Kanye West’s five worst songs
Kanye West has one of the best hip-hop catalogues of all time. His first six albums, The College Dropout, Late Registration, Graduation, 808s and Heartbreak, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and Yeezus, arguably complete the greatest run the genre will ever see. Each project has a distinctive sound that helped change the musical landscape.
But as we’ve come to find out, Kanye is far from perfect. While in the past, people have been able to separate the art from the artist, Ye’s opinions have become so bold that even his biggest fans have been turned off from his work. Not only that, but some of his ideology has even crept into his music, which once wasn’t the case.
Over the past decade, inconsistency has become frequent in Kanye’s material. There was once a time when this would have been hard to imagine, but he’s proved that he’s human after all. Despite most of his poor form coming in recent years, he also released some duds here and there throughout his glory days.
Below, we’ve put together some of the worst songs Kanye has had to offer across his three decades in the music industry. No matter how incredible his music has been at certain points, some songs have truly damaged his career.
Kanye West’s five worst songs:
‘I Love It’ (with Lil Pump)
An immediate song that springs to mind is ‘I Love It’. Released in 2018, the ridiculous track about Kanye and Lil Pump’s sexual preferences is a particularly low point in Ye’s career. With lyrics like, “I’m a sick fuck, I like a quick fuck,” and “I like my dick sucked, I’ll buy you a sick truck,” it’s the Chicago rapper at his very worst.
What makes it even worse is that the song was a chart success, reaching number six on the Billboard Hot 100 and number three on the UK Singles Chart. The music video premiered at the 2018 Pornhub Awards and saw the two artists wearing rectangular body suits as a nod to Roblox. Enough said.
‘Lift Yourself’
Any song that has the lyrics, “Poopy-di-scoop/ Scoop-diddy-whoop/ Whoop-di-scoop-di-poop/ Poopty-scoopty, scoopty-whoop,” is immediately going into the Hall of Shame. ‘Lift Yourself’ opens with promising samples of Amnesty’s ‘Liberty’ and Dancer’s ‘Boom Boom’, carrying a soulful sound that Kanye has been associated with over the years.
A couple of minutes into the track, it becomes clear that the whole thing was a prank. “But they don’t really realise, though, this next verse, this next verse though, these bars, watch this shit, go,” he says, before offering the worst verse of his career. The song was a response to radio host Ebro Darden over his support of Donald Trump and Candace Owens, but having the audacity to release such a thing in the first place is shameful.
‘Heil Hitler’
‘Heil Hitler’ was immediately one of the worst songs Kanye has ever recorded, even before he wrote any of the lyrics. Ye has long praised Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and his antisemitic views culminated with this track. If people hadn’t condemned him by this point, this was truly the moment when people couldn’t stand him any longer.
The song was banned from streaming platforms and Germany as a whole due to the country’s laws against extremist symbolism and hate speech. It also got him banned from Australia, the country where his wife, Bianca Censori, is from. The track was set to appear on an album called WW3, which included other controversial titles like ‘Hitler, Ye and Jesus’. That tells you all you need to know.
‘Drunk and Hot Girls’
Graduation is widely considered a classic album, but almost everyone can agree that ‘Drunk and Hot Girls’ was the lowest point of the project. The song finds Kanye whining about, you guessed it, drunk and hot girls. In the horny second verse, Ye reveals his desire to have sexual relations with a girl and tells her not to fall asleep before they do the deed.
Kanye once stated the track represents him the most, due to the fact that his life revolves around women. His line, “‘Ah-da-da-da-da,’ that’s how the fuck you sound,” is hard to listen to, and getting the legendary Mos Def on a song and not having him spit a verse is a crime on its own.
‘Nah Nah Nah’
Last but not least, there’s ‘Nah Nah Nah’. The song is so terrible that it’s no longer available on streaming services, which can only be a good thing. From the get-go, Kanye starts things off on the wrong foot, explaining how his bid to be president of the United States was no joke and ending each line with the annoying “nah, nah, nah” lyric at the end.
The track, produced with Dem Jointz, has a trap sound that couldn’t sound any less like the music he does best. From the annoying flute sample to Star Wars lyrics referencing Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker, this political campaign theme song should have stayed on the hard drive.