The 50 Best Kanye West Songs Ever

19. Spaceship

Release Date: February 10, 2004

Album: The College Dropout

Writer(s): Kanye West, Leonard Harris, Dexter Mills, Marvin Gaye, Gwen Gordy Fuqua, Sandra Greene

Producer(s): West

Notable Lyric:

“Y’all can’t match my hustle

You can’t catch my hustle

You can’t fathom my love dude

Lock yourself in a room doing 5 beats a day for 3 summers

That’s a Different World like Cree Summer’s

I deserve to do these numbers

“The kid that made that deserves that Maybach!”

So many records in my basement

I’m just waiting on my spaceship”

Making a list like this isn’t easy for many reasons, but one of the biggest challenges is being forced to skip wildly around Kanye’s career.

To jump between mental states, levels of fame and sonic backdrops like this can be jarring, and “Spaceship” potentially represents the biggest gear shift yet. After reviewing three tracks that represent some of Kanye’s highest heights on three of his later albums, returning to where it all began should be tricky.

But it’s really not. “Spaceships” is a song that, perhaps naively, lays out the framework of Kanye’s ambitions, and the trouble he’s had in realizing that ambition. It serves as an appropriate contrast to the three tracks that came before, all of which, in some manner or another, deal with the consequences of the fame young Kanye was propelling himself ever closer toward.

Next: 18. So Appalled