In an interview with Complex that accompanies his recent cover story, Chance The Rapper discusses his work on The Life Of Pablo and the series of events that led Kanye to tweet, “It’s Chance's fault the album not out yet… he really wanted Waves on that Bitch.”
“When I first came onto the album,” Chance remembers, “there were only ten songs… The first song they added to extend it was ‘Ultralight Beam,’ which was supposed to be the outro track. That opened the floodgates a little… one of the first songs I fell in love with was ‘Waves.’”
“The first night that I came to the studio to really work on the album, it was still SWISH,” he continues. “And after listening to ‘Waves’ like 50 times, the next day the album was WAVES. It wasn’t just me: every one who came through the studio loved ‘Waves.’”
Though the album title would change again, Chance’s love for “Waves” remained strong. “In the final hours, I was actually out in New York,” the rapper recalls. “The album was supposed to come out the next day at the fashion show. We spent all night finishing so many records: ‘Famous’ and ‘Father Stretch’ and a lot of those records got finished in the last hours. ‘Waves’ got put on the back burner. We did the fashion show, and the next day were rehearsals for Saturday Night Live. He came to me in rehearsals and was like, ‘you really want “Waves” to be on the album?’ And I was like, ‘yep!’ And he was like, ‘well, let’s go to the studio, we’ve got to finish it.’ I said, ‘we’ve gotta finish it tonight’? He said, ‘we’ve got to finish it toNOW.’ That’s one of my favorite Kanye quotes of all time.”
Chance also discusses an alternate version of the song—which he teased on Snapchat—that he arranged with the help of a choir and an additional sample. Watch above.
