Kanye West: 8 unreleased instrumental beats from 1997 have hit the internet

For those who missed the old Kanye

As pointed out in the Kanye West song “I Love Kanye”, there are a lot of people who miss the old Kanye, especially the chop up the beats Kanye.

Thankfully, the internet has been graced with some very old Kanye West beats, dating back to circa September 1997.

At the time, Kanye had yet to work with Jay-Z on The Blueprint - the album that would act as Kanye’s big break and revitalise Jay’s career - so these instrumentals are likely ones he was attempting to sell to other rappers and labels.

Genius has detailed the beat tape’s long journey to appearing on a relatively rogue Soundcloud profile, telling of how the owner bought the tape in December 2014 by a KanyeToThe user on Ebay for $52 plus $3 postage and packaging.

Two tracks from the tape were used by other artists: “Beat 2” was used by Grav on the track “6 City To City”, while “Beat 6” was used on Infamous Syndicate’s 1999 song, “What You Do To Me.”

The original Ebay seller told of how they came to own the tape, saying: “Someone was selling a group of tapes from a Miami record exec who had died in the early 2000s. (I asked the seller for more info about the person, but they had received it second hand from someone else.)

“It was a hodge-podge of commercially released albums, promotional snippet tapes, and a few hand-made demos. This one was obviously the most interesting. When I saw a blurry Kanye Beat Sept ‘97’ label among the other tapes it the auction picture, I decided to go all-in and set my bid to $300. I won the lot for $27.”

Expect Kanye to Tweet about the tape imminently. Meanwhile, Kanye hit headlines after he delivered a seven-minute speech on The Ellen Show.