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Kanye West · S4 E2
Gold Digger
Ray Charles, Jamie Foxx, and the biggest hit of Kanye's career
A recording studio, mid-2005. Jamie Foxx, six months removed from winning the Academy Award for playing Ray Charles, picks up a microphone and starts channeling Ray's voice into a Kanye West beat.
Kanye West ft. Jamie Foxx, Gold Digger (official music video, 2005). The biggest hit of Kanye's career, built on a Ray Charles sample sung by the man who just won an Oscar for playing him. The video matches the song's energy: flashy, funny, and impossible to turn off.
Gold Digger, Kanye West ft. Jamie Foxx (2005)
The beat flips Ray Charles' "I Got a Woman" (1954) into a bouncy, stripped-down loop with a snapping drum machine and Foxx singing Charles' melody on the hook. The production is deceptively simple: where Late Registration's other tracks pile on strings and orchestration, Gold Digger pulls everything back and lets the sample do the work. Listen for how the beat never changes throughout the entire song, no bridge, no breakdown, just relentless forward momentum.
“My manager called me at three in the morning and said, "You gotta get down to the studio. Kanye got a missile."”
— Jamie Foxx, The Cruz Show, Power 106, 2017
TAP TO REVEAL: What's the hidden connection between Gold Digger and the birth of soul music?
Number One
"Gold Digger" reaches number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and stays for ten consecutive weeks. It becomes one of the first songs to sell over a million digital downloads, a massive milestone in the early iTunes era. The rapper who launched his career with "Jesus Walks" now owns the biggest party anthem in the country.
Gold Digger, decoded
Which legendary musician's voice does Jamie Foxx channel on the Gold Digger hook?
I've Got a Woman, Ray Charles
The song Gold Digger is built on. Ray Charles took a gospel melody and turned it into what many consider the first soul record ever made, back in 1954. Listen to the original, then listen to Gold Digger, and you can hear fifty years of American music compressed into one sample.
Gold Digger makes Kanye a pop star, but the next single goes in the opposite direction. He samples Shirley Bassey's 1971 James Bond theme, and what starts as a victory lap about success transforms into something much darker.
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