Culture

Kanye West’s worst song is now a little better

Thanks to all the intrepid artists remixing “Lift Yourself.”

Culture

Kanye West’s worst song is now a little better

Thanks to all the intrepid artists remixing “Lift Yourself.”
Culture

Kanye West’s worst song is now a little better

Thanks to all the intrepid artists remixing “Lift Yourself.”

For weeks, we’ve sat in collective agony as Kanye West exposed himself as a Trump supporter and anti-historian. I, for one, still had hope this might climax with the release of some good music — something to distract from his sudden and bizarre public downfall. That is, until I heard the words “boopity scoop.” I’m talking about Kanye’s now infamous track “Lift Yourself,” which might actually be Ye’s worst track ever — a song so bad that his fans could only justify it by telling us it was supposed to be a cosmic troll.

But the internet can turn any lemon into a lemonade and, in recent weeks, many artists have shared their own remixes of the song, in an attempt to make it palatable. A few of them even succeeded. Below, enjoy some of the most successful attempts at turning one of Kanye’s worst songs into a merely middling track.

Castelle

I noticed a hilarious trend while sifting through the takes by all the SoundCloud DJs — almost all of them removed his verse completely. This track lays a sweet, laid-back beat under the the sample, which comes from the 1973 song “Liberty” by Amnesty.

Papa Navic

Papa Navic managed to optimize the memeability of the song, aligning the stars by combining the now-infamous “the ting Goes skraa” ad lib from last year’s “Man’s Not Hot,” and Kanye’s comparable gibberish. It actually sounds cohesive; I could easily imagine hearing this in the club and going off.

Sango

Seattle-based producer and DJ Sango put out a laid back, more sophisticated take than this song probably deserved, given all the poops and scoops.

Smokepurpp

The remix from Soundcloud rapper and all-around goon Smokepurpp is pretty much just two minutes of him being his own hypeman and shouting out J. Cole, who supposedly dissed him and similar rappers in his new album. If 30 seconds of Kanye speaking gibberish wasn’t enough, then this is the right one for you. He even got a cosign from the man himself. “I'm posting this but not as a diss to J Cole," Kanye wrote. "I love J Cole. I also love where Purp took his flow.”

Kanye X Macarena

We couldn’t find this one online, but honestly, it sounds fantastic.