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As one of Kanye West‘s closest collaborators, Common has had the opportunity to rap over many of Ye’s beats before he used them for himself. During an interview, the veteran Chicago rapper opened up about the many Kanye songs he’s turned down over the years, revealing why exactly he passed on them.

Common once had the beat for The Game’s ‘Dreams’, which appeared on his 2005 album The Documentary, and ‘Wouldn’t Get Far’, another Game song that featured on Doctor’s Advocate.

“I got more memories of joints I passed on, beats that he made for me,” Common said on Carmelo Anthony and The Kid Mero’s 7PM in Brooklyn podcast. “Like, that song ‘Wouldn’t Get Far’. And then ‘Dreams’.” Continuing to reveal some of the classic beats he turned down, Common stated that he even had access to production from Kanye’s Late Registration album, including the hit single ‘Heard ‘Em Say’.

“Even some of Kanye’s, like a lot of his Late Registration album,” he said. “‘I Wonder’ or even the song ‘Heard ‘Em Say’ — he made that beat for me. He made that beat and I was like, ‘This beat dope.’ He said, ‘Man, you want it?’ It didn’t feel like it was fitting my album. So I was like, ‘Nah, you good.’ He said, ‘Are you sure?’ I was like, ‘Nah, I’m good.’”

Common claimed that West made it look easy and put the song together in no time at all. “I promise you, he wrote that song in 10 minutes,” he revealed. “I sat there and watched this man write the song. He had just made the beat and he wrote the song. The whole song. I said, ‘Yo, this was meant for you.’ I can’t front, I wasn’t gonna do what he did to that beat. Sometimes you gotta know that. But as I look back, that beat was cold.”

He continued to praise ‘I Wonder’ despite not picking it for himself, while pointing out Kanye rapping about him on ‘Everything I Am’, which also appeared on his Graduation album. “‘I Wonder’ was dope,” he said. “There’s at least 10 Ye beats out there that I passed on. Even on one, he said, ‘Common passed on this beat, I made it to a jam/ Everything I’m not made me everything I am.’”

Between 2004 and 2010, Common was signed to Ye’s G.O.O.D. Music label, releasing his three albums Be, Finding Forever and Universal Mind Control. West executive produced each of those albums while producing the whole of Be and the majority of Finding Forever. In addition, he featured on the songs ‘They Say’, ‘Start the Show’, ‘Southside’, and ‘Punch Drunk Love’.

He also repaid the favour on many of Kanye’s songs throughout his career, such as ‘Get Em High’ from The College Dropout, ‘My Way Home’ from Late Registration and ‘The Morning’ from G.O.O.D. Music’s compilation album Cruel Summer.

It wasn’t until the early 2000s that Kanye was fully on Common’s radar after hearing the progression of his production. “In 2003, I started bumping into him in certain places in New York, in the airport,” he told Stereogum. “Like, ‘Man, we gotta work.’ I started hearing more of his beats and I was like, ‘This dude’s levelling up. Snapping with the beats.'”