6. Graduation (2007)

Graduation is typically seen as a minor entry in Kanye's catalog, a transitional step between the world-beating grandeur of Late Registration and the bummed-out cyborg bloodletting of 808s & Heartbreak. And there's some truth to that. Kanye's howlers seem less endearing and more desperate ("I'm like the fly Malcolm X / Buy any jeans necessary"), and some of his few genuine songwriting missteps (particularly "Drunk And Hot Girls," which casts him and Mos Def as fatalistic creepers) appear here. But, this being Kanye, there's still thematic unity at work and pop appeal at play. Mood-wise, it's almost entirely club tracks for darkened corners and melancholic after-hours music, all of which sounds infinitely better late at night. In the light of day, the deep cuts start to feel like a downer, but the singles still shine. It's easy to forget how prescient the Daft Punk-sampling "Stronger" was, or what an exuberant romp "Good Life" is, or how dramatically the strings and synths of "Flashing Lights" evoke the tailspin Kanye's life was becoming. When it works, it works; abundant lyrical clunkers can't stop centerpiece/lead single "Can't Tell Me Nothing" from fulfilling its purpose as anthem-cum-confession. Ultimately, though, something feels missing. The last two tracks -- "Homecoming," Kanye's Chris Martin-assisted Chicago tribute, and "Big Brother," his fraternal love letter to Jay-Z -- work well as shorthand for Graduation as a whole: appealing, but stuck in the awkward gap between intimate and grandiose that Kanye usually manages to bridge.

5. 808s & Heartbreak (2008)

The bravest album Kanye ever released, 808s & Heartbreak upended hip-hop's status quo even more radically than The College Dropout four years before it. He had toyed with AutoTune as a way to communicate paralyzing sadness in his verse on Young Jeezy's "Put On," a bleary-eyed, robotic mewling spree that showed him in the midst of a gruesome downward spiral. For 808s, the culmination of that spiral, he went all-in, flipping a technology that had been associated with audacious T-Pain party tracks into an instrument of despair. Crushed by his mother's death and his breakup with fiancee Alexis Phifer, Kanye channeled his depression into bleak electronic song-caskets and pained singing straight out of a '90s emo band's basement. (If you thought Kanye's rapping was clumsy ….) The album certainly has its drawbacks: It finishes with a whimper, not a bang. It introduced Kid Cudi to the world at large. Listening to Kanye play the victim is almost unbearable. But 808s shines in the way all Kanye albums shine: It challenges our expectations (letting the spare digital wasteland of opener "Say You Will" drift uninterrupted for three minutes was a bold choice) and it rewards our appetites. The first eight tracks are all masterful pop songs with serious replay value. When's the last time you listened to "Street Lights"? It's dope.

4. Watch The Throne (2011)

There were so many reasons Watch The Throne should have failed. Two of rap's biggest self-mythologizers, with a history of competitiveness and hurt feelings (see: "Big Brother" and the hubbub over who featured Chris Martin first), were attempting to function as a team. (It's no wonder LeBron and D-Wade got a shout-out on "Gotta Have It.") Jay was in the thralls of post-retirement mediocrity; Kanye was still basking in the afterglow from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. So many of these collaborative albums end up being less than the sum of their parts -- just ask Jay-Z how his records with R. Kelly turned out. And how could two middle-aged men swimming in Scrooge McDuck money pull off a monument to their own opulence while most of their audience fingernail-scraped its way out of a recession? Fortunately for Jay, 'Ye and everyone who spent 2011 bumping "Niggas In Paris," Watch the Throne beat those long odds. Mr. West is clearly the guiding hand: pushing the music into inventive directions, his creative energy inspiring Mr. Carter to some of the most vital microphone turns of his career. Let's not discredit Jay-Z for pushing Kanye, either; their chemistry on "Otis" is intoxicating. Yes, they broadcast their absurd wealth via braggadocious lyrics, expensive samples, and fashionable guests. But in light of the rags-to-riches backstory "Niggas In Paris" alludes to, it feels like the kind of triumph we all can share in.

3. The College Dropout (2004)

The self-proclaimed "true hip-hop heads" are probably fuming at the thought of The College Dropout ranked this low. Those with allegiance to hip-hop's fundamentals, traditions, and craft have a special fondness for this record, possibly because it's Kanye at his least art-damaged and most rooted in the soul samples that double as rap production's meat and potatoes. Or because it presents a hungry young underdog rather than a megalomaniac party monster. Or because it's a classic debut in a genre that famously fetishizes classic debuts. In the heads' defense, The College Dropout is unquestionably the most influential rap album of the past decade -- much more of a blueprint than The Blueprint. It rewrote the rulebook, not just by obliterating the wall between the mainstream and the underground but by redefining what constitutes a good rapper. (In case you haven't noticed, Kanye isn't exactly Rakim when it comes to technical proficiency.) It also introduced so many of the threads that run throughout Kanye's career: his social-media-style oversharing ("Last Call"), his deep appreciation for black icons (the Lauryn Hill interpolation on "All Fall Down," the name-checking "Slow Jamz"), his spiritual turmoil ("Jesus Walks"), his cornball streak (lyrics too numerous to cite), his willingness to speak his mind to poke holes in polite society's approved narrative (the education-skewering skits), his uneasy balance between black liberation ("Spaceship") and female objectification ("The New Workout Plan"). He wasn't wrong when, on "Through The Wire," he declared, "I swear, this right here? History in the making, man." And though we could spend all day discussing why it's important, let's not undersell just how much fun it is to listen to. For most artists, such a master stroke would be an easy No. 1, but in hindsight, The College Dropout feels more like a warmup for future glories than the pinnacle of Mr. West's creative output.

2. Late Registration (2005)

Speaking of future glories: They came quick. A year after unveiling an immensely appealing prototype for the next generation of rap with The College Dropout, Kanye returned with Late Registration, a grander, flashier version 2.0. Emboldened by his debut's commercial and critical success, he let his ideas run even wilder this time and came back with a record that seems to do everything and do it well. He recruited film score composer/experimental pop producer Jon Brion, who had just produced Fiona Apple's infamously label-rejected first draft of Extraordinary Machine and scored Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, to lend inventive quirks and expansive scope. (Given the vivid sprawl of "We Major" and "Gone," dude was a good fit.) Yet for all the artful pomp and circumstance, this wasn't the prog-rap opus Kanye would later conceive. The core of Late Registration is a batch of marvelous pop songs that represent a full scope of human experience, from political rage and the personal trauma that spawned it to giddy celebration and outright clowning. Beautiful and understated opener "Heard 'Em Say" even manages to wring actual human emotion out of whitebread hit-making robot Adam Levine. That's just one of the many excellent guest spots throughout, including one of the all-time great Jay-Z verses on "Diamonds From Sierra Leone," Lupe Fiasco's step into the spotlight on "Touch The Sky" and some classic Cam'ron tomfoolery on "Gone." But of course, this is Mr. West's show.

1. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)

"Can we get much higher?" is a reasonable question. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy isn't just Kanye's best album, it's also one of the best albums in a generation. Holed up in Hawaii after the VMAs debacle made him public enemy No. 1 (because rudeness is apparently the gravest of sins), Kanye flew superstars and proteges in and out of the lab, feeding off their creative energy, madly concocting the most grandiose hip-hop blockbuster of all time. From Nicki Minaj's story-time intro onward, it's an experience, the kind of transportive, transcendent record so many musicians have strived for and failed to achieve. It samples prog rock and mimics its expansive scope with songs that stretch far beyond rap radio's normal limits, turning Kanye's exile into a redemption story of mythic proportions. In the leadup to its release, he leaked new singles each week through the GOOD Friday series, building up expectations to impossible extremes. Then, somehow, he exceeded them. Guitar solos, choirs, a slew of hip-hop superstars and GOOD Music underlings, 808s, pianos, a bizarre Chris Rock monologue, Bon Iver (why not?), the most torrid verse of Minaj's life -- and let's not forget the troubled soul pulling the strings -- it all adds up to something timeless, thrilling and impossible to replicate. Yeezy taught us well.