Kanye West stole the next morning’s headlines at Sunday’s BET Awards, going a cappella in a moment of breathtaking ambition that recalled Lil Wayne seizing the same venue to declare himself hip-hop (“and I ain’t dead, I’m alive”) five years earlier. Now the full track, which samples its hook from Ghostface Killah’s Supreme Clientele cut “Mighty Healthy,” has emerged, and it’s similarly bristling: G.O.O.D. soldier Pusha T delivering a ferocious lesson on hip-hop history, from Puff tough-guy Shyne to Tupac at Coachella (by way of an inevitable-for-Pusha-eventually yay-‘Ye pun); West getting tied up a bit in his latest proclamation of greatness with name-drops (LeBron James, Notorious B.I.G., Martin Luther King, Rodney King, Whitney Houston, Richard Pryor … and EPMD half Erick Sermon!), but still finding room to touch on territory unusual for such likely Top 40 fare (crime problems in Chicago, “an uncle that touched you”). It’s a stomping, instantly memorable track, if undercut slightly by its military-cadence outro about how many hoes West gets (via Nah Right).
