[00:03.31]Yo **** you, Kanye, first and foremost
[00:05.98]For making me do this shit. Muh'****er
[00:10.65]Had to throw everybody out the mother****ing room
[00:12.50]'Cause they don't ****ing..
[00:13.49]
[00:13.51](I'd like to propose a toast)
[00:15.82](I said toast mother****er)
[00:24.65]
[00:27.65]And I am (here's to the roc)
[00:30.28]And they ask me, they ask me, they ask me, I tell them (here's to Rocafella)
[00:35.92]Raise your glasses, your glasses, your glasses to the sky (here's to the roc)
[00:41.03]This is the last call for alcohol, for the... (here's to Rocafella)
[00:47.17]So get your ass up off the wall
[00:49.16]
[00:50.16]The all around the world Digital Underground, Pac
[00:52.69]The Rudloph the red nosed reindeer of the Roc
[00:55.63]I take my chain, my 15 seconds of fame
[00:58.05]And come back next year with the whole ****ing game
[01:01.16]Ain't nobody expect Kanye to end up on top
[01:03.49]They expected that College Dropout to drop and then flop
[01:06.56]Then maybe he stop savin' all the good beats for himself
[01:09.72]Rocafella's only niggaz that help
[01:11.77]My money was thinner than Sean Paul's goatee hair
[01:14.36]Now Jean Paul Gaultier cologne fill the air, here
[01:16.51]They say he bourgie, he big-headed
[01:20.13]Won't you please stop talking about how my dick head is
[01:22.60]Flow infectious, give me 10 seconds
[01:25.44]I'll have a buzz bigger than insects in Texas
[01:28.23]It's funny how wasn't nobody interested
[01:30.82]'Til the night I almost killed myself in Lexus
[01:32.51]
[01:33.51]And I am (here's to the roc)
[01:36.04]And they ask me, they ask me, they ask me, I tell them (here's to Rocafella)
[01:41.68]Raise your glasses, your glasses, your glasses to the sky (here's to the roc)
[01:46.47]This is the last call for alcohol, for the... (here's to Rocafella)
[01:52.52]So get your ass up off the wall
[01:54.72]
[01:55.72]Now was Kanye the most overlooked? Yes sir
[01:58.15]Now is Kanye the most overbooked? Yes sir
[02:00.96]Though the fans want the feeling of A Tribe Called Quest
[02:03.80]But all they got left is this guy called West
[02:06.49]Better take Freeway, throw him on tracks with Mos Def
[02:09.12]Call him Kwa-lI or Kwe-li, I put him on songs with Jay-Z
[02:12.00]I'm the Gap like Banana Republic and Old Navy, and oooh
[02:14.84]It come out sweeter than old Sadie
[02:17.58]Nice as Bun-B when I met him at the Source awards
[02:20.63]Girl he had with him - ass coulda won the horse awards
[02:23.22]And I was almost famous, now everybody loves Kanye
[02:27.07]I'm almost Raymond'
[02:28.70]Some say he arrogant. Can y'all blame him?
[02:31.13]It was straight embarrassing how y'all played him
[02:33.78]Last year shoppin my demo, I was tryin' to shine
[02:36.73]Every mother****er told me that I couldn't rhyme
[02:39.30]Now I could let these dream killers kill my self-esteem
[02:41.70]Or use my arrogance as the steam to power my dreams
[02:44.51]I use it as my gas, so they say that I'm gassed
[02:47.66]But without it I'd be last, so I ought to laugh
[02:50.47]So I don't listen to the suits behind the desk no more
[02:53.05]You niggaz wear suits 'cause you can't dress no more
[02:55.60]You can't say shit to Kanye West no more
[02:58.42]I rocked 20,000 people, I was just on tour, nigga
[03:01.72]I'm Kan, the Louis Vuitton Don
[03:03.73]Bought my mom a purse, now she Louis Vuitton Mom
[03:06.67]I ain't play the hand I was dealt, I changed my cards
[03:09.19]I prayed to the skies and I changed my stars
[03:12.05]I went to the malls and I balled too hard
[03:14.88]'Oh my god, is that a Black Card?'
[03:17.96]I turned around and replied, why yes but I prefer the term
[03:21.17]African American Express
[03:23.47]Brains, power, and muscle, like Dame, Puffy, and Russell
[03:25.87]Your boy back on his hustle, you know what I've been up to
[03:28.56]Killin y'all niggaz on that lyrical shit
[03:31.27]Mayonnaise colored Benz, I push Miracle Whips
[03:33.70]
[03:34.15]And I am (here's to the roc)
[03:35.87]And they ask me, they ask me, they ask me, I tell them (here's to Rocafella)
[03:41.63]Raise your glasses, your glasses, your glasses to the sky (here's to the roc)
[03:46.94]This is the last call for alcohol, for my niggaz... (here's to Rocafella)
[03:52.47]So get your ass up off the wall
[03:54.45]
[03:55.45]So this A&R over at Rocafella, named Hiphop
[03:58.30]picked the Truth beat for Beanie. And I was in the session with him
[04:02.06]I had my demo with me. You know, like I always do
[04:04.34]I play the songs, he's like "Who that spittin?"
[04:06.23]I'm like "It's me." He's like "Oh, well okay."
[04:08.37]Uhh, he started talkin to me on the phone
[04:10.93]going back and forth, just askin me to send him beats
[04:13.14]And I'm thinking he's trying to get into managing producers
[04:15.76]cause he had this other kid named Just Blaze he was messin with
[04:19.18]And um, he was friends with my mentor, No ID
[04:21.76]And No ID told him, "look man, you wanna mess with Kanye
[04:24.24]you need to tell him that you like the way he rap"
[04:26.42](No ID:) "Yo, you wanna sign him, tell him you like how he rap"
[04:27.20]I was all, I dunno if he was gassin' me or not
[04:28.67]but he's like he wanna manage me as a rapper AND a producer
[04:31.01]I'm like oh shit
[04:32.33]I was messin with, uh, D-Dot also
[04:35.07]People were like this, started talking about the Ghost production
[04:37.59]But that's how I got in the game. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't be here
[04:40.13]So you know. After they picked that Truth beat
[04:42.31]I was figuring I was gonna do some more work
[04:44.47]But shit just went poppin off like that. I was stayin in Chicago
[04:47.88]I had my own apartment. I be doin' like, just beats for local acts
[04:51.58]just to try to keep the lights on, and then to go out and buy
[04:54.60]get a Pelle Pelle off lay-away, get some Jordans or something
[04:57.41]or get a TechnoMarine, that's what we wore back then
[04:59.72]I made this one beat where I sped up this Hal Melville sample
[05:04.53]I played it for Hip over the phone, he's like "oh, yo that shit is crazy
[05:08.87]Jay might want it for this compilation album he doin, called The Dynasty."
[05:12.16]And at that time, like the drums really weren't soundin' right to me
[05:15.62]so I went and um, I was listening to Dre Chronic 2001 at that time
[05:19.89]and really I just, like picked the drums off Xxplosive and put it like
[05:24.08]with it sped up, sampled, and now it's kind of like my whole style
[05:28.56]when it started, when he rapped on 'This Can't be Life.'
[05:30.39]And that was like, really the first beat of that kind that was on the Dynasty album
[05:33.67]I could say that was the, the resurgence of this whole sound
[05:37.59]You know, I got to come in and track the beat, and at the time
[05:40.39]I was still with my other management. I really wanted to roll with
[05:42.73]Hiphop. 'Cause I, I just needed some fresh air, you know what I'm
[05:45.71]sayin, 'cause I been there for a while, I appreciated what they did
[05:48.50]for me, but, you know there's a time in every man's life where he
[05:52.41]gotta make a change, try to move up to the next level. And that day I
[05:55.80]came and I tracked the beat and I got to meet Jay-Z and he said, "oh
[05:58.31]you a real soulful dude" (Jay-Z: "you a real soulful dude").
[05:59.99]And he uh, played the song 'cause he already spit his verse by the time I got
[06:02.90]to the studio, you know how he do it, one take. And he said
[06:06.32](Jay-Z:) "check this out, tell me what you think of this, right here"
[06:07.13]And I heard it, and I was thinking
[06:08.47]like, man, I really wanted more like of the simple type Jay-Z, I ain't
[06:12.60]want like the, the more introspective, complicated rhy- or the, in my
[06:16.38]personal opinion. So he asked me, "what you think of it?"
[06:18.90](Jay-Z:) "so what you thinkin?"
[06:19.58]And I was like, "man that shit tite,"
[06:20.19]you know what I'm sayin', man what I'ma tell him? I was on the train
[06:21.10]man, you know. So after that I went back home. And man I'm, I'm just
[06:26.41]in Chicago, I'm trying to do my thing. You know, I got groups. I got
[06:29.57]acts I'm trying to get on, and like there wasn't nothin really like
[06:32.81]poppin' off the way it should have been. One of my homeys that was one
[06:37.97]of my artists, he got signed. But it was supposed to really go through
[06:41.84]my production company, but he ended up going straight with the
[06:44.50]company. So, like I'm just straight holdin' the phone, gettin' the bad
[06:47.51]news that dude was tryin' to leave my company. And I got evicted at
[06:51.30]the same time. So I went down and tracked the beats from him, I took
[06:56.98]that money, came back, packed all my shit up in a U-Haul, maybe about
[07:01.20]ten days before I had to actually get out. So I ain't have to deal
[07:04.17]with the landlord 'cause he's a jerk. Me and my mother drove to
[07:07.30](Mother:) "Come on, let's just go"
[07:08.50]Newark, New Jersey. I hadn't even seen my apartment.
[07:10.75]I remember I pulled up
[07:12.01](Mother:) "Kanye, baby, we're here",
[07:13.15]I unpacked all my shit. You know, we went to Ikea, I bought a
[07:15.08]bed, I put the bed together myself. I loaded up all my equipment, and
[07:19.23]the first beat I made was, uh, 'Heart of the City.'
[07:22.58]And Beans was still working on his album at that time, so I came up
[07:25.47]there to Baseline, it was Beans' birthday, matter of fact, and I
[07:28.44]played like seven beats. And, you know I could see he's in the zone
[07:32.56]he already had the beats that he wanted, I did nothing like already at
[07:35.37]that time. But then Jay walked in. I remember he had a GuccI bucket
[07:39.66]hat on. I remember it like, like it was yesterday. And Hiphop said
[07:43.31]"yo play that one beat for him." And I played 'Heart of the City.' And
[07:46.77]really I made 'Heart of the City,' I really wanted to give that beat to DMX.
[07:49.48](Hiphop:) "No I think Jay gon' like this one right here".
[07:49.88]And I played another beat, and I played another beat. And I remember that
[07:52.77]GuccI bucket, he took it and like put it over his face and made one of
[07:56.12]them faces like 'OOOOOOOOOOH.' Two days later I'm in Baseline and I seen
[07:59.96]Dame. Dame didn't know who I was and I was like "yo what's up I'm Kanye."
[08:02.48](Dame:) "Yo, you that kid, Kanye?"
[08:04.04]"You that kid that gave all them beats to Jay?
[08:05.26]Yo, this nigga got classics"
[08:07.59](Dame:) "Jay got classics, G."
[08:08.81]You know I ain't talkin shit.
[08:10.40]I'm like "oh shit." And all this time I'm starstruck, man. I'm
[08:13.23]still thinking 'bout, you know I'm picturing these niggaz on the show
[08:16.15]The Streets is Watching, I'm lookin, these were superstars in my
[08:19.41]eyes. And they still are, you know. So, Jay came in and he spit all
[08:24.26]these songs like in one day, and in two days... I gotta bring up one
[08:28.80]thing, you know, come back to the story, the day I did the 'Can't be
[08:32.02]Life' beat on track, I remember Lenny S, he had some Louis Vuitton
[08:35.10]sneakers on, he think he fly. And Hiphop was there, I think Tata, John
[08:39.35]Minnelli, a bunch of people. I didn't know all these people at the
[08:41.98]time they was in the room, and I said, "yo Jay I could rap." And I
[08:44.79]spit this rap that said, uh "I'm killin y'all niggaz on that lyrical
[08:47.90]shit. Mayonnaise colored Benz, I push miracle whips." And I saw his
[08:51.08]eyes light up when I said that line. But you know the West, the rap
[08:54.68]was like real wack and shit, so that's all the response.
[08:57.33]He said "man that was tite."
[08:58.32](Jay-Z:) "That, that was cool. That was hot."
[08:59.18]That was it. You know, I ain't get no deal then, hehe.
[09:01.57]Okay, fast forward.
[09:03.55]So, Blueprint, H to the Izzo, my first hit single. And I just
[09:09.08]took that proudly, built relationships with people. My relationship
[09:12.47]with KwelI I think was one of the best ones to ever happen to my
[09:15.43]career as a rapper. Because, you know, of course later he allowed me
[09:19.29]to go on tour with him. Man, I appre-- I love him for that. And at
[09:25.98]this time, you know I didn't have a deal, I had songs, and I had
[09:29.71]relationships with all these A&R's, and they wanted beats from me, so
[09:32.59]they'd call me up, I'd play them some beats. "Gimme a beat that sound
[09:34.70]like Jay-Z." You know, they dick riders. Whatever. So I'll play them
[09:38.13]these post-Blueprint beats or whatever and then I'll play my shit. I'll
[09:41.33]be like, "yo but I rap too." Hey, I guess they was lookin' at me crazy
[09:43.95]'cause you know, 'cause I ain't have a jersey on or whatever
[09:46.88]Everybody out there listen here. I played them 'Jesus Walks' and they
[09:50.37]didn't sign me. You know what happened, it was some A&R's that ****ed
[09:53.02]with me though, but then like the heads, it'd be somebody at the
[09:56.66]company that'll say "naw." Like, Dave LottI ****ed with me, my
[09:59.76]nigga Mel brought me to a bunch of labels. Jessica Rivera, man
[10:03.47](Jessica:) "Man, you niggaz is stupid if y'all don't sign Kanye, for real."
[10:06.91]I'm not gonna say nothin to mess my promotion up
[10:10.32]"Y'all niggaz is stupid". Let's just say I didn't get my deal.
[10:13.17]The nigga that was behind me, I mean,
[10:15.32]he wasn't even a nigga, you know?
[10:17.07]The person who actually kicked everything off was Joe 3H from Capitol
[10:20.47]Records. He wanted to sign me really bad.
[10:22.54](Joe:) "We gonna change the game, buddy."
[10:23.95]Dame was like, "yo you got a deal with Capitol,
[10:25.63]okay man, just make sure it's not wack."
[10:27.15](Dame:) "you gotta make sure it's not wack."
[10:28.33]Then one day I just went ahead and played it, I wanted to
[10:30.39]play some songs, 'cause you know Cam was in the room, Young Guru, and
[10:33.62]Dame was in the room. So I played... actually it's a song that you'll
[10:37.76]never hear, but maybe I might use it. So, it's called 'Wow.'
[10:41.16]"I go to Jacob with 25 thou, you go with 25 hundred, wow
[10:45.37]I got eleven plaques on my walls right now
[10:47.79]You got your first gold single, damn, nigga, wow."
[10:50.84]Like the chorus went. Don't bite that chorus, I might still use it. So
[10:54.11]I play that song for him, and he's like "oh shit"
[10:56.78](Dame:) "Oh shit it's not even wack."
[10:58.16]"I ain't gonna front, it's kinda hot."
[11:00.05](Dame:) "it's actually kinda hot."
[11:01.48]Like they still weren't looking at me
[11:02.61]like a rapper. And I'm sure Dame figured, 'like man. If he do a whole
[11:06.39]album, if his raps is wack at least we can throw Cam on every song and
[11:09.31]save the album, you know. So uh Dame took me into the office, and he's
[11:13.67]like "yo man, we, we on a brick, we on a brick"
[11:15.61](Dame:) "you don't wanna catch a brick"
[11:17.26]You gotta be under an umbrella, you'll get rained on.
[11:19.45]I told Hiphop and Hiphop was all, "oh, word?" Actually, even with
[11:24.25]that I was still about to take the deal with Capitol 'cause it was
[11:28.89]already on the table and 'cause of my relationship with 3H. That, you
[11:32.52]know, 'cause I told him I was gonna do it, and I'm a man of my word, I
[11:34.61]was gonna roll with what I said I was gonna do. Then, you know, I'm
[11:39.02]not gonna name no names, but people told me, "oh he's just a producer
[11:42.69]rapper" and told 3H that told the heads of the Capitol, and right--
[11:46.38]the day I'm talking about, I planned out everything I was gonna do
[11:50.04]man, I had picked out clothes, I already started booking studio
[11:53.47]sessions, I started arranging my album, thinking of marketing schemes
[11:56.85]man I was ready to go. And they had Mel call me, they said
[12:00.24]"yo... Capitol pulled on the deal"
[12:04.07](Mel:) "Yo, Capitol pulled out on the deal."
[12:05.35]And, you know I told them that Rocafella was interested
[12:08.25]and I don't know if they thought that was just something I was saying
[12:10.63]to gas them up to try to push the price up or whatever.
[12:12.40]I went up...
[12:14.95]Icalled G, I said, "man, you think we could still get that deal with Rocafella?"
[12:23.54]
[12:25.54]
[12:27.47]( Lyrics by nostaticsin )
[12:30.11]
[12:32.33]