It’s Friday night. You’re in a humid room packed with what seems to be the entire student body. Your ears are ringing from the booming music to the point where you can’t hear what the person directly next to you is saying. Suddenly, the song changes, and the sound of a piano riff emits from the speaker. “Look at ya, look at ya, look at ya.” 

Kanye (Ye) West, a rapper and entrepreneur, dropped “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” in 2010 after booking a studio for twenty-four hours a day in Honolulu, Hawaii. Noah Callahan-Bever, Editor and Chief of “Complex”, visited Kanye while he was recording the album, and he shared in an interview that, “West never slept a full night at the glass-enclosed mansion he had rented, opting instead to take power naps in a studio chair or couch 90 minutes at a time.” Kanye didn’t hastily prepare this album. He created thirteen tracks, eight of which are between five and nine minutes long. 

After incessant hours of recording, “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” was born. Out of all the tracks on the album, one in particular showed fans a side to West they have never quite seen before: vulnerability. The eight minute and twenty-eight second masterpiece, “Runaway,” created in collaboration with Pusha T, gave the listeners insight into the current struggles Ye was facing not only in his career, but in his personal life.

West alluded to issues in his love life in the following lyric: “Never was much of a romantic. I could never take the intimacy.” This lyric unpacks quite an intimate detail of his struggles with relationships, which listeners have never heard in his music before.

West said in an interview with “Access Hollywood” that he was “interested in making a song that the average person could relate to, as he perceived himself as someone who identified with the average person.” Sharing personal struggles through his lyrics allowed Ye to develop a deeper connection with his fans. 

“Runaway” transformed the music industry with its iconic piano riff intro and three minute and forty-one second outro. No matter how loud a room is, the intro has the ability to captivate all attention. A distinguishing characteristic of the song is its versatile mood. Whether you are at a party chanting ,“let’s have a toast for the scumbags!” or simply at your desk humming along to the intro, “Runaway” fits any mood.

It’s all about what mood you are looking to channel from it. Moreover, the song’s message is one that many can resonate with. Ye concludes the piece with, “Baby I got a plan, run away as fast as you can.” In other words, the struggles West was facing made him want to runaway with hopes of escaping from society and it’s many d********s. Twenty-four seven- three sixty five, “Runaway” is on my mind. And it should be on yours too.