TRACING THE LIKEY INFLUENCES OF KANYE WEST’S STRONGER

Busta Rhymes - Touch It/Daft Punk - Harder Better Faster Stronger

The 2006 Busta Rhymes hit, of which samples Daft Punk’s “Technologic”, would have been on the airwaves and in the clubs during the conception of Kanye West’s “Stronger”. It is possible that the basic idea of a midtempo club record with a driving robotic vocal sample from a Daft Punk song also influenced Kanye’s decision to request the Daft Punk record from the duo through their then-manager Pedro Winter. Though this one is the most uncertain given Atrak played Kanye the Daft Punk single initially

Obviously the sample of Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” is a major influence on the song in both being directly sampled while also fully bringing out the chord progression that was merely spelled out in the arpeggio vocal melody (i-VII-IV-VI-V).

Beyoncé - Crazy In Love ft JAY-Z

This one was the most exciting one to discover, and I’ll just break down each area of influence:

• the hook flow is extremely similar, with both being comprised of a (mostly) one-note melody centered around the iii degree of each song’s respective key
• arrangement structure: chorus with a kick and muted snare and an epic legato chord progression, breakbeat-esque full drums in the verses without chords, which minimizes back to the simple kick based chorus, which then goes into a hook where the full drums return (accompanied by a repeating lyric refrain of one phrase)
• midtempo groove centered around a driving arpeggio melody sample
• the key is one semitone away - this is what I call the “semitone test”, which is when you compare two eerily similar songs to find if one was inspired by the other by seeing if its key is a semitone above or below the key of the suspected song of influence. This happens because the subconscious is pulling from a song you’re familiar with that fits your idea for your song while being a little different so as to not plagiarize, thus pulling a song that is a semitone away rather than the same key

Linkin Park - In The End

It was this most recent discovery that blew my mind and compelled me to share this long journey of tracing Stronger’s influences with you guys. So here it goes:

• the key of Ebminor
• the drums and rap flows in the verses
• the burst of blaring synths in the chorus of Stronger strongly resembles that of the electric guitar playing in In The End, both playing whole note chords in their determination-filled descending progressions (i-VII-IV-VI-V and i-VII-VI-VII respectively)

Hope you guys can hear the similarities and find new discoveries with songs you love. Enjoy

- BRAVE

What does the i-VII-IV-VI-V stuff mean? I’m not knowledgeable about music theory but I’d like to get a better grasp on it

Dirty Vegas maybe?

idk s*** abt theory but ngl the song gives me a MJ feeling idk what it is

Crazy in love kinda wild i never notice tbis

Every note has its own key/scale with an amount of notes in a specific order. In music Roman numerals are used to label each note

Chords are made when a few notes are played at once, and every chord has a root note. So when you see a chord progression written out how I did, I’m writing each root note to indicate where it is

Word thank u brave

No problem

This song is so GENIUSE

i feel massive daft punk influence when i listen

Charles Hamilton did a great breakdown on this song one time. He pointed out the amount of vocal chops in the beat is equal to the number of drum pads on an MPC.

Link? This is p cool

Wait…the intro is a bunch of cleverly pitched and placed chops of the main sample

Where it’s at

Probably lost to time I’m afraid. It was on ustream.

Pointing out similarities in other songs doesn’t mean they influenced anything

That’s why I said likely. And all those really specific similarities adding up may very well come from influence to some degree, no? That’s all this is

And I even address this in the thread by casting doubt in the Busta Rhymes example

i think when ye lost to justice at the EMAs in 2006, it made him look up the music of justice and the ed banger circle in general (including daft punk, or so-me who helped with the good life video)

source: genius.com/a/remembering-the-kanye-west-cameo-in-justice-s-2008-tour-documentary

i also remember ye talking about it in an interview

How did you get the Daft Punk part?

and ye also said that timbaland was always the reference for the drums (and he also eventually did them)

so the futuresex/lovesounds seems also like an obvious influence
not sure about a specific track tho

Makes a lot of sense

A-Trak told the story. Said he was the guy who put Kanye on to Daft Punk and the sample while they were on tour.

wasn't the way i are the influence rather than futuresex or am i misremembering details