Listen to Original Versions of Kanye’s “Waves” and “Famous” and Prepare to Ascend

Cast your mind back, if you will, to February and the run-up to Kanye West’s seventh solo album The Life of Pablo. Before the album dropped on TIDAL, Chance the Rapper announced that he’d been fighting a personal battle to keep one song on the record. “I fought everyone to keep Waves on the album”, he tweeted. “I spent all night finishing it. The world is better because of it.”

The thing is: Chance was noteably absent from the version of “Waves” that eventually appeared on TLOP. As Chris Brown steered the hook toward the high-heavens, Chance’s addition to the track was reduced to a writing credit. Since then we’ve heard two variations of “Waves”—a reversed version, which sounds like one’s soul floating toward Jesus, and an original demo—but none of them seemed to highlight why Chance had been working so hard on the song, and why he wanted it to be released. Was he really begging Kanye to release a track with a Chris Brown feature? Or had he been laboring over another version? Something more heavenly, angelic, and consumate?

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It turns out it was the latter. In an interview yesterday with Zane Lowe, Chance turned to the Beats 1 DJ and asked, “You wanna hear this original version of ‘Waves’ that I made for ‘Ye?,” to which the answer was obviously yes. Chance then previewed the original “Waves,” which features his contribution over the reinterpreted sample of Enigma’s “Return To Innocence”.

In a further attempt to bless the earth and return everything to its right place, Chance also shared a verse that he recorded for another track on TLOP, “Famous,” which was also eventually cut from the album. Lastly, he shared news that Kanye West is still working on the final segment of his College Dropout series, Good Ass Job, (which was originally announced before the release of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy) giving new meaning to the line “Let’s do a good ass job with Chance three” from “Ultra Light Beam.”

Listen below and prepare for the heavens to open.

Chance The Rapper shares the original versions of both “Waves” & “Famous” https://t.co/gjsp5Ogujg

May 25, 2016