The Kanye West ‘Graduation’ song Jay-Z was supposed to feature on
Kanye West and Jay-Z have collaborated countless times throughout their careers, starting from Ye producing ‘This Can’t Be Life’ in 2000 to releasing an entire album together with 2011’s Watch the Throne. However, they came close to another iconic collaboration on Kanye’s Graduation album.
The Chicago rapper’s third studio album was released on September 11th, 2007 via Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella, debuting at number one on the Billboard 200 with 957,000 copies sold in the first week. Features came from the likes of T-Pain, Mos Def, Chris Martin and Lil Wayne, who featured on song ‘Barry Bonds’.
During an interview with DJBooth, Kanye West revealed that Jay-Z was actually intended to be on the song, but there wasn’t enough time to make it happen. “Well, actually, it was supposed to be me, Weezy and Jay,” he said. “Jay didn’t have the time to get his verse in [before the album was wrapped].” When asked if his verse would appear on a remix, he said, “We’ll see.”
Jay-Z confirmed the story while speaking to Entertainment Weekly, telling the publication, “I was going to do ‘Barry Bonds’, but it was late in the day, so I didn’t get to do it.”
‘Barry Bonds’ is named after the former MLB star of the same name, who is considered to be one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Kanye West explained that he named the song due to seeing comparisons between himself and Barry Bonds, with the public often being highly opinionated about him.
“I don’t think he did [cheat],” he told DJBooth. “And whatever they say about Barry Bonds, you could say about so many others, [like,] ‘He couldn’t hit that many.’ So, that’s one of the reasons I wanted to call it ‘Barry Bonds’, you know, ‘cause it was controversial.”
He continued, “I think the similarity is a lot of people have a lot of things to say about me. ‘But here’s another hit, Barry Bonds…’ Like, what do you do? He goes out and makes more hits! So, at what point do you stop hating, you know?”
‘Barry Bonds’ was produced by Nottz and Kanye West, boasting almost 70million streams on Spotify. In the same conversation, Ye stated that Graduation served as a time capsule for the year it was released, featuring a buzzing Lil Wayne around the time of Da Drought 3 and Tha Carter III.
“I make music as good as possible, but I do reference cultural icons because I want my music to be a time capsule of 2007,” he said. “You throw everything in, you know, the Kate Moss reference to the Lil Wayne verse to a T-Pain feature—everything is like, ‘This is what’s happenin’ in 2007.’ I want my album to be that one—if you’re making a time capsule you have to throw my album in there.”
Jay-Z once revealed he was a big fan of Graduation, so he no doubt wonders what could have been. When asked about his favourite songs on the album, he said, “I’m pretty much consistent with ‘I Wonder’, ‘Champion’ and ‘Flashing Lights’. Those are my three records. I think ‘Drunk and Hot Girls’ would be a great stadium song for him to perform.”
Hov also spoke highly about ‘Big Brother’, claiming it was Kanye West’s most impressive track since ‘Jesus Walks’ on 2004’s College Dropout album.” I think ‘Big Brother’ is the best song he’s written since ‘Jesus Walks,’ as far as structure, emotion, everything,” he said.