20 Songs You Didn’t Know Kanye West Produced
Mos Def, Lil Wayne, Mariah Carey and more deeper cuts from the hip-hop icon


Kanye West produced songs for many rap stars before he got famous.
J. Emilio Flores/Corbis
Kanye West is one of music’s biggest stars and his roots as an in-demand beatsmith are well-known: He Âproduced huge hits for Ludacris (“Stand Up”) and Alicia Keys (“You Don’t Know My Name”), and played a major role in the sound of Jay-Z’s classic The Blueprint. Still, West produced dozens of tracks, often for major label releases, that went under the radar. Sometimes the track languished on a low selling album, did little damage to the singles charts or simply wasn’t associated with him because of the absence of a shout-out or his signature chipmunk soul samples. Here are 20 Kanye West productions that you may not know.