Monster

Album: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (2010)
Charted: 18
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Songfacts®:

  • One of the most eclectic songs in hip-hop history, "Monster" features rappers Nicki Minaj, Jay-Z and Rick Ross, and also the singer Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, who opens and closes the track. Most star-packed collaborations around this time featured a series of guys rapping about their talents, but with Bon Iver and Nicki Minaj on board, Kanye West was able to break free from this convention by bringing in some unusual voices. And while all the rappers take on their haters in their rhymes, there's an exceptional level of pathos in play that makes it feel dangerous and unpredictable.

    Minaj, for instance, brings along her alter ego, Roman Zolanski, and raps in a bewildering array of flows that sound like different people. In the years leading up to "Monster" it was rare to hear any woman on a hip-hop banger, let alone one as versatile as Minaj. She came into currency just months earlier with features on Lil Wayne's "Knockout," Ludacris' "My Chick Bad" and Usher's "Lil Freak." Her debut album, Pink Friday, was still a month away. "50K for a verse, no album out," she raps on "Monster." After the track dropped, her price certainly went up.
  • Originally intended for Kanye West's collaborative album Watch the Throne with Jay-Z, "Monster" appeared on Kanye's solo album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy instead and was released as the album's third single.
  • The deeper voice on the outro is Charlie Wilson of The Gap Band, who first teamed with West on Kayne's 2005 track "Crack Music." West would sometimes bring Wilson into the studio to record various vocal tracks and then use them where he saw fit. Wilson had no idea what he sang would become this monster.
  • Justin Vernon also collaborated with West on the track "Lost In The World" from the Chicago MC's Dark Twisted Fantasy album. He discussed working with West in an interview with Pitchfork: "I think he's very aware of the person he is, and I applaud him for that," said the singer. "It takes a lot of strength just to stay how he is amongst all the s--t that he's subjected to. But I found him extremely like a bro. You could talk to him about whatever."
  • Minaj told MTV News that when she heard the track prior to coming up with her verse, West and Jay's contributions weren't already on it. This was helpful - without the star MCs around, she felt free to keep up her screwball energy. "No one's verse was on the song yet," she said. "I had just an open playing field, and I could do whatever I wanted to do. Had I heard Kanye and Jay, I would have punked out. I wouldn't turn it down but I think I would have limited my creativity."
  • The controversial Jake Nava directed video, which opens with a woman hanging by her neck, features an onslaught of depraved scenes, upset feminist groups who organized a petition claiming the clip perpetuates violence against women and glamorizes misogyny. In response, a disclaimer was added, reading, "The following content is in no way to be interpreted as misogynistic or negative towards any groups of people. It is an art piece and it shall be taken as such."

    This didn't make the problem go away - the video was later removed from Kayne's official channel.
  • Speaking about the process behind the song's conception on her Instagram, Nicki Minaj revealed how the track was nearly left off My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy:

    "Kanye called me to tell me Jay put a verse on this song and that he was still deciding if he would put it on his album," Minaj wrote. "It was like an hour-long call where I tried to convince him to let the song stay on his album. He felt this verse would end up being the talk of the album. I said: 'YOU'RE KANYE WEST!!!!'"

    Minaj added: "I fought u every step of the way but it worked out. (He wanted me to add more of that growling monster voice and I felt it was over kill.) He wouldn't give in. In the end, maybe he was right. Ha!"
  • Rick Ross told MTV News that he wasn't slated to be on the song in the first place. "I wasn't originally supposed to be on the record. I was next door working on another Kanye collaboration," the Miami MC said. "I walked in, like, 'This is so big.' [Kanye] was like, 'Yeah.' He was playing the track, spitting his verse for me. That's before he even laid it. I'm like, 'That's dangerous.' At the same time, me being a hustler, I'm thinking of just an intro for the record. He told me the structure and the way he wanted it to go. I told him that was it. That's the way I would do it. He was on point with it. Me being the artist I am, I was sitting there talking to him and came up with an intro bridge. It wasn't a verse at all. It was just an intro or somewhat of a bridge to set the tone for 'Ye to come in. Jay capped it off."
  • Did you catch the Napoleon Dynamite reference in the lyrics? "What you gon' do now? Whatever I wanna do, gosh!" This is something Napoleon says early in the 2004 film.
  • During his time with Kanye West, Justin Vernon found himself working 18-hour days laying down vocal tracks and engineering a few recordings, such as Rick Ross' verse on this song. He recalled to Spin magazine: "Rick Ross would just be sitting there a lot of the time while I was working on s--t, on a piano bench right behind me, smoking blunt after blunt after blunt. In between takes, he'd inhale and then say real quiet, 'That was good, homie.' I'd be like, 'Okay! I'll keep going!'"
  • Ross told MTV News he was impressed with the way Minaj constructed her verse and then laid it down herself: "I was actually in the studio with Kanye in Hawaii when he played the concept for me," he recalled. "I was blown away. I had the opportunity to sit in the studio while Nicki wrote her verse just off the record. That was when she earned my respect as a lyricist. She was a dope entertainer up until that day that I sat in the studio and watched her come up with what I feel is one of the dopest verses of the year."
  • West admitted to MTV News' Sway that Minaj's verse was so good, he almost cut it out of pride.
  • Minaj told Rolling Stone about the inspiration for her verse. "He (Kanye West) said, 'What do you really wanna say?' So instead of writing a rap, I wrote pages and pages of like, 'I'm sick of people talking about this, tired of people saying I'm that' - ranting in a notebook, basically. Then I read it back, highlighted major things and put it in rap form."
  • The song returned to the iTunes chart in January 2016 after Adele rapped Nicki Minaj's verse from the hit during an appearance on James Corden's Carpool Karaoke.
  • "Monster" plays in the 2011 movie The Hangover Part II.

Comments: 1

  • Kristine from AsiaEvery now and then I listen to Pop Rap music but I wouldn't call myself a fan of this genre. It's too noisy and fast paced for my liking. But the lyrics are what I'm after when I listen to these songs. They are full of angst and there is no shortage of bad language, they feel betrayed and they talk about being misfits of society, but they are interesting because of their rawness which conveys genuine emotion. It was always obvious that Kanye's a really talented musician but I couldn't understand why he is showing himself off as a bigheaded, and better-than-everybody kind of person. Probably it's his way of staying relevant in this age of ruthless critiques and cynical listeners. It's not wise of me to question his ways since he is the one living in the world of marketable music. I bet he knows how to play it well so I'll stop questioning his tactics. It was nice to know though that Nikki Minaj constructs her own verses. I liked her before for being an awesome performer, and I like her more now that I know she creates her own music.
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