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Trivia / Kanye West

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  • Approval of God: Kim Kardashian tweeted that she found "Bound 3" (a Seth Rogen and James Franco remake of the "Bound 2" video) to be hilarious, and later tweeted that Kanye found it funny as well.
  • All-Star Cast: "All of the Lights" from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy features all of the following on one song: Rihanna, Elly Jackson, Elton John, Alicia Keys, The-Dream, Fergie, Kid Cudi, Ryan Leslie, Charlie Wilson, Tony Williams, and John Legend.
    • MBDTF in general. Looking at the list of personnel involved, they range from the expected (e.g. Kid Cudi, Drake) to the somewhat less-expected (e.g. Gil Scott-Heron) to the rather bizarre (Justin Vernon of Bon Iver? Really?)
    • Subverted with "Cruel Summer" in that the features (outside GOOD Music) were all superstars in the world of urban music - about 10 years before the album was released. It featured R. Kelly, Ma$e, Raekwon and Marsha Ambrosius.
      • The exceptions being Jay-Z and Chief Keef. Plus, R. Kelly and Marsha Ambrosius both had albums out.
    • For the most part, Yeezus doesn't have as many features. However, Daft Punk produced four of the tracks, Rick Rubin was brought in as the deadline loomed for additional production, and Justin Vernon of Bon Iver returns.
      • Yeezus only appears to have less features on the surface, based on the decision to not name features on the track list. Looking at the credits you can also find Lupe Fiasco, Kid Cudi, Hudson Mohawke, Travis Scott, Chief Keef, King L, Frank Ocean and reggae musician, Assassin.
    • The Life of Pablo features big names such as Frank Ocean, Sia, The Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar and Chris Brown, along with some relatively smaller names like Ty Dolla $ign, Young Thug, Vic Mensa, The-Dream, and much more.
  • Attention Deficit Creator Disorder: Briefly indulged in this in 2018 with the now-famous Wyoming Sessions, in which he single-handedly produced albums for himself and a group attending the studio, the group composed of him and Kid Cudi, Pusha T, Nas, and Teyana Taylor.
  • Beam Me Up, Scotty!: His famous 2009 MTV VMAs "speech" has been misquoted almost every time it is said. And it's rarely ever quoted the same way.
    "Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time. ONE OF THE BEST VIDEOS OF ALL TIME."
  • Breakthrough Hit: "Through the Wire". Kanye frequently notes how he couldn't have made it this far without that song to provide him with his first big break, simultaneously swaying Roc-A-Fella executives' beliefs on whether or not to give Kanye the chance to make an album.
  • Christmas Rushed: In contrast to his usual tendency to let release dates slide, Kanye heavily pushed for Donda 2 to be released on February 22, 2022, just about half a year after Donda. While it didn't end up actually releasing on the date — only its live concert — it still ended up being released through the Stem Player in the following days, and just based on how the recordings and production came out, it seems he was seriously cramming to get something out relatively on time.
  • Colbert Bump:
    • His decision to bring Justin Vernon in for Dark Twisted Fantasy gave Bon Iver a lot of exposure. Odds are, if you meet someone who still pronounces it "Bonn Eye-vur", this is likely the only way they know about the band.
    • To an extent, at least in America, his songs with Elly Jackson of La Roux.
    • "Father Stretch My Hands Part 2" gave a big bump to Desiigner's "Panda," turning it from just another Future ripoff into a bona fide hit.
  • Converted Fanboy: Kanye never heard of Daft Punk prior to starting production on "Stronger". After producer A-Trak shared some Daft Punk tracks with him, eventually beginning the production of "Stronger", Kanye became a huge fan of them, eventually tapping them as two of the many collaborators on Yeezus. He has also gone on record saying that "Stronger" does not compare to the original "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger".
  • Corpsing:
    • You can hear Kanye chuckling a bit in "RoboCop" after he says "she said she ain't take it to this degree / well, let's agree to disagree".
    • At the end of this line in "On Sight":
    "Took her to the 'Bleau, she tried to sip the fountain
    That when David Grutman kicked her out
    But I got her back in and put my dick in her moooooouuuuuth"
  • Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: His verse on the Cruel Summer remix of "Don't Like" has a line where he says he was "in too deep like Mekhi Phife'" — although the film In Too Deep actually starred Omar Epps.
  • Creator Breakdown:
    • His longtime fiancée dumped him, then his mom died after a plastic surgery operation, the album 808s & Heartbreak being the end result.
    • To an extent, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy as well, given it was created whilst West was a recluse in Hawaii after the fallout from the Taylor Swift incident. This was even exemplified with the unreleased song "Never See Me Again", which some have described as an "audio suicide note", but whether or not Kanye was contemplating suicide or was just planning to quit music all together is debated.
    • Everything leading up to The Life of Pablo to ye (between early 2016 to mid 2018) stemmed from health issues and more mental breakdowns, resulting in him disappearing from Twitter and the public eye at large for much of 2017. When he returned to work in 2018, ye lead to the revelation that Kanye suffers from bipolar disorder.
    • Donda was further influenced by themes of grief and reconciliation, most distinctively regarding the loss of his late mother whom the album is named after. Several songs (most notably "Lord I Need You") also allude to his tumultuous breakup with Kim Kardashian in early 2021.
    • Donda 2 is arguably even more informed by his divorce from Kim, with several tracks (namely "True Love", "Get Lost", and "Flowers") being directly about their breakup and the subsequent fallout. Much of this appears to have been produced in the same headspace as his public meltdown just before the album's release, where Kanye publicly begged for Kim to come back, threatened Pete Davidson (who Kim was dating at the time), and leaked private text messages on his Instagram.
  • Creator's Favorite Episode: In an October 2013 interview, Kanye revealed that "Can't Tell Me Nothing" is his favorite song to have been released by him.
  • Denial of Digital Distribution:
    • The Life of Pablo — first released on February 14, 2016 — was originally a Tidal exclusive, and West vowed that it would never appear on any other services, nor would it ever be for sale. For unclear reasons, following updates to the album, it wound up being released on other streaming services and for digital purchase on his website anyway on April 1 of the same year (this ended up resulting in a class-action lawsuit against Kanye and Jay-Z over false advertising, but it was dropped in January 2019).
    • Donda 2 was not released through any traditional stream service, rather through the download-based service of a Stem Player audio device released around the time of Donda in the previous year. Billboard ended up disqualifying the album from its charts due to them classifying its attachment to a physical device as "bundling", which was deemed invalid when counting record sales.
  • Development Hell:
    • Shortly after the release of The Life of Pablo in early 2016, Kanye teased he would have another 2016 album release out, tentatively titled TurboGrafx-16. No word of the specific project has come from it due to rising health issues by the end of the year, his absence the following year, and his investment in other projects since then — including ye, Kids See Ghosts, additional production work, Jesus Is King, etc.— suggesting that the project was either greatly reworked or outright scrapped.
    • Around the initial leadup to Kanye's Yandhi/Jesus Is King in September 2018, Kanye publicly announced that he and Chance the Rapper were collaborating on the ill-fated Good Ass Job album together. Following Kanye's drastic transition period with Jesus Is King and the uncertainty regarding Donda, word about it has stagnated with no updates given about its status since.
    • Soon after Jesus Is King was released, Kanye announced a remix album in collaboration with Dr. Dre tentatively titled Jesus Is King Part II. Almost no updates regarding the album were since made, causing many fans to assume it was quietly scrapped or shelved, and the only track from the project to surface legitimately was a remix of "Use This Gospel" by Dr. Dre amd Eminem, which released in 2022 on DJ Khaled's album God Did. In a bizarre turn of events, a version of Dr. Dre's Jesus Is King 2 was leaked online in September 2023 and in a surprisingly complete state, featuring 15 tracks (including the un-remixed version of "Use This Gospel", still featuring Eminem), alternate performances by Kanye, and many guests, including Pusha T, Travis Scott, 2 Chainz, Snoop Dogg, Marsha Ambrosius, Anderson .Paak, and A$AP Ferg. Exactly why this version was never released remains a mystery.
    • Yandhi was meant to come out in 2018, then delayed before being scrapped so he could make Jesus Is King. Given years have passed it's not likely to ever come out now, though a few songs from it did make it onto Jesus Is King and Donda.
  • Doing It for the Art:
    • The Runaway film. Paid out of his own pocket, done solely to show off the music and backstory of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Def Jam's official statement was basically: "We have no idea where the money for this came from."
    • Donda 2 being only released through the Stem player was squarely because of this. Kanye even declined a deal with Apple to drop the album on Apple Music as a retroactive middle finger to the music industry in terms of artists not getting much payment for their hard work.
  • Dueling Stars Album: Watch the Throne with Jay-Z.
  • Executive Meddling: Very shortly after the official release of Dondaeven after several false starts across several staggered release datesKanye claims that Universal had released it early without his approval, also blocking "Jail, Pt. 2" from being on the album (though it was very quickly restored to streaming the same day of his complaint).
  • In Memoriam: Donda is full of direct tributes to deceased loved ones — the album title itself refers to Kanye's mother, Dr. Donda West, who died due to complications from cosmetic surgery in 2007. The song "Jonah" is a tribute to Jonah Ware, a 19-year-old independent artist that was shot and killed in 2020, with the song's featured artists Lil Durk and Vory both being close friends with him before his passing. "24" was also made as a tribute to Kobe Bryant (24 being his jersey number), the initial vocals being recorded a mere 2-3 days after his death.
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes: Donda 2 was exclusively released on the Stem Player peripheral through device-specific downloads, but Kano Computing (the device's manufacturer) severed their relationship with Kanye following his antisemetic outbursts at the end of 2022, discontinuing the affiliated productnote . As a result, the only way to listen to the album legitimately is to own one of the original Stem Players, of which only five thousand units exist.
  • Magnum Opus Dissonance: Despite the fact that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is ranked by many people as his best album, Kanye said, in 2015, that it is "almost like, an apology record", and that 808s & Heartbreak and Yeezus are "so much stronger."
  • Meaningful Release Date: Ye was adamant on releasing Donda 2 on "2.22.22", though whether it actually made that date is a bit debatable — February 22, 2022 was the date of the concert/"listening party" where he premiered much of the album's songs, but the actual album didn't roll out until February 23.
  • Missing Episode: Yandhi was recorded and heavily teased before ultimately being scrapped. While Yandhi was reworked as Jesus Is King, completed songs from it (such as "The Storm" featuring Kid Cudi, Ty Dolla $ign and XXXTentacion) were leaked, resulting with a multitude of fan interpretations of what Yandhi could have been.
    • This also applies to any album after My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (sans a bit of Yeezus) with many collaborations being left on the cutting room floor. What's even more infamous is there was a copy of MBDTF specifically for Hype Williams floating around that fans got a hold of and tried for years to open it. 2020 would be the point where the copy was finally decrypted and fans were able to hear original cuts and segments removed from the album (although with multiple "THIS COPY IS FOR HYPE WILLIAMS" said all around).
  • Production Posse: In addition to whoever is signed to GOOD Music; whenever Kanye has something being released; expect some involvement from Jay-Z, No I.D., Common, Lupe Fiasco, Tony Williams, Elly Jackson, Justin Vernon and Rihanna.
  • Role-Ending Misdemeanor:
    • On Donda, Chris Brown originally had a guest verse on "New Again", but it was removed after he and Kanye developed bad blood, with Brown calling him "a whole hoe" on Instagram. The initial release of the album still kept him in the chorus, but following an update in late September 2021, the chorus was rerecorded with Kanye and the Sunday Service Choir.
    • Ye himself would face this a year later when Vogue, CAA, Balenciaga, Gap and Adidas terminated their collaborations, sponsorships and ties with him following several Anti-Semitic interviews and tweets from October 2022 onward. The hefty loss of major business ties was so drastic that he lost his billionaire status in less than a month, with his net worth dropping from an estimated $1.8 billion to $400 million.
  • Schedule Slip:
    • The Life of Pablo was the final result of a ton of false starts of a new album from as early as 2013. Kanye initially teased it as So Help Me God for a 2014 release, but development persisted (with additional temporary title changes like SWISH and Waves), and while the album was "80% done" by early 2015, it wasn't properly released until early 2016 (and continued to be updated for a few months afterwards on top of that).
    • A much more visible example of this came in the buildup to Jesus Is King. Originally publicly announced in September 2018 as Yandhi and set to be released in the same month (even teased by both Kanye and Kim with then-final cover art), it was postponed at the last second to November for additional recording work. Once that rolled around, it was postponed again, this time indefinitely. News of the project reemerged in late August 2019, where it was announced as Jesus Is King and set for a September release. It too was postponed by a few days, and then that date was also missed, until it was bumped to late October, where it finally made its release date.
    • A similar mess occurred with Donda, which went through multiple names, track lists, and release dates only to continue failing to materialize. The first major stumbling came from it being given a precise release date of July 24, 2020, which unceremoniously came and went with nothing. It took until March 2021 for co-writer and collaborator CyHi The Prynce had to clarify that Kanye had been on hiatus (not helped by his breakup from Kim Kardashian) but Donda was not permanently shelved and he resumed work on it again. Talks of it nearing completion escalated months later, with Kanye hosting live listening events playing the near-finished product, but even then its release date was staggered — first scheduled for July 23, then pushed to August 6, then finally coming out on August 29. Even then, it was still edited after coming out (much like The Life of Pablo was) to remove a few features from certain songs and/or replace them. (Kanye claimed the album was released without his approval and he was not quite finished working on it.)
  • Throw It In!: The dropout bear from The College Dropout wasn’t planned to be on the cover at all, it just so happened to be at the high school the photoshoot took place. The only "plans" Kanye had for this cover art were that he didn’t want his face on it, and didn’t want any writing featured on the front side. The dropout bear would later be featured on Late Registration, and as an animated character on Graduation.
  • Trolling Creator: He outright says it on "I Am A God" ("As soon as they like you, make 'em unlike you"). He deliberately changes his style after each album, generally very successfully, but your mileage will almost certainly vary.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • Rick Rubin came in and stripped down a lot of Yeezus into what it is now, leaving many contributors' work on the cutting room floor (all of them still retained credits, however.) It can be fun to imagine what things originally sounded like before Rubin came in, especially because the 16-song demo version he was given by Kanye was three-and-a-half hours long.
    • The Life of Pablo has this in spades. After multiple title changes and alternate tracklists, it's easy to imagine how the album could've come out different.
    • As is the case with the development process for most rap albums, rumors circulated that Kanye had a variety of guest artists to choose from in making MBDTF. A wide variety of guest artists, including Soulja Boy (who Kanye had previously offered beats to) and Waka Flocka Flame. Much to the relief of some longtime Kanye fans, these two names never resurfaced. Madlib, the famous experimental, jazzy hip hop producer, was another name frequently mentioned. Who knows whether it would have fit with Kanye's style or not; but it would have been fascinating, no matter what.
      • Averted with Madlib, as he worked on "No More Parties in LA" on The Life of Pablo.
      • Ultimately averted with Soulja Boy too, since he appears on "First Time in a Long Time" on Donda 2.
    • Speaking of MBDTF, "Monster" was almost considered removed from the album, had Nicki Minaj not convinced Kanye to put her verse in the song.
    • "Drive Slow" on Late Registration was supposed to feature M.I.A. and T.I.. The former didn't record a verse, whilst the latter did, but it was cut from the album, but can be found on the Internet. M.I.A. also recorded for My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
    • "Highlights" from The Life of Pablo originally featured Madonna, who Kanye had previously worked with on her 2008 album Hard Candy and her 2015 album Rebel Heart, featuring on the former on the track "The Beat Goes On".
    • Child Rebel Soldier could arguably fall into this as well.
    • The College Dropout had a number of tracks that never made an album. One of which is a collaboration with Ol' Dirty Bastard called "Keep the Receipt".
    • 808s & Heartbreak was originally going to conclude with "Coldest Winter", but Beyoncé convinced Kanye to end the album with "Pinocchio Story".
    • Kanye had planned to release a four-album education-themed series; he released three of the four (College Dropout, Late Registration, Graduation), and planned to call the fourth Good Ass Job before a series of personal misfortunes occurred that shaped the conception of his fourth album (808s & Heartbreak) as outside of the series narrative. However, Kanye announced in late 2018 that he and Chance the Rapper would be collaborating on making it a reality again, so there may be hope for the project yet.
    • After the Taylor Swift incident, he cancelled his plans to go on tour with Lady Gaga.
    • The 2018 album ye was mentioned as being hastily re-recorded following Kanye's then-recent tabloid controversies, including a TMZ interview where he made polarizing comments on slavery. It's unclear what exactly got changed, but multiple sources have claimed that following the incident, Kanye spent a full two-week blitz redoing the album up until the day of release.
    • Andre 3000 wrote and recorded a guest verse for Donda in a track called "Life of the Party", which according to him didn't make it on the final album since he wasn't aware that the album was meant to be completely devoid of profanity, and that the verse just didn't work when censored. Oddly enough, the verse saw the light of day after it was leaked by Drake as part of his beef with Kanye around the album's release.
    • DONDA, like most of his albums, went through a long process, especially in terms of artwork. Originally Kanye released this as the cover with the name planned to be DONDA with Child. However again West changed the artwork from that to a portrait by Louise Bourgeois from her series Les têtes bleues et les femmes rouges. Despite all of that, the final release was just a black cover with the album title changed to simply DONDA.
    • According to former Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Amie, Kanye approached him during an E3 event and set up a meeting to discuss having Nintendo develop a video game about guiding his mother to heaven. However, Reggie had to "politely decline" the offer due to Nintendo being busy with a number of other commitments at the time; Kanye would later publicly announce his intention to make the game himself in 2015, under the title Only One, but nothing came out of this either. Whether or not Only One was related to Donda (apart from centering around the death of Kanye's mother) is unknown.
    • Following the commercial and critical success of 2018's Kids See Ghosts (the collaboration between Ye and Kid Cudi), Cudi announced the following year that they were working on a follow-up, and to expect more from them later. 2020 also saw a surprise announcement of an Animated Adaptation of Kids See Ghosts, with the animated teaser directed by Takashi Murakami (notable for featuring Dropout Bear, over a decade since he was last attached to a Kanye project). Unfortunately, Cudi announced in 2022 that he had a personal falling-out with Kanye and would no longer be working with him, confirming that the future collaborations have been scrapped.
  • Written-In Infirmity: His first hit, "Through the Wire", was written while in the hospital after a car accident and recorded while his jaw was still wired shut.

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