Kanye West’s mother passed away three years before the release of MBDTF, but the spirit of her is present throughout the album’s deepest lows. So it’s only fitting to start with mentioning Donda West as a huge influence on Ye’s magnum opus. The original version of the Bon Iver-sampling and Justin Vernon collaboration “Lost In The Woods” actually was supposed to feature an interpolation of vocals of Michael Jackson’s “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” to “mama-say, mama-sah, mama Donda’s son…”, as performed by Kanye West on Facebook before the release of MBDTF. But that ode to his mother didn’t make the final cut of the album.

The wide range of samples on MBDTF plays an essential role in what makes the album so rich and layered. Credit where credit’s due: Kanye for going all-out, and this guy for enabling him to. Eric Weissman was single-handedly responsible for clearing samples of music by James Brown, Aphex Twin, Gil Scott-Heron, Rick James, Black Sabbath, King Crimson & many more. One hell of a job.

The man who famously introduced Kanye to hip-hop production, when he invited Kanye to recording sessions for Common’s Resurrection in 1994. A long-lasting relationship from mentoring a young Kanye then, to co-producing album opener "Dark Fantasy", "Gorgeous", "So Appalled" & "See Me Now" almost two decades later.

On top of co-producing Watch The Throne and various GOOD Music tracks, producer Mike Dean heavily contributed to MBDTF as well, with credits on most of the tracks on the album.

Only one production credit on MBDTF for Symbolic One (S1), but arguably for the biggest (or at least most widely known and heard) track: “Power.”

All jokes aside on only getting credited for “handclapping” on an album: the use of Continent Number 6's Afromerica by producer Jean-Louis Detry on “Power” is extremely strong. The handclaps add to the strength and hypnotizing nature of the song… So yes, these four definitely deserve to be mentioned.

The producer behind the brilliant chops on “Devil In A New Dress”, sampling Smokey Robinson's 'Will You Love Me Tomorrow'.

We all know jazz is not dead. But Kanye missed that memo. Statik Selektah’s jazz-heavy album What Goes Around was inspired by one particular moment during the MBDTF recording sessions on Hawaii: "The first beat I played him was the Nas one,” Statik Selektah told MTV back in 2014. “Kanye sat there and listened for like 10 seconds and he pressed stop and he was like: ‘It’s cool, but jazz is dead′. I was just happy to be there, but the way he said that to me always stuck in my mind. This album was definitely inspired by that."

“Lex Luger Can Write a Hit Rap Song in the Time It Takes to Read This,“ New York Times once headlined. Case in point: a year before he produced hit rap song “H.A.M.” by Kanye and Jay-Z for Watch The Throne, Lex Luger visited Kanye in the iconic Electric Lady Studios (the studio in New York commissioned by Jimi Hendrix) where he knocked out the drums for MBDTF bonus track “See Me Now.” He shortly left the studio space, and by the time he got back upstairs, the beat was used for vocals by Beyoncé, who was there in the room with Kanye and Jay-Z.

After Takashi Murakami (Graduation) and a photograph by Kristen Yiengst designed by Virgil Abloh and Willo Perron (and an alternate cover by street artist KAWS), it’s contemporary artist George Condo who is responsible for the memorable series of five MBDTF covers. Of which one (with the armless angel-slash-phoenix) got banned in the US close to the release. “The superimposition of people’s perceptions on a cartoon is shocking,” George Condo stated, “What’s happening in their minds should be banned. Not the painting.” Oddly fitting with the album title - and actually, a publicity stunt, as shared by Condo in 2011 as part of a New Yorker profile.

The place where most of the enigmatic “Rap Camp” recording sessions took place “That’s a really nice studio: on the marina, in this massive house…,” Roger Bong of Hawaii-based label Aloha Got Soul told us in an interview. “I think that studio was set up by a wealthy Japanese guy who envisioned a studio in Hawaii where all his artists and so-and-so can come for vacation. Jetskis on the waters and all... [Laughs]”

Gotta shout-out the guys who kept the producers cooking and emcees blazing... Just picture this setting, as narrated in a Complex cover story by editor-in-chief Noah Callahan-Bever: “Pusha, Tip, RZA, Cudi, Cons, and Kanye’s crew slowly assemble to enjoy the absurdly tasty cooking of Kanye’s in-house chefs. If you’re smart, you order the French toast with the flambéed banana. An hour later, Kanye pulls up in his Porsche Panamera, fresh from the studio. That’s right, from the studio. During my five days in Hawaii, Kanye never slept at his house, or even in a bed.”