The Surprising Song That Kanye West Said Was ‘Life-Defining’ Back in 2007 - VICE
What song completely encapsulates the Kanye West experience? Typically, the brain goes towards something like “Jesus Walks”, where his audacious song about faith cracked the charts. Maybe it’s a record like “Power” that balances his trademark sense of humor with his extreme self-confidence. But according to the man himself, it’s a divisive Graduation album cut that almost no one would ever guess.
In a 2007 interview with Rolling Stone, Ye asked the interviewer for his favorite song of his. When he responded with his Mos Def collab “Drunk & Hot Girls”, the Chicago rapper and producer immediately lit up. Both West and Jay-Z are massive fans of the song, though fans at the time didn’t immediately gravitate towards it.
“That’s my life-defining song,” Kanye West said. “Jay-Z said that that’s the anthem, a stadium-killer. I’m going to tell you, on some real s**t, out of all the songs I’ve done — “Touch The Sky,” “Jesus Walks” — that song represents me the most.”
But why that song? Why not one of Ye’s bigger hit records or one that highlights his skill the most? Ultimately, he explained that the story of his life was that everything he ever did was for a woman.
“At the end of the day, everything relates back to trying to do something for a girl,” Ye argued. “It’s my entire life, from being a five-year-old trying to reach for that porno magazine all the way to the thirty-year-old getting into an argument with his girlfriend. It sums up my whole f**kin’ life.
It’s not just Kanye West though. He fervently believed that this was true for all men of the world. “Guys will go through a lot to chase women,” he continued. “A guy will get on a plane and go to the other side of the world to hit it for the first time and won’t cross the street to hit it the second time. But as a man, your whole life is to provide for that girl in that white dress, that missing picture in your wedding photo. That was poetically put, if I do say so myself.”
The line “We go through too much bulls**t just to mess with these drunk and hot girls” echoed when talking about his decision to get engaged to Alexis Phifer. Though he chose to not speak on his relationship perfectly, Kanye West did say that marriage was always one of his big goals as a man.
“I think real rock stars get married and have little rock star kids. At some point, you have to add some sort of stability to your life,” Kanye West added. “You have to have something real that you can hold on to. There can be a point where your records don’t sell as much, or you’re not as popular as you used to be. The best thing that any of the Backstreet Boys could have had was a really good woman in their life.”
