Countdown to Yeezy: Kanye West's 5 best songs

With Kanye West set to finally unleash his latest album this Friday,  we look at his most potent tracks to date.

Jesus Walks 

"We at war with terrorism, racism, but most of all we at war with ourselves." With that proclamation on his debut album, 2004's The College Dropout, West — until that point known for his dynamic production for the likes of Jay Z and Alicia Keys — announced his arrival as a voice to be reckoned with. Musically and spiritually searching, with its propulsive drum rolls and rhythmically charged chants (sampling Harlem's ARC Choir), Jesus Walks introduces us to the gospel of Kanye at its most earnest and haunting.

Diamonds From Sierra Leone

West offered a more piercing flash of social consciousness with this mesmerizing track from his 2005 sophomore effort, Late Registration. Milking Shirley Bassey's Bond theme Diamonds Are Forever for all its lush menace, Kanye summons the scourge of violence in the pursuit of material wealth (made more pointed in a remix featuring Jay Z) — even as he flaunts his growing braggadocio and taste for decadence. Surely, the irony wasn't lost on him.

Hey, Mama 

Humility, tenderness, a self-effacing sense of humor — not necessarily the first qualities you would ascribe to Kanye West, but they're all glowingly evident on this homage to his late mother,  Donda West, also featured on Late Registration. Produced by West and pop savant Jon Brion, the tune has an atypically breezy, twinkly arrangement, embellished by West's playful yelps and featuring a bright refrain of backing vocals, from Donal Leece's ebullient Today Won't Come Again. "I wanna scream out loud for you, 'cause I'm so proud of you," West declares, and no one could doubt him.

Blame Game

2010's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy includes this take on a far more complicated relationship between a man and a woman. Bittersweet piano chords (borrowed from an Aphex Twin song) and collaborator John Legend's softly husky vocals provide a melancholy foundation, while West pours on uglier aspects of male bravado and wounded pride — jealousy, rage and worse — then shifts to something resembling resignation. (That's before Chris Rock adds dark, twisted comedy with a closing skit that's not for sensitive ears.) It's a profoundly disturbing song, but fascinating in its sulking beauty and strained self-awareness, with Legend's gentle soulfulness drawing us in as West lays bare his contradictions.

Black Skinhead

Short, stark and frantic, this burst of industrial angst from 2013's Yeezus paired West with Daft Punk on production. Darkly distorted guitars offer the closest thing here to a melodic riff as a breathless West's fury is mirrored by crisp, panting percussion. The effect is strangely exhilarating, West's rhymes suggesting a kind of delirium as they buzz and sting. "I've been a menace for the longest," he raps. "But I ain't finished, I'm devoted/And you know it, and you know it." We did, and we do.