanye goes Hollywood with a glossy, Philly-soul-sampling contribution to the Mission: Impossible III soundtrack (he also delivered a bombastic take on the franchise's theme music), featuring speed rapper Twista, hip-hop soul princess Keyshia Cole and a mind-numbing number of repetitions of the word "impossible." It doesn't quite work: The skittering beat never settles into a groove, and the rhymes never explain what, exactly, is supposed to be so impossible. This is one mission Mr. West probably shouldn't have chosen to accept.

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.