Chance the Rapper Reveals His "Ultralight Beam" Lyrics That Kanye West Didn't Like
Sharing that he “had to go back and forth” with Ye to let him keep the line.
Despite the fact that his appearance on Kanye West‘s “Ultralight Beam” was highly revered, Chance the Rapper revealed that Ye wasn’t necessarily happy with some of his lyrics on the cut.
Speaking to the Recording Academy, Chano shared that he needed to convince West to let him use his line about the GRAMMYs. The lyric “I met Kanye West, I’m never going to fail/He said, ‘Let’s do a good-a** job with Chance 3/I hear you gotta sell it to snatch the GRAMMY” eventually made it on the track, but the Coloring Book rapper “had to go back and forth with [West]” to keep it. “I rapped on Kanye’s s*** right before it came out that I was working on these three GRAMMYs, and I was like, “If I keep rapping like that, and just saying s***’s gonna happen, that’s just gonna happen.” And it started happening,” he explained. “Kanye didn’t want me to say that [line] on that song. And I had to go back and forth with him about keeping my line on there.”
Chance further touched on his involvement with The Life of Pablo, adding, “That whole experience of working on [Pablo] was very transformative for a lot of people around me, because I was 40% of the way done with ‘Coloring Book.’ I was listening to a lot of gospel [then]. So, when I came to the camp, any time I got the aux cord, I was playing Fred Hammond or talking about something I read in the bible. It was a different vibe than what Kanye had hit me up for because I was coming off the heels of ‘Acid Rap.’ So, I had this different vibe and energy, and it was very well received.” He continued, “Kanye was like, ‘I wanna have more gospel [moments] on this album,’ and people eventually started calling it a gospel album. Just being in a position to rap [with] the person who probably is the reason I became a rapper—to be able to produce and write and to be featured on the intro, the first real rap verse you hear on the album, was crazy to me. I was, at that time, speaking it into existence like, ‘Kanye gonna hit us up soon. You gonna be working with ‘Ye soon.’ And when that happened, I had to keep doing that. I had to keep being like, “I’m gonna just say what’s gonna happen.”
Elsewhere in music, Cordae is preparing to release his newest album From a Birds Eye View by clearing out his Instagram.
