Kanye West - rare gems

There are a few rap artists that have great unreleased catalog of music. Tupac and Nas are the first rappers that come to mind, but Kanye West is the third rapper that I think of.

I remember reading in a magazine recently about how the crown jewel in Kanye's Graduation cd was the song "Homecoming" with Coldplay's Chris Martin. I remember thinking how I thought that version of the song didn't even come close to matching the feel of the original.

The original version was on the advance version of the "College Dropout" album, but didn't show up in the later released retail version. I'm guessing because of sample clearance issues.

I remember that I had three favorites on the advance version of the album and I was telling people how good the album was. It's funny that two of my favorite three songs didn't show up on the final retail version, but yet the retail version was better than the advance version. It just goes to show how much quality material Kanye had recorded for his album.

Here's two rare Kanye gems:

Home - the original version of the song with John Legend left off of "College Dropout" that was later re-recorded and turned into "Homecoming."


Good Night (f/Mos Def & Al Be) - Here's a track that was made available as a bonus track on the Japan version of "Graduation." This is such a better showing for Mos & Kanye (especially for the Mighty Mos Def) than "Drunk and Hot Girls." For whatever reason that made the album, and this didn't.


I feel that "Homecoming" doesn't come close to "Home," but that could be because I loved the original version so much that the newer version just sounded odd to me. I spoke to a friend a couple of days ago who loved "Homecoming" and didn't like "Home." I suspect for the same reason that I liked "Home" (he got used to the newer version, so the original version sounded odd when he heard it).

This is just the tip of the iceberg on Kanye's great unreleased catalog...