Songfacts®:

• This is a track from Chicago rapper Kanye West's fifth studio album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. The song features Jay-Z, who needs no introduction, as well as rapper Pusha T of Clipse, who is signed to West's label G.O.O.D. Music, West's protégé CyHi the Prynce, rapper/producer Swizz Beatz, and RZA, who is the de facto leader of the Wu-Tang Clan.
• Jay-Z's verse includes a reference to 1990's rapper MC Hammer's bankruptcy problems: "And Hammer went broke so you know I'm more focused. I lost 30 mil so I spent another 30, cause unlike Hammer 30 million can't hurt me."
  
  The U Can't Touch This artist filmed an accompanying video in response. The clip sees a Jay-Z look alike being chased through some woods by the devil before eventually getting baptised by Hammer.
  
  Jay-Z told BBC Radio 1 Extra's DJ Semtex that he had no intentions of starting a lyrical battle with Hammer, claiming that the rhymes weren't controversial. "I didn't know that was on the table for discussion. I didn't know I was the first person to ever say that. Am I? I'm not, am I? I know I've heard that before, I didn't think I was the first one to say it," said Hov. "He took it the wrong way, I didn't know it was on the table for discussion. And I didn't know that I said anything wrong!"
• Pusha T's verse includes the lyric, "I speak of gospel, hostile/ Tony doing time for what he did to nostrils." This refers to Clipse's onetime manager Anthony "Geezy" Gonzalez, who was jailed for 32 years in January 2010 after pleading guilty to running a $20 million drug ring, the minimum sentence allowed under federal law.
• Pusha told MTV News that it was the instrumental for the song that inspired him to deliver such a spirited verse. "It's Kanye, the beat brings the ghost out of you," he said.
• Kanye West is known for his last-minute edits on his material, which sometimes results in mistakes on the production. During Swiss Beatz's verse there is a vocal skip during the second repetition of "middle finger in the air, if you don't really care." Speaking on Complex's Open Late in May 2018, Beatz admitted the slip-up still irks him.
  
  "I just never understood why my part wasn't cleaned up. If you hear it, my voice skips on it," he said. "I don't know what it was but everything was like last minute. Every time I hear it, it drives me crazy."