The rapper who wrote for Kanye West without credit: “There are a lot of songs”
Kanye West is a talented songwriter—there’s no disputing that. But he might not have experienced the same success without some of his affiliates. Over the years, particularly since 2010’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Ye’s album credits have grown in terms of collaborators, often listing up to 10 writers per song. Someone who has been alongside Kanye through it all is Rhymefest, who has had a notable impact on his career.
On paper, the Chicago rapper is best known for collaborating with Ye on ‘Brand New’ from his 2006 album, Blue Collar. The project was released on Mark Ronson’s Allido Records label and included work from Q-Tip, Wu-Tang Clan’s Ol’ Dirty Bastard, Just Blaze, and No ID.
Rhymefest famously appeared in Kanye’s 2022 Netflix docu-series, Jeen-Yuhs. In one clip, he argues with Kanye, questioning, “Who are you to call yourself a genius?” He explains that “genius is something you have to earn,” but Ye disagrees.
His work with Kanye West dates back to 2004’s The College Dropout as a writer for his hit single ‘Jesus Walks’. The song peaked at number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won ‘Best Rap Song’ at the 47th Annual Grammy Awards. He also has songwriting credits on ‘New Slaves’, ‘Hold My Liquor’, ‘I Am a God’ and ‘On Sight’ from 2013’s Yeezus album, and ‘Praise God’ from 2021’s Donda.
Still, Rhymefest claims he’s written many more of Kanye’s songs without receiving any credit. During an interview with The Daily Beast in 2015, he said, “I’ve written for all of Kanye’s albums with the exception of 808s & Heartbreak. There are a lot of songs that my name isn’t even on.”
In another conversation with HipHopDX, he spoke on the impact ‘Jesus Walks’ had on Ye’s career. “When you do great things, you know it. Whenever you make a song, you know when it’s special,” he explained. “After it was made, we knew it was special. Looking back on it, we would not view Kanye the same way without it.
“Kanye would not have as many chances with the public as he has had without that critical piece of the puzzle. It touched people in a place where rap music rarely touches people these days, and that’s the heart.”
Part of the reason he believes Kanye West took a backseat in writing is because of how busy he is with other avenues of his career. “I think sometimes people get to a point where they’re so busy—’I’m doing fashion, I’m doing this, I’m doing that’—that you lose focus with the foundation of what it is,” he said. “We have so many things… we lose track of the fact that it wasn’t about the things. You shouldn’t be trying to keep the things, you should be trying to make new things.”
Rhymefest found it challenging to go from being unable to pay his bills to visiting friends with multi-million dollar mansions. “It does kind of bother me that I go to my friends’ $20 million houses, and last year I was trying to figure out how to pay my mortgage,” he revealed.
“It’s not their fault, totally. When you look at the way artists get paid now, streaming has decimated the income of the writer, so the writer doesn’t really have a career anymore. My ASCAP royalty checks went from a lot to almost nothing.”