#Kanye West Finally Scores His 1st Diamond Plaque

Break out the shutter shades again because Kanye West has earned the first diamond plaque of his career with the RIAA certifying “Stronger” after reaching north of 10 million units in sales. The 2007 Graduation No. 1 hit notches diamond status 14 years following its release.

“Stronger” served as the second single off Kanye’s Graduation album and features a sample of Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.”

Kanye West’s ‘Stronger’ is now @RIAA certified DIAMOND 💎 ! Congratulations to Yeezy and the entire team. pic.twitter.com/ISgiWiF52b

— Def Jam Recordings (@defjam) October 6, 2021

The genre-blending tune was a labor of love for Kanye West and his team as the track was mixed over 75 times and had more than 10 engineers working on perfecting the record until Timbaland came in at the last minute to make the “drums pop.”

One of Kanye’s go-to engineers Anthony Kilhoffer recalled the process of crafting “Stronger” in an interview with Billboard.

“When [Kanye] sampled Daft Punk on an ASR-10, Plain Pat said, ‘You can’t flip this. It’s not going to work.’ Pat was highly skeptical,” he said. “At the end of the day, he cooked up ‘Stronger’ in five minutes, and it was quite a departure from the boom-bap Kanye West production, and the beginning of experimenting with other albums.

He probably had eight to ten different mixing engineers on the song. I’d say there’s ten a piece to each mixer. I know I mixed that song for two weeks straight every day and that was after it had been mixed by five other engineers.”

“Stronger” would go on to top the Billboard Hot 100 and break up Soulja Boy’s “Crank Dat” run. The track also earned Kanye a Grammy Award win in the Best Rap Solo Performance category.

A few other hits from Kanye’s illustrious discography could be joining the diamond club soon including “Gold Digger” (8x Platinum), “N*ggas In Paris” (8x Platinum) and “Heartless” (7x Platinum).

Yeezy is coming off the release of his Donda album which went No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and became certified gold less than a month following its arrival.