Chance The Rapper has a standout contribution to Kanye West’s “Ultralight Beam” but according to the Chicago rapper, his verse nearly wasn’t released the way we’ve heard it for the last five years.
During a new interview with the Recording Academy, Chance spoke about his manifestations in music, and specifically his “I met Kanye West, I’m never going to fail” lyrics, explaining that ‘Ye initially tried to argue with him to take that part out of the song.
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“I rapped on Kanye’s shit right before it came out that I was working on these three GRAMMYs, and I was like, ‘If I keep rapping like that, and just saying shit’s gonna happen, that’s just gonna happen.’ And it started happening,” said the 28-year-old artist. “Kanye didn’t want me to say that [line] on that song. And I had to go back and forth with him about keeping my line on there.”
Despite having some disagreements with Kanye about the song, the lyric made the final cut. “Just being in a position to rap [with] the person who probably is the reason I became a rapper—to be able to produce and write and to be featured on the intro, the first real rap verse you hear on the album, was crazy to me,” said Chano. “I was, at that time, speaking it into existence like, ‘Kanye gonna hit us up soon. You gonna be working with ‘Ye soon.’ And when that happened, I had to keep doing that. I had to keep being like, ‘I’m gonna just say what’s gonna happen.'”
Revisit “Ultralight Beam” below and read the full interview at the link underneath.