Welcome to the Christian Ciancitto Podcast, my name is Christian Ciancitto and on today’s show I will be doing a song critique for Kanye West’s song, “Jesus Walks”.
“Jesus Walks” was released on December 4th 2004 as the fourth single from Kanye West’s debut studio album The College Dropout. The song was co-written by Kanye West and Che Smith who is also known as Rhymefest. Kanye West was also the producer of the song but it was mixed by Engineer Manny Marroquin. The song was recorded at Sony Music Studios in New York City and was the seventh track on the album when it was released on February 10th 2004. The album was recorded under Def Jam recordings and Roc-A-Fella recordings. “Jesus Walks” peaked at number 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was accompanied by three different music videos. The first music video was directed by Michael Haussman in California and had a budget of $650,000. Kanye was not satisfied saying that four minutes of imagery limits the ideas of his song and convinced his label to commission another music video. The second music video was directed by Chris Milk and had a budget of $500,000, which Kanye financed out of his own pocket. A third version of the music video was also filmed in Chicago and was co-directed by Kanye, Coodie Simmons, and Chike Ozah. The last music video, also funded by Kanye, had a budget of $50,000, and was produced all in one day. (Ogunnaike).
“Jesus Walks” is a song that addresses spirituality and Kanye’s views on religion. Kanye uses the song to criticize the media for shying away from songs that address matters of faith, while embracing songs that discuss sex, violence, and drugs. The inspiration for this came from his struggles to get signed to a record label after being turned down by many executives after playing a demo of “Jesus Walks”. They reasoned that his song would not be easy to market because he did not conform to the stereotypes associated with mainstream hip hop. Kanye has a line that reads, “So here go my single dog radio needs this. They said you can rap about anything except for Jesus. That means guns, sex, lies, video tape. But if I talk about God my record won’t get played”. By criticizing the radio for not wanting to play a song about religion, he was hoping to use reverse psychology to get plays on the radio. (Jones). This song is also about Kanye’s own personal relationship with God. In the chorus Kanye reaches out to God and embraces religion. By saying “I wanna talk to God but im afraid cause we aint spoke in so long”, Kanye shows that he is putting his real emotion into his lyrics. It would be easy to pretend that he has always had a perfect relationship with God but he is exposing his real struggles. The main message in this song however is that Jesus walks with everybody not just people who are extremely religious. Kanye says, “To the hustlers, killers, murderers, drug dealers, and even the scrippers, Jesus walks for them”. Kanye takes this belief from the Bible based on stories of how Jesus told thieves and murderers to follow him and he told sinners that they would be forgiven. People thought that a righteous person should only hangout with other righteous people but Jesus did the opposite. Kanye modernized this idea and wanted to share the message that anybody could embrace religion even if they have never done so before.
“Jesus Walks” contains influences from gospel and choir music. The song has a sample of the song “Walk with me” that was performed by the ARC choir. The use of this sample is symbolic because the main point in this song is that God and religion can be for anybody. ARC stands for Addicts Rehabilitation Center, and the choir was made up of many ex-drug addicts. The way the sample exemplifies the message of the song is a great way to connect all aspects of the production to convey a powerful message.
“Jesus Walks” falls under the hip-hop genre that has choir and gospel influences. This song was different from the other songs on The College Dropout album because it is the only one that has these influences. Not only was it different from the rest of the album but it also went against mainstream hip-hop. It was not typical for rap to mix with gospel or religious music. It is significant that this is a rap song because rap music has stereotypes attached to it that suggest that all rap is street or gangster rap that glorifies guns, sex, and drugs. Also, other genres like rock are known assimilate with religion more so than rap. There is even a subgenre of rock called Christian rock. This song is significant because Kanye pushed boundaries and mixed genres in a way that had not been done in a mainstream way before.
“Jesus Walks” was a very popular song and peaked at number 11 on the US Billboard Hot 100. At the 2005 Grammys, “Jesus Walks” was nominated for song of the year and won the Grammy for best rap song. The College Dropout won the Grammy for best rap album.
Overall “Jesus Walks” was critically acclaimed. Josh Love of Stylus Magazine believed that “Jesus Walks” was the best song on the entire album. (Love). Many were astonished that the song was embraced by radio because of how openly religious it was. The Los Angeles Times shares a similar opinion with Josh Love and says that “Jesus Walks” is the highlight of the album and likes the songs ability to stay away from negative subject matter that is typical in rap music (Baker). There are many things that I believe that this song does right. The way all aspects of this song are organized to tie in together to strengthen the message was incredibly clever. Unfortunately, there are aspects of Kanye’s character that overshadow the significance of his music. Nowadays Kanye has more of a reputation for being controversial than for being a great song writer or producer which is a shame. For example, before I did this critique, I had no idea that “Jesus Walks” won a Grammy and was such a big deal in 2005.
That concludes todays show, thank you for listening to the Christian Ciancitto podcast.
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