“Stronger” by Kanye West with Daft Punk

"Stronger" is where Kanye West grabbed Daft Punk's "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" by the collar and dragged it onto the dance floor. The second single from his third album, Graduation, it hit US rhythmic radio on July 31, 2007, on Roc-A-Fella and Def Jam. West had first heard the duo's music while touring in 2006, built the beat around their track, then spent months rewriting his verses; Mike Dean handled the extended outro, and Edwin Birdsong got a credit for "Cola Bottle Baby". Daft Punk gave it their blessing.

It's maximalist, electro-charged hip-hop about self-empowerment, with a chorus that borrows its backbone from Nietzsche. It topped the Hot 100 and the charts in Canada, New Zealand, Turkey and the UK, won the Grammy for Best Rap Solo Performance, and its Akira-inspired Tokyo video took Best Hip-Hop Video at the BET Hip Hop Awards. It later went diamond in America, and plenty of people credit it with pushing hip-hop toward electronica.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.