Violent Crimes

Album: Ye (2018)
Charted: 27
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Songfacts®:

  • Kanye West closes his Ye album with his most personal and confessional track on the record in which he chronicles his shift in perspective towards women.

    Niggas is savage, niggas is monsters
    Niggas is pimps, niggas is players
    'Til niggas have daughters, now they precautious
    Father, forgive me, I'm scared of the karma
    'Cause now I see women as somethin' to nurture
    Not somethin' to conquer


    Yeezy candidly reflects on how poorly he treated women in his past relationships. However, his views have changed now that he's a father of two daughters North and Chicago.
  • The track includes an ode to Nicki Minaj's classic verse from West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy track "Monster."

    I hope she like Nicki, I'll make her a monster

    The song closes with a short spoken word outro from the Queen Barbz herself. It is the first time she's worked on a West track since "Monster."
  • Also featured are New Jersey artist 070 Shake (on the intro and chorus) and Ty Dolla Sign (on the second chorus).
  • Nicki Minaj's part features her referencing the same bars West rapped earlier in the song. It comes from a voice note she did for the Chicago rapper when he asked her help with figuring out how to deliver some lines on the song. He then decided he wanted to include the actual voice note itself. Speaking during a live episode of Queen Radio on Apple Music's Beats 1, Minaj recalled her surprise when the Ye album first premiered as she didn't know how the voice note would end up being used.

    "That gave me chills because I didn't know," the Queen Barbj said. "I saw everybody online saying 'oh my god, Nicki's voice is on Kanye's album.'"
  • Rapper Pardison Fontaine wrote the verses for "Violent Crimes." Kanye changed a couple of lines but apart from that Fontaine wrote all the rhymes. Fontaine also has writing credits on the Ye tracks "Ghost Town," "Yikes," "All Mine," and "Wouldn't Leave."

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