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Music

Kanye West Recycles Lyrics From Old Material

He used to be in a group called The Go Getters and he has been borrowing their old lyrics, and some of his own, and using them in new material for over a decade.
Ryan Bassil
London, GB

We delve into musicians' HTML attics, searching to see what remains of their earliest forays online. Sometimes there's astonishing early material that has only been heard by a handful of people. Sometimes it's just them being a dick in the comments section of Gawker. Whatever happens though, The Internet is Written in Ink.

Long before Kanye West was afforded the power of deciding if you were allowed to finish your sentences, he was in a hip-hop group called The Go-Getters.

Formed in Chicago in the early 2000s, the group included GLC, Arrowstar and Timmy G. The Go Getters meandered around the Kon-Man Productions conglomerate, working with artists like Rhymefest, Mikkey, Really Doe and generally, people that Kanye forgot about once he had his first gold plaque up on the wall. They recorded a bunch of songs, made a few radio appearances, and took part in a few promo shoots. Here’s one of their press shots:

Despite Kanye announcing that The “Go Getters rhyme like, should've been signed twice” on College Dropout cut “Two Words”, the group never put out an official album. Obviously you can still hear them though, because the internet happened and about ten years ago, the tracks made the rounds under an unofficial release titled World Record Holders.

You can listen to one below, it’s called “Uh Oh!”, and it reminds me of the type of R’n’B phrasing that used to frequent early 2000s chart music.