"And anything that happen is for a reason
And niggas gun-clappin and keep to squeezin'
And Grandma keep prayin' and keep believin' /
in Jesus and one day that she see him /
Till they walk in his footsteps and try to be him
The devil is alive I feel him breathin'!"
... transcribed from memory, so please excuse any errors.
This is one of my favorite Ye verses. And "Heard 'Em Say" is one of those songs that, on paper, sounds like it should suck hard. Adam Levine? But I can't imagine it any other way. Kind of like "Homecoming" in that sense. But Heard is a better song.
My dad wrote me after the Kanye show. He's always appreciated my taste in music but he can't get his head around why I like Kanye so much. But he saw footage from the Saint Pablo tour and read glowing reviews of the show I attended and he wrote to say, "Ok, so... where do I start?"
Keep in mind, my father's in his '60s. I wasn't going to tell him to listen to "I'm in it" or... well, anything after 808s really. But he's a huge Beatles fan, so I recommended "Heard 'Em Say" because of the clear influence of Rubber Soul and Revolver on the chamber-music vibe of Late Registration.
He listened and wrote back... after years of kind of being a dick about Kanye, even when "Only One" came out... and he said, "Ok. I get it now".
