Kanye West Productions

Now that every Kanye West album is an event, it’s easy to overlook the other side of his oeuvre — more than a decade of beats that bang as hard as anything by Timbaland, the Neptunes, or Dre. That goes for everything from his breakthrough work on The Blueprint (the sinister Doors sample of “Takeover” and the chilling throwback-soul choruses of “Never Change,” for starters) to such post-stardom productions as the shuffled synths of “Find Your Love,” the marching-band breaks of “Run This Town,” and the Motown-endorsed wails of “Let the Beat Build.”

And then there’s our Next Steps, a set that drops three more Jigga tracks in the same room as Chris Brown and Mariah Carey.

Rappers aren’t the only artists begging for a Kanye West beat these days. “Talk About Our Love” was a last-minute addition to Brandy’s Afrodisiac album that suddenly became its leadoff single on the strength of live-violin lashings and the late-’70s funk melodies of Mandrill. And then there’s “Stay the Night,” a piano-driven standout on Mariah Carey’s chart-topping comeback album, The Emancipation of Mimi. Between that and the tempo shifts West brings to the dizzying Chris Brown backdrop of “Down,” you’d think the Chicago native’s never met a track he couldn’t tackle.

Yep, that’s about right — just listen to our Deep Cuts . . .

When Michael Jackson’s record-breaking album Thriller received a 25th-anniversary reboot in 2008, executive producer will.i.am had one beat-maker in mind for a decade-spanning remix of “Billie Jean”: Kanye West. And, boy, did he deliver, amping up the tension of a true original with chunky drums and swooning strings. Speaking of West’s lesser-known work, he’s also blended Ethiopian jazz with boom-bap breaks (Common’s “The Game”), built a bulletproof chorus from a platinum-plated Fifth Dimension medley (Mos Def’s “Sunshine”), and brought the blue-eyed soul out in Fall Out Boy (“This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race”).

It’s hard to believe now that he’s one of the world’s biggest pop stars, but there was once a time when Kanye West was looked at as nothing but a producer. Which is easy to understand considering all the instant classics he cut before dropping his own debut album, including the richly orchestrated R&B of “You Don’t Know My Name,” the spastic Nina Simone nods of “Get By,” and the flawless Jackson 5 foundation of “Izzo (H.O.V.A.),” a.k.a. Jay-Z’s first Top 10 single as a solo artist. And since he’s barely taken a breather in the years since, West has a lot of music to wade through, ranging from the revved-up soul signatures of “Slow Jamz,” “The Corner,” and “Overnight Celebrity” to the left-field loops of “Lucifer,” “Make Her Say,” and “D12 World.” Consider this his ultimate mixtape.