How Kanye West “invigorated” Chris Rock: “It probably freaks him out”
Chris Rock is one of the most popular comedians in America. The 60-year-old’s career has gone from stand-up to film and television, earning multiple awards, including Primetime Emmys and a Golden Globe nomination. While he’s long been considered one of the most talented comics, one of the highlights of his career came in 2010, courtesy of Kanye West.
Ye asked Rock to contribute to ‘Blame Game’, a song that appeared on his My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy album, which was primarily recorded in exile in Miami. Bringing back the skits from Kanye’s early College Dropout and Late Registration days, Rock appears at the song’s end, praising a woman for her performance in the bedroom. Many assume the dialogue is a reference to Ye’s ex-girlfriend, Amber Rose.
Rock provides endless compliments and asks where she learned her skills from, to which the woman, voiced by Selma Kenas, replies, “Yeezy taught me.” This eventually evolves to, “Yeezy reupholstered my p*ssy.”
He says in the song, “Oh my God/ Baby, you done took this shit to another motherfuckin’ level/ Now, a neighbourhood n*gga like me ain’t supposed to be gettin’ no p*ssy like this/ Goddamn, goddamn/ Who taught you how to get sexy for a n*gga?/ You never used to talk dirty, but now you goddamn disgusting/ My, my God, where’d you learn that?”
Thanking Kanye, he adds, “You know what, I got to thank Yeezy/ And when I see that n*gga, I’ma thank him/ I’ma buy the album, I’ma download that motherfucker/ I’ma shoot a bootlegger/ That’s how good I feel about this n*gga.”
Rock explained that the collaboration came about after they ran into each other at the Chinese food restaurant, Mr Chow, in Manhattan, New York City. The skit lasts over two minutes, but Kanye made him record much more than that in the studio.
“We made it in New York,” Rock told Ebony Magazine. “My family was in Africa for a week, and I had nothing to do. I bumped into [Kanye] at Mr Chow, and he got me hanging out in the studio for a while. It sounded like it’s all me, but it’s him. He recorded me doing five times as much stuff, and he put it together. Then he texts me, ‘Yo, we got a classic!’
“He kept telling me, ‘It could be iller, it could be iller.’ He’s an instigator; he just instigated that performance out of me. That was the highlight of my year. To be in something that cool? It’s the best piece of art of the year. They could play the record in the Museum of Modern Art.”
The collaboration gave him energy he had never felt before. “I did that quicker than I read scripts that they offer me money to do,” he admitted to The New York Times. “I thank him so much it probably freaks him out. Especially at this late date, to get on something, the album of the moment, that stuff is priceless, you can’t put a price tag on that. I felt invigorated by it. I’ve still got my fastball.”
‘Blame Game’ also features John Legend. It was produced by Kanye, Mike Dean, and DJ Frank E and samples Aphex Twin’s ‘Avril 14th’. The song finds Ye touching on past relationships and was part of the same sessions that birthed ‘All of the Lights’.