I Won

Album: Honest (2014)
Charted: 98
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Songfacts®:

  • Originally titled "Trophy Wife," this track finds Future and Kanye West comparing their relationships with their respective lady loves (Ciara and Kim Kardishan) to the feeling of winning a trophy. "I know I haven't always done things the right way," Future told Billboard magazine. "I'm just trying to reflect on how to make myself better, how to become a better man, a better father, a better person, a better artist. I wanted to touch on subject matter that doesn't always get touched on."
  • Future told The Associated Press that he wanted Kanye West to guest on his Honest album, so he sent him over a few tracks. "He picked this 'I Won' track," the Atlanta producer-rapper said. "He did the verse in one day and sent it back. That's rare when you get a Kanye verse back in one day, so you know it's one of them records when he does the verse and sends it back in 24 hours. That's the icing on the cake with the album."
  • The beat was supplied by Metro Boomin, who also produced 2013's "Karate Chop" as well as Honest's title track. "We had a session with me, Future and [production duo] Rock City," Metro Boomin told MTV News of the song's origin. "I loaded [the beat] up, and it was a certain part that we liked more, so we really just took the beat in a new direction. I started making the beat over a little bit while they were recording the song."

    "At the end of the night, we had a rough; we had a hook, the first verse, and some ad-libs," Metro continued. "Future told me to take it home and build a whole track out. So I went and built the track with the vocals, finished the beat, and placed everything and sent it back to him."

    "I got a call one day that they had sent it to Kanye," he added. A day later Yeezy was on the record.
  • The song's black-and-white video was directed by frequent West collaborator Hype Williams, (he filmed the rapper's "Gold Digger" "Homecoming" and "All of the Lights" clips). The visual flits between shots of the rappers performing on a deserted beach and close-ups of bikini-clad women posing on the sand. "We made [them] look like the old Hype Williams' video girls," Future told MTV News. "You know when video girls were stars back then. Video vixens, you really got them from the Hype Williams videos."
  • Future released a controversial browser-based video game to go with the song. The game features the rappers throwing gold and jewelry at the bikini-clad women walking across the beach in their view, with the objective being to collect as many "trophy wives" as possible. Upon its release, the game drew a great deal of criticism for its sexism.

    Future previously released the game Move That Dope in conjunction with his song of the same name with Pharrell.

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