How Jamie Foxx got cut from his biggest hit
(Credit: Gage Skidmore)

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How Jamie Foxx got cut from his biggest hit

Jamie Foxx, for all his prestige and talent in multiple art forms, hasn’t really carved out as strong a musical career as many might have expected. Of course, Foxx is no slouch: he’s got five studio albums and even reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 with his 2008 single ‘Blame It’ featuring T-Pain (one of these days I’ll start a column talking about songs that hit number two. They’re often more fascinating than the actual chart-toppers).

But Foxx didn’t really break out the same way he did with film, television, and comedy. That still makes him a renaissance man, but he’ll have to settle for his two number one hits being features on others’ songs Boohoo, right?

But it’s true: Jamie Foxx featured on two number one hits in America. The first one was ‘Slow Jamz’ by the lightning-fast Chicago MC Twista. Whether this is actually a Twista song or a Kanye West song is a Chicago rap debate for another day, but Billboard officially credits the single to Twista featuring Kanye West and Jamie Foxx.

Not to be outdone, Kanye West scored his own number one hit and took Foxx with him. Except, he didn’t really. The song in question is, of course, ‘Gold Digger’, the Ray Charles-referencing prime-time “My name is Kanye West and it’s time you all knew it” single from 2005’s Late Registration. When ‘Gold Digger’ was released in July of 2005, Foxx had just won his academy award for Ray five months before. Nothing was bigger than Jamie Foxx doing Ray Charles, and West struck while the iron was hot.

For exactly 14 seconds. In the song’s intro. And then never again. Yes, despite being the best Ray Charles impersonator in the world at the time (and probably now too), Foxx didn’t actually provide the interpolation of ‘I Got a Woman’ used throughout the song. He tried, but over numerous takes, West realised that he just wanted the original sample more and more. For all his trouble, Foxx got a featured artist credit and surely a fair amount of gold records, but his actual contributions are limited to the opening a capella section, with the rest of the song sung by Charles himself.

Foxx didn’t seem to take it all the harshly: he appeared in the song’s video and performed the Ray Charles parts live with West on numerous occasions. Hey, he got the Oscar, he got the number one hit, and he doesn’t seem like a guy to have a terribly big ego, so I’m sure he just rolled with it and reaped the benefits of being a part of one of Kanye’s best singles.