Illmind Made These Beats for Kanye West, What Would You Do With Them? Posted by Lucas G. on 06/10/13 | Filed under Kanye West, Beats, llmind

As much as I love writing abut hip-hop, my dream is to at some point, be in the position to help create it. Now I can’t rap, nor do I know my way around the boards, but I always find myself playing the “who would kill it” game, where you think of an emcee who would sound perfect over the beat of choice. It’s a fun way to test you’re A&R skills. If you haven’t played, what better way to start than over a new, supremely awesome tape from !llmind.

Kanye West is undoubtedly one of the most exciting producer/artists to emerge in the last decade. His music is one of the few I can safely say I whole-heartedly admire (next to the late great J. Dilla). I had the pleasure of producing “The Morning” off of 2012’s highly anticipated “Kanye West Presents: G.O.O.D. Music Cruel Summer” LP. During the creation of that song, and between the months of July 2012 - March 2013, I created a handful of tracks with Kanye West in mind. This is a collection of some of that music. It features collaborations and co-production from my long time friend Symbolyc One (Produced Kanye West’s “Power”, “Murder 2 Excellence” on Watch The Throne & part of Kanye’s “Very G.O.O.D. Beats” entity), Dr. Know Jr., M31RK, Hippie Sabotage, Kailiin Yong &The Frontrunnerz. I had so much fun creating this stuff, and I hope you enjoy it just as much as I do. - !llmind

As !llmind explains, these beats were made for Kanye, but ended up going unused. How or why they weren’t chosen I have no idea. I think a few of them really scream Kanye, but in the spirit of “who would kill it” lets talk about who else beside Yeezy would sound great over these poor, abandoned beats. For the record, you can stream the !.B.F.K.W. (!llmind Beats For Kanye West) EP below but if you want to take the beats to go, you can download them via !llmind’s website.



For “Rolling Stone”, I thought BlackThought would be a great fit. The beat gets a little tricky after the first minute and half, changing to more of a string centered cut that would require an emcee adept at rapping over instrumental driven beats (as opposed to something more traditional); for that who better than the king of live band emcees? Also, could you imagine the crazy sh*t Questo could do with the drums when playing this live?



If you were one of the many that couldn’t wait to hear J.Cole's Born Sinner and listened to the stream, you are already familiar with “Let Nas Down” where Cole talks about how Nas was disappointed in “Work Out”. What better way to make up for it by joining the legend on “He’s Against Me”. Nas would kill the second verse with his last few bars over the softer outro being the icing on the cake. For good measure, lets throw in a hook from John Legend because what's a budget when you have imaginary money to blow?



I am not the biggest Action Bronson fan, but one thing that impresses me about him is his ability to squeeze his colorfully descriptive bars into a normal beat and still make it work. I feel like that quality would add a nice element to this clean beat. Also, the strings would really be a interesting, elegant contrast to his edgy, grimy flow. Side note, while it is now officially a joke that Bronson was signed to TDE. Maybe Hippie Sabotage, who have some TDE connects should actually link up with Bronson.



What do you guys think? Are there any beats that stuck out to you? Who would you want on some of these beats?

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