Noah Callahan-Bever

Key Takeaways On April 25, 1995, New York rappers Mobb Deep released The Infamous, the follow-up to Juvenile Hell, their debut album, which had flopped. Self-produced and cinematically dark, the Queensbridge classic is widely considered one of the best rap albums of the '90s.

In 2010, Kanye West released his classic fifth studio album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The album arrived at a moment of adversity for Ye; just a year earlier, he faced intense criticism for interrupting Taylor Swift as she accepted the Best Female Video award at the 2009 MTV VMAs. So Kanye hid out. And then began working on new music. He returned to Hawaii, where he had previously recorded 808s & Heartbreak.

During a 2013 interview with the New York Times, Kanye West shed some light on his feelings about his own discography. It wasn’t quite as tidy as Jay-Z photographing all of his music albums in an ordered stack, but it did reveal a lot about what Ye thinks of his output.