If you’ve listened to The Life of Pablo, Kanye’s new album, you might have noticed a few familiar voices barking throughout a couple of songs. That’s because Kanye actually sampled Street Fighter II (as is tradition for rap artists, by this point).
From the very first verse on FACTS, you can hear Street Fighter II’s announcer yelling ‘PERFECT’, something players can hear within the original 1991 game if they manage to beat an opponent without getting hit a single time. (Thanks for the tip, Steve.)
Actually, almost every verse in FACTS ends with a Street Fighter II sound byte. You can hear Dhalsim’s Yoga Flame bark and Guile’s Sonic Boom bark throughout the song. You’ll have to download Tidal, AKA the music version of uPlay, to listen to the album version of FACTS, though Kanye did release an early version last month with many of the same Street Fighter sounds, too:
I didn’t like this song at first — it seemed to bite on Drake’s sound a bit too much — but it’s grown on me now that I’ve heard the final version a few times. The Street Fighter sound clips act as a really good punctuation at the end of verses, and the album version also seems to have more of its own identity than the original SoundCloud upload. I like the changes. It’s not the only song that’s going to be tweaked, either. Seems like games aren’t the only things with day-one patches nowadays!
Ima fix wolves
— KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) February 14, 2016
Curiously, you can hear the PERFECT clip on a different song: at the start of “Pt. 2”. I guess Kanye likes Street Fighter.
This combination of rap and video game seemed worth noting, not just because I’ve been obsessively listening to the excellent Life of Pablo, but also in the context of Kanye’s very own video game, Only One. We posted about the trailer last week, but since then, we’ve learned a bit more about what the game actually is. We hear it is a side-scrolling runner with a more narrative take — which sounds like an ambitious marriage based on what people are saying about it:
I played his game with his manager at Notch’s house one time. It was actually really beautiful. About his mom. 🙁 https://t.co/1Anl08tzUW
— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) February 15, 2016
I told @kanyewest‘s manager at Notch’s house after I played his game it was beautiful and he’ll have a hard time selling it though.
— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) February 15, 2016
If the makers of Journey made Kanye’s game it’d be heralded. Kanye makes a beautiful narrative about his mom and people give him shit.
— Cliff Bleszinski (@therealcliffyb) February 15, 2016
We haven’t gotten a chance to play it ourselves, so we can’t say. In the meantime, I’ll keep FACTS on repeat. It’s far from the first time a big rapper has sampled a video game, but damn if this particular instance isn’t catchy anyway.
Image via AP.
Comments
11 responses to “Yep, That’s Street Fighter On Kanye West’s New Album”
Exactly what I thought. There’s a weird part of me that’s glad the changes were made but coupled with a worry that this isn’t going to be an isolated incident.
I hope Patricia is a black woman because Kanye has just made it clear he doesn’t want white people commenting on his latest album!
But he still thinks “whitey” Zuckerberg should give him a billion dollars for his “ideas”…. Despite Kanye being $74,500,000 in debt and having a line of fashion very much resembling “DERELICTE” from Zoolander.
rather than spending money on a fashion label he needs a publicist who will stop him from using social media.
Where did he say that? I usually hate celebrity news stuff but Kanye just sucks me in with how insane he is!
I’ve been outta my mind a long time
I’ve been outta my mind a long time
Is the lyric I just jumped over Jumpman a Mario reference?
It’s a reference to his Adidas shoe line purportedly doing better than Nike’s Jordan brand (the jumpman logo) last year. Although he must be referring to hype because his shoes were deliberately released in much smaller quantities than any Jordans. Obviously nothing to do with his Nike collaboration that didn’t live up to his lofty expectations…
WTF is this shit?
Call me old and jaded, but this is f***ing rubbish :/
Kanye west is the ultimate un-filtered creative lunatic. I feel people misunderstand him because of his ridiculous ego and behaviour. His albums only get better and better.
Yo ho ho the uplay version of music. ZING
Also, remember when he walked into a sign hahahahaha